As time went on he became wiser, if, alas, a little more eager. By association with merchants and some superior politicians whom he chanced to encounter, and because the ward in which he lived happened to be a pivotal one, he began to speak publicly on occasion and to gather dimly the import of that logic which sees life as a pagan wild, and religion and convention as the forms man puts on or off to suit his fancy, mood, and whims during the onward drift of the ages. Not for Chaffee Thayer Sluss to grasp the true meaning of it all. His brain was not big enough. Men led dual lives, it was true; but say what you would, and in the face of his own erring conduct, this was very bad. On Sunday, when he went to church with his wife, he felt that religion was essential and purifying. In his own business he found himself frequently confronted by various little flaws of logic relating to undue profits, misrepresentations, and the like; but say what you would, nevertheless and notwithstanding, God was God, morality was superior, the church was important. It was wrong to yield to one’s impulses, as he found it so fascinating to do. One should be better than his neighbor, or pretend to be.
What is to be done with such a rag-bag, moralistic ass as this? In spite of all his philanderings, and the resultant qualms due to his fear of being found out, he prospered in business and rose to some eminence in his own community. As he had grown more lax he had become somewhat more genial and tolerant, more generally acceptable. He was a good Republican, a follower in the wake of Norrie Simms and young Truman Leslie MacDonald. His father-in-law was both rich and moderately influential. Having lent himself to some campaign speaking, and to party work in general, he proved quite an adept. Because of all these things—his ability, such as it was, his pliability, and his thoroughly respectable savor—he had been slated as candidate for mayor on the Republican ticket, which had subsequently been elected.
Cowperwood was well aware, from remarks made in the previous campaign, of the derogatory attitude of Mayor Sluss. Already he had discussed it in a conversation with the Hon. Joel Avery (ex-state senator), who was in his employ at the time. Avery had recently been in all sorts of corporation work, and knew the ins and outs of the courts—lawyers, judges, politicians—as he knew his revised statutes. He was a very little man—not more than five feet one inch tall—with a wide forehead, saffron hair and brows, brown, cat-like eyes and a mushy underlip that occasionally covered the upper one as he thought. After years and years Mr. Avery had learned to smile, but it was in a strange, exotic way. Mostly he gazed steadily, folded his lower lip over his upper one, and expressed his almost unchangeable conclusions in slow Addisonian phrases. In the present crisis it was Mr. Avery who had a suggestion to make.
“One thing that I think could be done,” he said to Cowperwood one day in a very confidential conference, “would be to have a look into the—the—shall I say the heart affairs—of the Hon. Chaffee Thayer Sluss.” Mr. Avery’s cat-like eyes gleamed sardonically. “Unless I am greatly mistaken, judging the man by his personal presence merely, he is the sort of person who probably has had, or if not might readily be induced to have, some compromising affair with a woman which would require considerable sacrifice on his part to smooth over. We are all human and vulnerable”—up went Mr. Avery’s lower lip covering the upper one, and then down again—“and it does not behoove any of us to be too severely ethical and self-righteous. Mr. Sluss is a well-meaning man, but a trifle sentimental, as I take it.”
As Mr. Avery paused Cowperwood merely contemplated him, amused no less by his personal appearance than by his suggestion.
“Not a bad idea,” he said, “though I don’t like to mix heart affairs with politics.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Avery, soulfully, “there may be something in it. I don’t know. You never can tell.”
The upshot of this was that the task of obtaining an account of Mr. Sluss’s habits, tastes, and proclivities was assigned to that now rather dignified legal personage, Mr. Burton Stimson, who in turn assigned it to an assistant, a Mr. Marchbanks. It was an amazing situation in some respects, but those who know anything concerning the intricacies of politics, finance, and corporate control, as they were practised in those palmy days, would never marvel at the wells of subtlety, sinks of misery, and morasses of disaster which they represented.
From another quarter, the Hon. Patrick Gilgan was not slow in responding to Cowperwood’s message. Whatever his political connections and proclivities, he did not care to neglect so powerful a man.
“And what can I be doing for you to-day, Mr. Cowperwood?” he inquired, when he arrived looking nice and fresh, very spick and span after his victory.
“Listen, Mr. Gilgan,” said Cowperwood, simply, eying the Republican county chairman very fixedly and twiddling his thumbs with fingers interlocked, “are you going to let the city council jam through the General Electric and that South Side ‘L’ road ordinance without giving me a chance to say a word or do anything about it?”
Mr. Gilgan, so Cowperwood knew, was only one of a new quadrumvirate setting out to rule the city, but he pretended to believe that he was the last word—an all power and authority—after the fashion of McKenty. “Me good man,” replied Gilgan, archly, “you flatter me. I haven’t the city council in me vest pocket. I’ve been county chairman, it’s true, and helped to elect some of these men, but I don’t own ’em. Why shouldn’t they pass the General Electric ordinance? It’s an honest ordinance, as far as I know. All the newspapers have been for it. As for this ‘L’ road ordinance, I haven’t anything to do with it. It isn’t anything I know much about. Young MacDonald and Mr. Schryhart are looking after that.”
As a matter of fact, all that Mr. Gilgan was saying was decidedly true. A henchman of young MacDonald’s who was beginning to learn to play politics—an alderman by the name of Klemm—had been scheduled as a kind of field-marshal, and it was MacDonald—not Gilgan, Tiernan, Kerrigan, or Edstrom—who was to round up the recalcitrant aldermen, telling them their duty. Gilgan’s quadrumvirate had not as yet got their machine in good working order, though they were doing their best to bring this about. “I helped to elect every one of these men, it’s true; but that doesn’t mean I’m running ’em by any means,” concluded Gilgan. “Not yet, anyhow.”
At the “not yet” Cowperwood smiled.
“Just the same, Mr. Gilgan,” he went on, smoothly, “you’re the nominal head and front of this whole movement in opposition to me at present, and you’re the one I have to look to. You have this present Republican situation almost entirely in your own fingers, and you can do about as you like if you’re so minded. If you choose you can persuade the members of council to take considerable more time than they otherwise would in passing these ordinances—of that I’m sure. I don’t know whether you know or not, Mr. Gilgan, though I suppose you do, that this whole fight against me is a strike campaign intended to drive me out of Chicago. Now you’re a man of sense and judgment and considerable business experience, and I want to ask you if you think that is fair. I came here some sixteen or seventeen years ago and went into the gas business. It was an open field, the field I undertook to develop—outlying towns on the North, South, and West sides. Yet the moment I started the old-line companies began to fight me, though I wasn’t invading their territory at all at the time.”