This fall we win--me and the big fellows over there in La Salle Street, and all the Republicans or Democrats or Prohibitionists, or whoever else comes in with us--do you get me? We"re going to put up the biggest political fight Chicago has ever seen. I"m not naming any names just yet, but when the time comes you"ll see. Now, what I want to ask of you is this, and I"ll not mince me words nor beat around the bush.

Will you and Tiernan come in with me and Edstrom to take over the city and run it during the next two years? If you will, we can win hands down. It will be a case of share and share alike on everything--police, gas, water, highways, street-railways, everything--or we"ll divide beforehand and put it down in black and white. I know that you and Tiernan work together, or I wouldn"t talk about this. Edstrom has the Swedes where he wants them, and he"ll poll twenty thousand of them this fall. There"s Ungerich with his Germans; one of us might make a deal with him afterward, give him most any office he wants. If we win this time we can hold the city for six or eight years anyhow, most likely, and after that--well, there"s no use lookin" too far in the future--Anyhow we"d have a majority of the council and carry the mayor along with it."

"If--" commented Mr. Kerrigan, dryly.

"If," replied Mr. Gilgan, sententiously. "You"re very right. There"s a big "if" in there, I"ll admit. But if these two wards--yours and Tiernan"s--could by any chance be carried for the Republicans they"d be equal to any four or five of the others."

"Very true," replied Mr. Kerrigan, "if they could be carried for the Republicans. But they can"t be. What do you want me to do, anyhow?

Lose me seat in council and be run out of the Democratic party? What"s your game? You don"t take me for a plain d.a.m.n fool, do you?"

"Sorry the man that ever took "Emerald Pat" for that," answered Gilgan, with honeyed compliment. "I never would. But no one is askin" ye to lose your seat in council and be run out of the Democratic party.

What"s to hinder you from electin" yourself and droppin" the rest of the ticket?" He had almost said "knifing."

Mr. Kerrigan smiled. In spite of all his previous dissatisfaction with the Chicago situation he had not thought of Mr. Gilgan"s talk as leading to this. It was an interesting idea. He had "knifed" people before--here and there a particular candidate whom it was desirable to undo. If the Democratic party was in any danger of losing this fall, and if Gilgan was honest in his desire to divide and control, it might not be such a bad thing. Neither Cowperwood, McKenty, nor Dowling had ever favored him in any particular way. If they lost through him, and he could still keep himself in power, they would have to make terms with him. There was no chance of their running him out. Why shouldn"t he knife the ticket? It was worth thinking over, to say the least.

"That"s all very fine," he observed, dryly, after his meditations had run their course; "but how do I know that you wouldn"t turn around and "welch" on the agreement afterward?" (Mr. Gilgan stirred irritably at the suggestion.) "Dave Morrissey came to me four years ago to help him out, and a lot of satisfaction I got afterward." Kerrigan was referring to a man whom he had helped make county clerk, and who had turned on him when he asked for return favors and his support for the office of commissioner of highways. Morrissey had become a prominent politician.

"That"s very easy to say," replied Gilgan, irritably, "but it"s not true of me. Ask any man in my district. Ask the men who know me.

I"ll put my part of the bargain in black and white if you"ll put yours.

If I don"t make good, show me up afterward. I"ll take you to the people that are backing me. I"ll show you the money. I"ve got the goods this time. What do you stand to lose, anyhow? They can"t run you out for cutting the ticket. They can"t prove it. We"ll bring police in here to make it look like a fair vote. I"ll put up as much money as they will to carry this district, and more."

Mr. Kerrigan suddenly saw a grand coup here. He could "draw down" from the Democrats, as he would have expressed it, twenty to twenty-five thousand dollars to do the dirty work here. Gilgan would furnish him as much and more--the situation being so critical. Perhaps fifteen or eighteen thousand would be necessary to poll the number of votes required either way. At the last hour, before stuffing the boxes, he would learn how the city was going. If it looked favorable for the Republicans it would be easy to complete the victory and complain that his lieutenants had been suborned. If it looked certain for the Democrats he could throw Gilgan and pocket his funds. In either case he would be "in" twenty-five to thirty thousand dollars, and he would still be councilman.

"All very fine," replied Mr. Kerrigan, pretending a dullness which he did not feel; "but it"s d.a.m.ned ticklish business at best. I don"t know that I want anything to do with it even if we could win. It"s true the City Hall crowd have never played into my hands very much; but this is a Democratic district, and I"m a Democrat. If it ever got out that I had thrown the party it would be pretty near all day with me.

"I"m a man of my word," declared Mr. Gilgan, emphatically, getting up.

"I never threw a man or a bet in my life. Look at me record in the eighteenth. Did you ever hear any one say that I had?"

"No, I never did," returned Kerrigan, mildly. "But it"s a pretty large thing you"re proposing, Mr. Gilgan. I wouldn"t want to say what I thought about it offhand. This ward is supposed to be Democratic. It couldn"t be swung over into the Republican column without a good bit of fuss being made about it. You"d better see Mr. Tiernan first and hear what he has to say. Afterward I might be willing to talk about it further. Not now, though--not now."

Mr. Gilgan went away quite jauntily and cheerfully. He was not at all downcast.

Chapter x.x.xVI

An Election Draws Near

Subsequently Mr. Kerrigan called on Mr. Tiernan casually. Mr. Tiernan returned the call. A little later Messrs. Tiernan, Kerrigan, and Gilgan, in a parlor-room in a small hotel in Milwaukee (in order not to be seen together), conferred. Finally Messrs. Tiernan, Edstrom, Kerrigan, and Gilgan met and mapped out a programme of division far too intricate to be indicated here. Needless to say, it involved the division of chief clerks, pro rata, of police graft, of gambling and bawdy-house perquisites, of returns from gas, street-railway, and other organizations. It was sealed with many solemn promises. If it could be made effective this quadrumvirate was to endure for years. Judges, small magistrates, officers large and small, the shrievalty, the water office, the tax office, all were to come within its purview. It was a fine, handsome political dream, and as such worthy of every courtesy and consideration but it was only a political dream in its ultimate aspects, and as such impressed the partic.i.p.ants themselves at times.

The campaign was now in full blast. The summer and fall (September and October) went by to the tune of Democratic and Republican marching club bands, to the sound of l.u.s.ty political voices orating in parks, at street-corners, in wooden "wigwams," halls, tents, and parlors--wherever a meager handful of listeners could be drummed up and made by any device to keep still. The newspapers honked and bellowed, as is the way with those profit-appointed advocates and guardians of "right" and "justice." Cowperwood and McKenty were denounced from nearly every street-corner in Chicago. Wagons and sign-boards on wheels were hauled about labeled "Break the partnership between the street-railway corporations and the city council." "Do you want more streets stolen?" "Do you want Cowperwood to own Chicago?" Cowperwood himself, coming down-town of a morning or driving home of an evening, saw these things. He saw the huge signs, listened to speeches denouncing himself, and smiled. By now he was quite aware as to whence this powerful uprising had sprung. Hand was back of it, he knew--for so McKenty and Addison had quickly discovered--and with Hand was Schryhart, Arneel, Merrill, the Douglas Trust Company, the various editors, young Truman Leslie MacDonald, the old gas crowd, the Chicago General Company--all. He even suspected that certain aldermen might possibly be suborned to desert him, though all professed loyalty.

McKenty, Addison, Videra, and himself were planning the details of their defenses as carefully and effectively as possible. Cowperwood was fully alive to the fact that if he lost this election--the first to be vigorously contested--it might involve a serious chain of events; but he did not propose to be unduly disturbed, since he could always fight in the courts by money, and by preferment in the council, and with the mayor and the city attorney. "There is more than one way to kill a cat," was one of his pet expressions, and it expressed his logic and courage exactly. Yet he did not wish to lose.

One of the amusing features of the campaign was that the McKenty orators had been instructed to shout as loudly for reforms as the Republicans, only instead of a.s.sailing Cowperwood and McKenty they were to point out that Schryhart"s Chicago City Railway was far more rapacious, and that this was a scheme to give it a blanket franchise of all streets not yet covered by either the Cowperwood or the Schryhart-Hand-Arneel lines. It was a pretty argument. The Democrats could point with pride to a uniformly liberal interpretation of some trying Sunday laws, whereby under Republican and reform administrations it had been occasionally difficult for the honest working-man to get his gla.s.s or pail of beer on Sunday. On the other hand it was possible for the Republican orators to show how "the low dives and gin-mills"

were everywhere being operated in favor of McKenty, and that under the highly respectable administration of the Republican candidate for mayor this partnership between the city government and vice and crime would be nullified.

"If I am elected," declared the Honorable Chaffee Thayer Sluss, the Republican candidate, "neither Frank Cowperwood nor John McKenty will dare to show his face in the City Hall unless he comes with clean hands and an honest purpose.

"Hooray!" yelled the crowd.

"I know that a.s.s," commented Addison, when he read this in the Transcript. "He used to be a clerk in the Douglas Trust Company. He"s made a little money recently in the paper business. He"s a mere tool for the Arneel-Schryhart interests. He hasn"t the courage of a two-inch fish-worm."

When McKenty read it he simply observed: "There are other ways of going to City Hall than by going yourself." He was depending upon a councilmanic majority at least.

However, in the midst of this uproar the goings to and fro of Gilgan, Edstrom, Kerrigan, and Tiernan were nor fully grasped. A more urbanely shifty pair than these latter were never seen. While fraternizing secretly with both Gilgan and Edstrom, laying out their political programme most neatly, they were at the same time conferring with Dowling, Duvanicki, even McKenty himself. Seeing that the outcome was, for some reason--he could scarcely see why--looking very uncertain, McKenty one day asked the two of them to come to see him. On getting the letter Mr. Tiernan strolled over to Mr. Kerrigan"s place to see whether he also had received a message.

"Sure, sure! I did!" replied Mr. Kerrigan, gaily. "Here it is now in me outside coat pocket. "Dear Mr. Kerrigan,"" he read, ""won"t you do me the favor to come over to-morrow evening at seven and dine with me?

Mr. Ungerich, Mr. Duvanicki, and several others will very likely drop in afterward. I have asked Mr. Tiernan to come at the same time.

Sincerely, John J. McKenty." That"s the way he does it," added Mr.

Kerrigan; "just like that."

He kissed the letter mockingly and put it back into his pocket.

"Sure I got one, jist the same way. The very same langwidge, nearly,"

commented Mr. Tiernan, sweetly. "He"s beginning to wake up, eh? What!

The little old first and second are beginning to look purty big just now, eh? What!"

"Tush!" observed Mr. Kerrigan to Mr. Tiernan, with a marked sardonic emphasis, "that combination won"t last forever. They"ve been getting too big for their pants, I"m thinking. Well, it"s a long road, eh?

It"s pretty near time, what?"

"You"re right," responded Mr. Tiernan, feelingly. "It is a long road.

These are the two big wards of the city, and everybody knows it. If we turn on them at the last moment where will they be, eh?"

He put a fat finger alongside of his heavy reddish nose and looked at Mr. Kerrigan out of squinted eyes.

"You"re d.a.m.ned right," replied the little politician, cheerfully.

They went to the dinner separately, so as not to appear to have conferred before, and greeted each other on arriving as though they had not seen each other for days.

"How"s business, Mike?"

"Oh, fair, Pat. How"s things with you?"

"So so."

"Things lookin" all right in your ward for November?"

Mr. Tiernan wrinkled a fat forehead. "Can"t tell yet." All this was for the benefit of Mr. McKenty, who did not suspect rank party disloyalty.

Nothing much came of this conference, except that they sat about discussing in a general way wards, pluralities, what Zeigler was likely to do with the twelfth, whether Pinski could make it in the sixth, Schlumbohm in the twentieth, and so on. New Republican contestants in old, safe Democratic wards were making things look dubious.

"And how about the first, Kerrigan?" inquired Ungerich, a thin, reflective German-American of shrewd presence. Ungerich was one who had hitherto wormed himself higher in McKenty"s favor than either Kerrigan or Tiernan.

"Oh, the first"s all right," replied Kerrigan, archly. "Of course you never can tell. This fellow Scully may do something, but I don"t think it will be much. If we have the same police protection--"

Ungerich was gratified. He was having a struggle in his own ward, where a rival by the name of Glover appeared to be pouring out money like water. He would require considerably more money than usual to win. It was the same with Duvanicki.

McKenty finally parted with his lieutenants--more feelingly with Kerrigan and Tiernan than he had ever done before. He did not wholly trust these two, and he could not exactly admire them and their methods, which were the roughest of all, but they were useful.