below. Cowperwood, as he sat in his light runabout, annoyed by a delay,
or dashed swiftly forward to get over before a bridge turned, had long
since noted that the street-car service in the North and West Sides was
badly hampered. The unbroken South Side, unthreaded by a river, had no
such problem, and was growing rapidly.

Because of this he was naturally interested to observe one day, in the
course of his peregrinations, that there existed in two places under
the Chicago River--in the first place at La Salle Street, running north
and south, and in the second at Washington Street, running east and
west--two now soggy and rat-infested tunnels which were never used by
anybody--dark, dank, dripping affairs only vaguely lighted with
oil-lamp, and oozing with water. Upon investigation he learned that
they had been built years before to accommodate this same tide of wagon
traffic, which now congested at the bridges, and which even then had
been rapidly rising. Being forced to pay a toll in time to which a
slight toll in cash, exacted for the privilege of using a tunnel, had
seemed to the investors and public infinitely to be preferred, this
traffic had been offered this opportunity of avoiding the delay.
However, like many another handsome commercial scheme on paper or
bubbling in the human brain, the plan did not work exactly. These
tunnels might have proved profitable if they had been properly built
with long, low-per-cent. grades, wide roadways, and a sufficiency of
light and air; but, as a matter of fact, they had not been judiciously
adapted to public convenience. Norman Schryhart's father had been an
investor in these tunnels, and Anson Merrill. When they had proved
unprofitable, after a long period of pointless manipulation--cost, one
million dollars--they had been sold to the city for exactly that sum
each, it being poetically deemed that a growing city could better
afford to lose so disturbing an amount than any of its humble,
ambitious, and respectable citizens. That was a little affair by which
members of council had profited years before; but that also is another
story.

After discovering these tunnels Cowperwood walked through them several
times--for though they were now boarded up, there was still an
uninterrupted footpath--and wondered why they could not be utilized.
It seemed to him that if the street-car traffic were heavy enough,
profitable enough, and these tunnels, for a reasonable sum, could be