well as the latter and Merrill, had been
social friends for years and years.

After his call on Mr. Haguenin, Cowperwood's naturally selective and
self-protective judgment led him next to the office of the Inquirer,
old General MacDonald's paper, where he found that because of
rhuematism and the severe, inclement weather of Chicago, the old
General had sailed only a few days before for Italy. His son, an
aggressive, mercantile type of youth of thirty-two, and a managing
editor by the name of Du Bois were acting in his stead. In the son,
Truman Leslie MacDonald, an intense, calm, and penetrating young man,
Cowperwood encountered some one who, like himself, saw life only from
the point of view of sharp, self-centered, personal advantage. What
was he, Truman Leslie MacDonald, to derive from any given situation,
and how was he to make the Inquirer an even greater property than it
had been under his father before him? He did not propose to be
overwhelmed by the old General's rather flowery reputation. At the
same time he meant to become imposingly rich. An active member of a
young and very smart set which had been growing up on the North Side,
he rode, drove, was instrumental in organizing a new and exclusive
country club, and despised the rank and file as unsuited to the fine
atmosphere to which he aspired. Mr. Clifford Du Bois, the managing
editor, was a cool reprobate of forty, masquerading as a gentleman, and
using the Inquirer in subtle ways for furthering his personal ends, and
that under the old General's very nose. He was osseous, sandy-haired,
blue-eyed, with a keen, formidable nose and a solid chin. Clifford Du
Bois was always careful never to let his left hand know what his right
hand did.

It was this sapient pair that received Cowperwood in the old General's
absence, first in Mr. Du Bois's room and then in that of Mr. MacDonald.
The latter had already heard much of Cowperwood's doings. Men who had
been connected with the old gas war--Jordan Jules, for instance,
president of the old North Chicago Gas Company, and Hudson Baker,
president of the old West Chicago Gas Company--had denounced him long
before as a bucaneer who had pirated them out of very comfortable
sinecures. Here he was now invading the North Chicago street-railway
field and coming with startling schemes for the reorganization of the
down-town business heart. Why shouldn't the city have something in
return; or, better yet, those who helpe