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more than ninety, at the same time creating the impression that it was going to be a prosperous
investment. The certificates gradually rose and were unloaded in rising amounts until one
hundred was reached, when all the two hundred thousand dollars' worth--two thousand
certificates in all--was fed out in small lots. Stener was satisfied. Two hundred shares had been
carried for him and sold at one hundred, which netted him two thousand dollars. It was
illegitimate gain, unethical; but his conscience was not very much troubled by that. He had
none, truly. He saw visions of a halcyon future.
It is difficult to make perfectly clear what a subtle and significant power this suddenly placed in
the hands of Cowperwood. Consider that he was only twenty-eight--nearing twenty-nine.
Imagine yourself by nature versed in the arts of finance, capable of playing with sums of money
in the forms of stocks, certificates, bonds, and cash, as the ordinary man plays with checkers or
chess. Or, better yet, imagine yourself one of those subtle masters of the mysteries of the
higher forms of chess--the type of mind so well illustrated by the famous and historic chess-
players, who could sit with their backs to a group of rivals playing fourteen men at once, calling
out all the moves in turn, remembering all the positions of all the men on all the boards, and
winning. This, of course, would be an overstatement of the subtlety of Cowperwood at this time,
and yet it would not be wholly out of bounds. He knew instinctively what could be done with a
given sum of money--how as cash it could be deposited in one place, and yet as credit and the
basis of moving checks, used in not one but many other places at the same time. When
properly watched and followed this manipulation gave him the constructive and purchasing
power of ten and a dozen times as much as his original sum might have represented. He knew
instinctively the principles of "pyramiding" and "kiting." He could see exactly not only how he
could raise and lower the value of these certificates of loan, day after day and year after year--if
he were so fortunate as to retain his hold on the city treasurer--but also how this would give him
a credit with the banks hitherto beyond his wildest dreams. His father's bank was one of the first
to profit by this and to extend him loans. The various local politicians and bosses-- Mollenhauer,
Butler, Simpson, and others--seeing the success of his efforts in this direction, speculated in city
loan. He became known to Mollenhauer and Simpson, by reputation, if not personally, as the
man who was carrying this city loan proposition to a successful issue. Stener was supposed to
have done a clever thing in finding him. The stock exchange stipulated that all trades were to be
compared the same day and settled before the close of the next; but this working arrangement
with the new city treasurer gave Cowperwood much more latitude, and now he had always until
the first of the month, or practically thirty days at times, in which to render an accounting for all
deals connected with the loan issue.
And, moreover, this was really not an accounting in the sense of removing anything from his
hands. Since the issue was to be so large, the sum at his disposal would always be large, and
so-called transfers and balancing at the end of the month would be a mere matter of
bookkeeping. He could use these city loan certificates deposited with him for manipulative
purposes, deposit them at any bank as collateral for a loan, quite as if they were his own, thus
raising seventy per cent. of their actual value in cash, and he did not hesitate to do so. He could
take this cash, which need not be accounted for until the end of the month, and cover other
stock transactions, on which he could borrow again. There was no limit to the resources of
which he now found himself possessed, except the resources of his own energy, ingenuity, and
the limits of time in which he had to work. The politicians did not realize what a bonanza he was
making of it all for himself, because they were as yet unaware of the subtlety of his mind. When
Stener told him, after talking the matter over with the mayor, Strobik, and others that he would
formally, during the course of the year, set over on the city's books all of the two millions in city
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