Jennie Gerhardt - Theodore Dreiser (recommended reading TXT) 📗

She teases him about it—the little imp. She offered to teach him to dance to-night. If he didn't love her so he'd box her ears."

"I can see that," said Lester, smiling. "Him dancing! That's pretty good!"

"She's not the least bit disturbed by his storming, either."

"Good for her," said Lester. He was very fond of Vesta, who was now quite a girl.

So Jennie tripped on until his mood was modified a little, and then some inkling of what had happened came out. It was when they were retiring for the night. "Robert's formulated a pretty big thing in a financial way since we've been away," he volunteered.

"What is it?" asked Jennie, all ears.

"Oh, he's gotten up a carriage trust. It's something which will take in every manufactory of any importance in the country. Bracebridge was telling me that Robert was made president, and that they have nearly eight millions in capital."

"You don't say!" replied Jennie. "Well, then you won't want to do much with your new company, will you?"

"No; there's nothing in that, just now," he said. "Later on I fancy it may be all right. I'll wait and see how this thing comes out. You never can tell what a trust like that will do."

Jennie was intensely sorry. She had never heard Lester complain before. It was a new note. She wished sincerely that she might do something to comfort him, but she knew that her efforts were useless. "Oh, well," she said, "there are so many interesting things in this world. If I were you I wouldn't be in a hurry to do anything, Lester. You have so much time."

She didn't trust herself to say anything more, and he felt that it was useless to worry. Why should he? After all, he had an ample income that was absolutely secure for two years yet. He could have more if he wanted it. Only his brother was moving so dazzlingly onward, while he was standing still—perhaps "drifting" would be the better word. It did seem a pity; worst of all, he was beginning to feel a little uncertain of himself.

CHAPTER XLVIII

Lester had been doing some pretty hard thinking, but so far he had been unable to formulate any feasible plan for his re-entrance into active life. The successful organization of Robert's carriage trade trust had knocked in the head any further thought on his part of taking an interest in the small Indiana wagon manufactory. He could not be expected to sink his sense of pride and place, and enter a petty campaign for business success with a man who was so obviously his financial superior. He had looked up the details of the combination, and he found that Bracebridge had barely indicated how wonderfully complete it was. There were millions in the combine. It would have every little manufacturer by the throat. Should he begin now in a small way and "pike along" in the shadow of his giant brother? He couldn't see it. It was too ignominious. He would be running around the country trying to fight a new trust, with his own brother as his tolerant rival and his own rightful capital arrayed against him. It couldn't be done. Better sit still for the time being. Something else might show up. If not—well, he had his independent income and the right to come back into the Kane Company if he wished. Did he wish? The question was always with him.

It was while Lester was in this mood, drifting, that he received a visit from Samuel E. Ross, a real estate dealer, whose great, wooden signs might be seen everywhere on the windy stretches of prairie about the city. Lester had seen Ross once or twice at the Union Club, where he had been pointed out as a daring and successful real estate speculator, and he had noticed his rather conspicuous offices at La Salle and Washington streets. Ross was a magnetic-looking person of about fifty years of age, tall, black-bearded, black-eyed, an arched, wide-nostriled nose, and hair that curled naturally, almost electrically. Lester was impressed with his lithe, cat-like figure, and his long, thin, impressive white hands.

Mr. Ross had a real estate proposition to lay before Mr. Kane. Of course Mr. Kane knew who he was. And Mr. Ross admitted fully that he knew all about Mr. Kane. Recently, in conjunction with Mr. Norman Yale, of the wholesale grocery firm of Yale, Simpson & Rice, he had developed "Yalewood." Mr. Kane knew of that?

Yes, Mr. Kane knew of that.

Only within six weeks the last lots in the Ridgewood section of "Yalewood" had been closed out at a total profit of forty-two per cent. He went over a list of other deals in real estate which he had put through, all well-known properties. He admitted frankly that there were failures in the business; he had had one or two himself. But the successes far outnumbered the bad speculations, as every one knew. Now Lester was no longer connected with the Kane Company. He was probably looking for a good investment, and Mr. Ross had a proposition to lay before him. Lester consented to listen, and Mr. Ross blinked his cat-like eyes and started in.

The idea was that he and Lester should enter into a one-deal partnership, covering the purchase and development of a forty-acre tract of land lying between Fifty-fifth, Seventy-first, Halstead streets, and Ashland Avenue, on the southwest side. There were indications of a genuine real estate boom there—healthy, natural, and permanent. The city was about to pave Fifty-fifth Street. There was a plan to extend the Halstead Street car line far below its present terminus. The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, which ran near there, would be glad to put a passenger station on the property. The initial cost of the land would be forty thousand dollars which they would share equally. Grading, paving, lighting, tree planting, surveying would cost, roughly, an additional twenty-five thousand. There would be expenses for advertising—say ten per cent, of the total investment for two years, or perhaps three—a total of nineteen thousand five hundred or twenty thousand dollars. All told, they would stand to invest jointly the sum of ninety-five thousand, or possibly one hundred thousand dollars, of which Lester's share would be fifty thousand. Then Mr. Ross began to figure on the profits.

The character of the land, its salability, and the likelihood of a rise in value could be judged by the property adjacent, the sales that had been made north of Fifty-fifth Street and east of Halstead. Take, for instance, the Mortimer plot, at Halstead and Fifty-fifth streets, on the south-east corner. Here was a piece of land that in 1882 was held at forty-five dollars an acre. In 1886 it had risen to five hundred dollars an acre, as attested by its sale to a Mr. John L. Slosson at that time. In 1889, three years later, it had been sold to Mr. Mortimer for one thousand per acre, precisely the figure at which this tract was now offered. It could be parceled out into lots fifty by one hundred feet at five hundred dollars per lot. Was there any profit in that?

Lester admitted that there was.

Ross went on, somewhat boastfully, to explain just how real estate profits were made. It was useless for any outsider to rush into the game, and imagine that he could do in a few weeks or years what trained real estate speculators like himself had been working on for a quarter of a century. There was something in prestige, something in taste, something in psychic apprehension. Supposing that they went into the deal, he, Ross, would be the presiding genius. He had a trained staff, he controlled giant contractors, he had friends in the tax office, in the water office, and in the various other city departments which made or marred city improvements. If Lester would come in with him he would make him some money—how much he would not say exactly—fifty thousand dollars at the lowest—one hundred and fifty to two hundred thousand in all likelihood. Would Lester let him go into details, and explain just how the scheme could be worked out? After a few days of quiet cogitation, Lester decided to accede to Mr. Ross's request; he would look into this thing.

CHAPTER XLIX

The peculiarity of this particular proposition was that it had the basic elements of success. Mr. Ross had the experience and the judgment which were quite capable of making a success of almost anything he undertook. He was in a field which was entirely familiar. He could convince almost any able man if he could get his ear sufficiently long to lay his facts before him.

Lester was not convinced at first, although, generally speaking, he was interested in real estate propositions. He liked land. He considered it a sound investment providing you did not get too much of it. He had never invested in any, or scarcely any, solely because he had not been in a realm where real estate propositions were talked of. As it was he was landless and, in a way, jobless.

He rather liked Mr. Ross and his way of doing business. It was easy to verify his statements, and he did verify them in several particulars. There were his signs out on the prairie stretches, and here were his ads in the daily papers. It seemed not a bad way at all in his idleness to start and make some money.

The trouble with Lester was that he had reached the time where he was not as keen for details as he had formerly been. All his work in recent years—in fact, from the very beginning—had been with large propositions, the purchasing of great quantities of supplies, the placing of large orders, the discussion of things which were wholesale and which had very little to do with the minor details which make up the special interests of the smaller traders of the world. In the factory his brother Robert had figured the pennies and nickels of labor-cost, had seen to it that all the little leaks were shut off. Lester had been left to deal with larger things, and he had consistently done so. When it came to this particular proposition his interest was in the wholesale phases of it, not the petty details of selling. He could not help seeing that Chicago was a growing city, and that land values must rise. What was now far-out prairie property would soon, in the course of a few years, be well built-up suburban residence territory. Scarcely any land that could be purchased now would fall in value. It might drag in sales or increase, but it couldn't fall. Ross convinced him of this. He knew it of his own judgment to be true.

The several things on which he did not speculate sufficiently were the life or health of Mr. Ross; the chance that some obnoxious neighborhood growth would affect the territory he had selected as residence territory; the fact that difficult money situations might reduce real estate values—in fact, bring about a flurry of real estate liquidation which would send prices crashing down and cause the failure of strong promoters, even such promoters for instance, as Mr. Samuel E. Ross.

For several months he studied the situation as presented by his new guide and mentor, and then, having satisfied himself that he was reasonably safe, decided to sell some of the holdings which were netting him a beggarly six per cent, and invest in this new proposition. The first cash outlay was twenty thousand dollars for the land, which was taken over under an operative agreement between himself and Ross; this was run indefinitely—so long as there was any of this land left to sell. The next thing was to raise twelve thousand five hundred dollars for improvements, which he did, and then to furnish some twenty-five hundred dollars more for taxes and unconsidered expenses, items which had come up in carrying