Jennie Gerhardt Part 51

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 pa.s.senger 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 quant.i.ties 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 out the improvement work which had been planned. It seemed that hard and soft earth made a difference in grading costs, that trees would not always flourish as expected, that certain members of the city water and gas departments had to be "seen" and "fixed" before certain other improvements could be effected. Mr. Ross attended to all this, but the cost of the proceedings was something which had to be discussed, and Lester heard it all.

After the land was put in shape, about a year after the original conversation, it was necessary to wait until spring for the proper advertising and booming of the new section; and this advertising began to call at once for the third payment. Lester disposed of an additional fifteen thousand dollars worth of securities in order to follow this venture to its logical and profitable conclusion.

Up to this time he was rather pleased with his venture. Ross had certainly been thorough and business-like in his handling of the various details. The land was put in excellent shape. It was given a rather attractive t.i.tle--"Inwood," although, as Lester noted, there was precious little wood anywhere around there. But Ross a.s.sured him that people looking for a suburban residence would be attracted by the name; seeing the vigorous efforts in tree-planting that had been made to provide for shade in the future, they would take the will for the deed. Lester smiled.

The first chill wind that blew upon the infant project came in the form of a rumor that the International Packing Company, one of the big const.i.tuent members of the packing house combination at Halstead and Thirty-ninth streets, had determined to desert the old group and lay out a new packing area for itself. The papers explained that the company intended to go farther south, probably below Fifty-fifth Street and west of Ashland Avenue. This was the territory that was located due west of Lester's property, and the mere suspicion that the packing company might invade the territory was sufficient to blight the prospects of any budding real estate deal.

Ross was beside himself with rage. He decided, after quick deliberation, that the best thing to do would be to boom the property heavily, by means of newspaper advertising, and see if it could not be disposed of before any additional damage was likely to be done to it.

He laid the matter before Lester, who agreed that this would be advisable. They had already expended six thousand dollars in advertising, and now the additional sum of three thousand dollars was spent in ten days, to make it appear that In wood was an ideal residence section, equipped with every modern convenience for the home-lover, and destined to be one of the most exclusive and beautiful suburbs of the city. It was "no go." A few lots were sold, but the rumor that the International Packing Company might come was persistent and deadly; from any point of view, save that of a foreign population neighborhood, the enterprise was a failure.

To say that Lester was greatly disheartened by this blow is to put it mildly. Practically fifty thousand dollars, two-thirds of all his earthly possessions, outside of his stipulated annual income, was tied up here; and there were taxes to pay, repairs to maintain, actual depreciation in value to face. He suggested to Ross that the area might be sold at its cost value, or a loan raised on it, and the whole enterprise abandoned; but that experienced real estate dealer was not so sanguine. He had had one or two failures of this kind before. He was superst.i.tious about anything which did not go smoothly from the beginning. If it didn't go it was a hoodoo--a black shadow--and he wanted no more to do with it. Other real estate men, as he knew to his cost, were of the same opinion.

Some three years later the property was sold under the sheriff's hammer. Lester, having put in fifty thousand dollars all told, recovered a trifle more than eighteen thousand; and some of his wise friends a.s.sured him that he was lucky in getting off so easily.

CHAPTER L

While the real estate deal was in progress Mrs. Gerald decided to move to Chicago. She had been staying in Cincinnati for a few months, and had learned a great deal as to the real facts of Lester's irregular mode of life. The question whether or not he was really married to Jennie remained an open one. The garbled details of Jennie's early years, the fact that a Chicago paper had written him up as a young millionaire who was sacrificing his fortune for love of her, the certainty that Robert had practically eliminated him from any voice in the Kane Company, all came to her ears. She hated to think that Lester was making such a sacrifice of himself. He had let nearly a year slip by without doing anything. In two more years his chance would be gone. He had said to her in London that he was without many illusions. Was Jennie one? Did he really love her, or was he just sorry for her? Letty wanted very much to find out for sure.

The house that Mrs. Gerald leased in Chicago was a most imposing one on Drexel Boulevard. "I'm going to take a house in your town this winter, and I hope to see a lot of you," she wrote to Lester. "I'm awfully bored with life here in Cincinnati. After Europe it's so--well, you know. I saw Mrs. Knowles on Sat.u.r.day. She asked after you. You ought to know that you have a loving friend in her. Her daughter is going to marry Jimmy Severance in the spring."

Lester thought of her coming with mingled feelings of pleasure and uncertainty. She would be entertaining largely, of course. Would she foolishly begin by attempting to invite him and Jennie? Surely not.

She must know the truth by this time. Her letter indicated as much.

She spoke of seeing a lot of him. That meant that Jennie would have to be eliminated. He would have to make a clean breast of the whole affair to Letty. Then she could do as she pleased about their future intimacy. Seated in Letty's comfortable boudoir one afternoon, facing a vision of loveliness in pale yellow, he decided that he might as well have it out with her. She would understand. Just at this time he was beginning to doubt the outcome of the real estate deal, and consequently he was feeling a little blue, and, as a concomitant, a little confidential. He could not as yet talk to Jennie about his troubles.

"You know, Lester," said Letty, by way of helping him to his confession--the maid had brought tea for her and some brandy and soda for him, and departed--"that I have been hearing a lot of things about you since I've been back in this country. Aren't you going to tell me all about yourself? You know I have your real interests at heart."

"What have you been hearing, Letty?" he asked, quietly.

"Oh, about your father's will for one thing, and the fact that you're out of the company, and some gossip about Mrs. Kane which doesn't interest me very much. You know what I mean. Aren't you going to straighten things out, so that you can have what rightfully belongs to you? It seems to me such a great sacrifice, Lester, unless, of course, you are very much in love. Are you?" she asked archly.

Lester paused and deliberated before replying. "I really don't know how to answer that last question, Letty," he said. "Sometimes I think that I love her; sometimes I wonder whether I do or not. I'm going to be perfectly frank with you. I was never in such a curious position in my life before. You like me so much, and I--well, I don't say what I think of you," he smiled. "But anyhow, I can talk to you frankly. I'm not married."

"I thought as much," she said, as he paused.

"And I'm not married because I have never been able to make up my mind just what to do about it. When I first met Jennie I thought her the most entrancing girl I had ever laid eyes on."

"That speaks volumes for my charms at that time," interrupted his vis-a-vis.

"Don't interrupt me if you want to hear this," he smiled.

"Tell me one thing," she questioned, "and then I won't. Was that in Cleveland?"

"Yes."

"So I heard," she a.s.sented.

"There was something about her so--"

"Love at first sight," again interpolated Letty foolishly. Her heart was hurting her. "I know."

"Are you going to let me tell this?"