"It's a bargain, then," said Cowperwood. "We'll want new offices,
Laughlin, don't you think? This one's a little dark."

"Fix it up any way you like, Mr. Cowperwood. It's all the same
to me. I'll be glad to see how yer do it."

In a week the details were completed, and two weeks later the sign
of Peter Laughlin & Co., grain and commission merchants, appeared
over the door of a handsome suite of rooms on the ground floor of
a corner at La Salle and Madison, in the heart of the Chicago
financial district.

"Get onto old Laughlin, will you?" one broker observed to another,
as they passed the new, pretentious commission-house with its
splendid plate-glass windows, and observed the heavy, ornate bronze
sign placed on either side of the door, which was located exactly
on the corner. "What's struck him? I thought he was almost all
through. Who's the Company?"

"I don't know. Some fellow from the East, I think."

"Well, he's certainly moving up. Look at the plate glass, will
you?"

It was thus that Frank Algernon Cowperwood's Chicago financial
career was definitely launched.