curiously.

"Why, Peter," Cowperwood replied, quite simply, "Anton Videra"
(one of the directors of the Wheat and Corn Bank) "was in here
yesterday while you were on 'change, and he was telling me." He
described a situation which Videra had outlined.

Laughlin knew Videra as a strong, wealthy Pole who had come up in
the last few years. It was strange how Cowperwood naturally got
in with these wealthy men and won their confidence so quickly.
Videra would never have become so confidential with him.

"Huh!" he exclaimed. "Well, if he says it it's more'n likely so."

So Laughlin bought, and Peter Laughlin & Co. won.

But this grain and commission business, while it was yielding a
profit which would average about twenty thousand a year to each
partner, was nothing more to Cowperwood than a source of information.

He wanted to "get in" on something that was sure to bring very
great returns within a reasonable time and that would not leave
him in any such desperate situation as he was at the time of the
Chicago fire--spread out very thin, as he put it. He had interested
in his ventures a small group of Chicago men who were watching
him--Judah Addison, Alexander Rambaud, Millard Bailey, Anton
Videra--men who, although not supreme figures by any means, had
free capital. He knew that he could go to them with any truly
sound proposition. The one thing that most attracted his attention
was the Chicago gas situation, because there was a chance to step