There was still a third lawyer, Burton Stimson, the youngest but
assuredly not the least able of the three, a pale, dark-haired
Romeoish youth with burning eyes, whom Cowperwood had encountered
doing some little work for Laughlin, and who was engaged to work
on the West Side with old Laughlin as ostensible organizer and the
sprightly De Soto Sippens as practical adviser. Stimson was no
mooning Romeo, however, but an eager, incisive soul, born very
poor, eager to advance himself. Cowperwood detected that pliability
of intellect which, while it might spell disaster to some, spelled
success for him. He wanted the intellectual servants. He was
willing to pay them handsomely, to keep them busy, to treat them
with almost princely courtesy, but he must have the utmost loyalty.
Stimson, while maintaining his calm and reserve, could have kissed
the arch-episcopal hand. Such is the subtlety of contact.

Behold then at once on the North Side, the South Side, the West
Side--dark goings to and fro and walkings up and down in the earth.
In Lake View old General Van Sickle and De Soto Sippens, conferring
with shrewd Councilman Duniway, druggist, and with Jacob Gerecht,
ward boss and wholesale butcher, both of whom were agreeable but
exacting, holding pleasant back-room and drug-store confabs with
almost tabulated details of rewards and benefits. In Hyde Park,
Mr. Kent Barrows McKibben, smug and well dressed, a Chesterfield
among lawyers, and with him one J. J. Bergdoll, a noble hireling,
long-haired and dusty, ostensibly president of the Hyde Park Gas
and Fuel Company, conferring with Councilman Alfred B. Davis,
manufacturer of willow and rattan ware, and Mr. Patrick Gilgan,
saloon-keeper, arranging a prospective distribution of shares,
offering certain cash consideration, lots, favors, and the like.