and counter-schemings came to a head in a court proceeding filed
in the United States Circuit Court late in November, charging Frank
Algernon Cowperwood, Henry De Soto Sippens, Judson P. Van Sickle,
and others with conspiracy; this again was followed almost immediately
by suits begun by the West and South Side companies charging the
same thing. In each case Cowperwood's name was mentioned as the
secret power behind the new companies, conspiring to force the old
companies to buy him out. His Philadelphia history was published,
but only in part--a highly modified account he had furnished the
newspapers some time before. Though conspiracy and bribery are
ugly words, still lawyers' charges prove nothing. But a penitentiary
record, for whatever reason served, coupled with previous failure,
divorce, and scandal (though the newspapers made only the most
guarded reference to all this), served to whet public interest and
to fix Cowperwood and his wife in the public eye.

Cowperwood himself was solicited for an interview, but his answer
was that he was merely a financial agent for the three new companies,
not an investor; and that the charges, in so far as he was concerned,
were untrue, mere legal fol-de-rol trumped up to make the situation
as annoying as possible. He threatened to sue for libel.
Nevertheless, although these suits eventually did come to nothing
(for he had fixed it so that he could not be traced save as a
financial agent in each case), yet the charges had been made, and
he was now revealed as a shrewd, manipulative factor, with a record
that was certainly spectacular.

"I see," said Anson Merrill to his wife, one morning at breakfast,
"that this man Cowperwood is beginning to get his name in the
papers." He had the Times on the table before him, and was looking