Sam had eggs and apples lying in warehouse against a rise; game, smuggled across the state line from Michigan and Wisconsin, lay frozen in cold storage tagged with his name and ready to be sold at a long profit to hotels and fashionable restaurants; and there were even secret bushels of corn and wheat lying in other warehouses along the Chicago River ready to be thrown on the market at a word from him, or, the margins by which he kept his hold on the stuff not being forthcoming, at a word from a LaSalle Street broker.
Getting the twenty thousand dollars out of the hands of the medical student was a turning point in Sam’s life. Sunday after Sunday he walked with Eckardt in the streets or loitered with him in the parks thinking of the money lying idle in the bank and of the deals he might be turning with it in the street or on the road. Daily he saw more clearly the power of cash. Other commission merchants along South Water Street came running into the office of his firm with tense, anxious faces asking Narrow-Face to help them over rough spots in the day’s trading. Broad-Shoulders, who had no business ability but who had married a rich woman, went on month after month taking half the profits brought in by the ability of his tall, shrewd brother, and Narrow-Face, who had taken a liking for Sam and who occasionally stopped for a word with him, spoke of the matter often and eloquently.
“Spend your time with no one who hasn’t money to help you,” he said; “on the road look for the men with money and then try to get it. That’s all there is to business—money-getting.” And then looking across to the desk of his brother he would add, “I would kick half the men in business out of it if I could, but I myself must dance to the tune that money plays.”
One day Sam went to the office of an attorney named Webster, whose reputation for the shrewd drawing of contracts had come to him from Narrow-Face.
“I want a contract drawn that will give me absolute control of twenty thousand dollars with no risk on my part if I lose the money and no promise to pay more than seven per cent if I do not lose,” he said.
The attorney, a slender, middle-aged man with a swarthy skin and black hair, put his hands on the desk before him and looked at the tall young man.
“What collateral?” he asked.
Sam shook his head. “Can you draw such a contract that will be legal and what will it cost me?” he asked.
The lawyer laughed good naturedly. “I can draw it of course. Why not?”
Sam, taking a roll of bills from his pocket, counted the amount upon the table.