By now he was quite aware as to whence this powerful uprising had sprung.

Hand was back of it, he knew--for so McKenty and Addison had quickly discovered--and with Hand was Schryhart, Arneel, Merrill, the Douglas Trust Company, the various editors, young Truman Leslie MacDonald, the old gas crowd, the Chicago General Company--all.

He even suspected that certain aldermen might possibly be suborned to desert him, though all professed loyalty.
McKenty, Addison, Videra, and himself were planning the details of their defenses as carefully and effectively as possible.

Cowperwood was fully alive to the fact that if he lost this election--the first to be vigorously contested--it might involve a serious chain of events; but he did not propose to be unduly disturbed, since he could always fight in the courts by money, and by preferment in the council, and with the mayor and the city attorney.

"There is more than one way to kill a cat," was one of his pet expressions, and it expressed his logic and courage exactly.