Mr. Ross had a real estate proposition to lay before Mr. Kane. Of course Mr. Kane knew who he was. And Mr. Ross admitted fully that he knew all about Mr. Kane. Recently, in conjunction with Mr. Norman Yale, of the wholesale grocery firm of Yale, Simpson & Rice, he had developed “Yalewood.” Mr. Kane knew of that? Yes, Mr. Kane knew of that. Only within six weeks the last lots in the Ridgewood section of “Yalewood” had been closed out at a total profit of forty-two per cent. He went over a list of other deals in real estate which he had put through, all well-known properties. He admitted frankly that there were failures in the business; he had had one or two himself. But the successes far outnumbered the bad speculations, as every one knew. Now Lester was no longer connected with the Kane Company. He was probably looking for a good investment, and Mr. Ross had a proposition to lay before him. Lester consented to listen, and Mr. Ross blinked his cat-like eyes and started in. The idea was that he and Lester should enter into a one-deal partnership, covering the purchase and development of a forty-acre tract of land lying between Fifty-fifth, Seventy-first, Halstead streets, and Ashland Avenue, on the southwest side. There were indications of a genuine real estate boom there—healthy, natural, and permanent. The city was about to pave Fifty-fifth Street. There was a plan to extend the Halstead Street car line far below its present terminus. The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, which ran near there, would be glad to put a passenger station on the property. The initial cost of the land would be forty thousand dollars which they would share equally. Grading, paving, lighting, tree planting, surveying would cost, roughly, an additional twenty-five thousand. There would be expenses for advertising—say ten per cent, of the total investment for two years, or perhaps three—a total of nineteen thousand five hundred or twenty thousand dollars. All told, they would stand to invest jointly the sum of ninety-five thousand, or possibly one hundred thousand dollars, of which Lester’s share would be fifty thousand. Then Mr. Ross began to figure on the profits. The character of the land, its salability, and the likelihood of a rise in value could be judged by the property adjacent, the sales that had been made north of Fifty-fifth Street and east of Halstead. Take, for instance, the Mortimer plot, at Halstead and Fifty-fifth streets, on the south-east corner. Here was a piece of land that in 1882 was held at forty-five dollars an acre. In 1886 it had risen to five hundred dollars an acre, as attested by its sale to a Mr. John L. Slosson at that time. In 1889, three years later, it had been sold to Mr. Mortimer for one thousand per acre, precisely the figure at which this tract was now offered. It could be parceled out into lots fifty by one hundred feet at five hundred dollars per lot. Was there any profit in that? Lester admitted that there was.