After his call on Mr. Haguenin, Cowperwood’s naturally selective and self-protective judgment led him next to the office of the _Inquirer_, old General MacDonald’s paper, where he found that because of rhuematism and the severe, inclement weather of Chicago, the old General had sailed only a few days before for Italy. His son, an aggressive, mercantile type of youth of thirty-two, and a managing editor by the name of Du Bois were acting in his stead. In the son, Truman Leslie MacDonald, an intense, calm, and penetrating young man, Cowperwood encountered some one who, like himself, saw life only from the point of view of sharp, self-centered, personal advantage. What was he, Truman Leslie MacDonald, to derive from any given situation, and how was he to make the _Inquirer_ an even greater property than it had been under his father before him? He did not propose to be overwhelmed by the old General’s rather flowery reputation. At the same time he meant to become imposingly rich. An active member of a young and very smart set which had been growing up on the North Side, he rode, drove, was instrumental in organizing a new and exclusive country club, and despised the rank and file as unsuited to the fine atmosphere to which he aspired. Mr. Clifford Du Bois, the managing editor, was a cool reprobate of forty, masquerading as a gentleman, and using the _Inquirer_ in subtle ways for furthering his personal ends, and that under the old General’s very nose. He was osseous, sandy-haired, blue-eyed, with a keen, formidable nose and a solid chin. Clifford Du Bois was always careful never to let his left hand know what his right hand did. It was this sapient pair that received Cowperwood in the old General’s absence, first in Mr. Du Bois’s room and then in that of Mr. MacDonald. The latter had already heard much of Cowperwood’s doings. Men who had been connected with the old gas war—Jordan Jules, for instance, president of the old North Chicago Gas Company, and Hudson Baker, president of the old West Chicago Gas Company—had denounced him long before as a bucaneer who had pirated them out of very comfortable sinecures. Here he was now invading the North Chicago street-railway field and coming with startling schemes for the reorganization of the down-town business heart. Why shouldn’t the city have something in return; or, better yet, those who helped to formulate the public opinion, so influential in the success of Cowperwood’s plans? Truman Leslie MacDonald, as has been said, did not see life from his father’s point of view at all. He had in mind a sharp bargain, which he could drive with Cowperwood during the old gentleman’s absence. The General need never know.