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 at a headline which, after the old-fashioned pyramids then in vogue, read: "Conspiracy charged against various Chicago citizens.