“They’ve rubbed you the wrong way,” said Locke, “and no doubt they’re too crooked to lie straight in a ditch, but that doesn’t affect this contract. You can’t break it.”
“If I haven’t a chance I won’t fight,” said Joe. “I guess you’re right about the ethics of the case, too. They made me so mad I forgot that side of it. Of course they knew the railway was going to jump the rate on us. Have you any idea why it was jumped.”
“I suppose they knew you’d have to stand for it,” said Locke, grimly. “That’s enough reason for any railroad.”
VII
Coincident with the rise in the freight rate the car shortage became a thing of the past. Orders from Clancy Brothers poured in and were filled as slowly as possible. Around them flourished a mass of acrid correspondence—complaints and threats from the consignees, tart rejoinders from Kent. In other quarters sales were slow and small, for the time was one of money stringency. Credit, once long and easy, contracted, and the men who held the purse-strings drew them tight.
Hagel, of the Commercial Bank, communicated his directors’ decision as to the maturing notes, with his usual verbose solemnity. Done into plain English it amounted to this: The directors insisted on having the notes reduced by half, and they didn’t care a hoot for the Kent current account.
Kent thereupon drew a check for his balance and took it to the Farmers’ National, where he had already made tentative arrangements. New notes were signed, the Commercial paid off, and the securities held by them transferred to the Farmers’. That incident was closed.
Joe found McDowell a vast improvement upon Hagel. Where the latter had backed and filled and referred to his directors, McDowell, to whom responsibility was as the breath of life, decided instantly. He was less bound by routine and tradition, more willing to take a chance, and in closer touch with the exigencies of modern business. But for all that he never lost sight of his bank’s interests, and his impartial and cool advice was of inestimable benefit to Joe. Also he made it very plain that while his institution would meet any reasonable proposition more than half way, it would protect itself first, last, and all the time. But their policy was a more liberal one than the Commercial’s.
Thus Joe was able to pay the interest on the mortgages held by the Northern Loan Company. This was overdue, and the mortgagees had threatened legal proceedings. And he was able, also, to accompany his tender for the choice Wind River limits by a marked check, a necessary formality which had cost him some sleepless nights.
Naturally neither Crooks nor Kent sat down quietly under the new freight rate. They protested warmly, and, protests failing, deputed Locke to handle the matter for them. Locke went straight to headquarters, as was his custom. Henry J. Beemer, the general manager of the Peninsular Railway, tilted back his chair and knocked the ashes from his cigar.