“Yes—but are you?” Locke retorted.
“I’m not in the witness box,” said Beemer.
“You will be, one of these days,” Locke predicted. “Then we’ll thresh out the letters and the rebate question, if I have the cross-examining of you.”
Beemer smiled rather uneasily. “We don’t seem to be getting ahead. What do you want us to do?”
“Restore the old rate. My clients—or one of them—made contracts on the faith of it.”
“Shouldn’t have done it,” said Beemer. “Good heavens! You, as a lawyer, can’t hold us responsible for that.”
“No, but you see how the new rate hits them.”
“We were losing money on the old one,” said Beemer. “This has just gone into effect. We must see how it works. I won’t promise anything, but later we may be able to reduce it.”
“That isn’t satisfactory,” Locke told him bluntly. “I shall advise my clients to file a complaint with the Transportation Commission.”
Beemer laughed. The commission was notoriously slow and over-loaded with work. Taken in its order of priority the complaint would not, in all probability, be disposed of inside a year.