He took his other hand off the clipboard and found he had crumpled their copy for the last forecast into a ball. He tossed it in the basket, hardly hearing his chief shouting into the phone next to him; it didn't matter, he knew it by heart now anyhow, but as the phone rang again, he made a dive and recovered the forecast. He smoothed it out carefully. It might, he suddenly realized, be very important indeed, over the next weeks and months when the investigating commissions and legislative committees began sniffing through the debris. * * * * * Mrs. Chesbro came smiling into the burgess's office. "Excuse me," she said. "I knocked, but you were busy on the phone--" "Not very," said the burgess, slamming the instrument down. Now he couldn't even get the central office again. "What can I do for you?" He didn't know the woman. She was expensively dressed; the burgess, whose wife read _Vogue_, realized that her flat-heeled leather shoes, her matching waterproof tweed coat and cap, her neat leather gloves all were imported and expensive. For the rest, she was a small blonde in her twenties with a careful, conciliatory look on her face. "I'm Mrs. Arthur Chesbro," she said. "Arthur and I drove over from Summit to see you. Arthur let me off and then he decided he'd better move the car to a little higher ground, the top of that little shopping street you have, Sullivan Street, isn't it? After General Sullivan, I suppose? And he'll be right along and then you two can get on with your little talk." The burgess looked at her vaguely, her chatter only half comprehended. If she had been a man he would have said something like: "I'm sorry but I'm tied up now; write me a letter and we'll make an appointment." Since she was a woman his old-fashioned notions ruled that out. "I didn't expect Mr. Chesbro," he began. "I've got so much on my mind right now with the rain--" He noted with wry amusement that he had started to say "flood" and changed the word. Civic pride or superstition?--"that I don't think this is the best time for a meeting. Could you go and head him off, Mrs. Chesbro? It can't be urgent." "Arthur thinks it is," she said. "A man phoned him from New York that this Mickey Groff is on his way and Arthur swore around the house for fifteen minutes and then told me to get out the car and, well, here I am." She could ask for a favor and keep her dignity. "I'm sure it won't take more than a minute. Arthur says it's all cut and dried." Chief Brayer came in without knocking. His black slicker streamed and his mustache was limp. "Henry," he said to the burgess, "I make it twelve feet and rising at the Sullivan Street bridge. In thirty-five it was only eight feet and in thirty-nine it was only nine and a half. What's going on down in the Hollow, God only knows. Anyway, I'd better get down there with all the boys. All right?"