"Sure, Red." The head of Hebertown's Civil Defense Squad, an organization with an honorable history extending back nearly four hours, dug his fingers into the bags under his eyes and tried to stay awake. He owned a ready-to-wear establishment on North Front, and he had once allowed the Red Cross to use his second-floor storeroom as a fund-drive headquarters, a record of achievement which had done very little to fit him for staying up all night. "I went down at eleven o'clock to look at the water," he said meditatively. "I didn't want my cellar flooded again, like in thirty-nine, so I shoveled dirt up against the windows, and then I went home to bed." He laughed. He had gone by his store again two hours later--in a boat--and had had to bend down to look through the windows of the loft the Red Cross once had used. "I heard on the radio a list of all the cities that were hit--the worst ones. They didn't even mention Hebertown.... Say, what are you going to tell Bess Starkman?" CHAPTER NINE Gray light filtered through the dirty panes of the second-floor window. Arthur Chesbro woke slowly, aching in every bone. When he opened his eyes stickily and peered across the grimy little room he could not at first believe what he saw. "Polly!" he choked, amazement and outrage blended. His wife, apparently unclothed, was snuggled close to old Harry Starkman, under a single blanket. She looked up, smiling. "Hush," she said. "I finally got him to sleep. His chest sounds terrible and he has a fever, but if he sleeps he can't be too bad--for now." She got up gracefully, managing to swirl the blanket around her without showing, Chesbro hoped, _too_ much. Then he noted that the youngster from the hotel was gawking. He cleared his throat loudly and the kid looked away. Mrs. Goudeket grunted to her feet. "Fever?" she asked. "Let me." She went to the sleeping old man and felt his forehead. "He's burning up," she announced grimly. "An old man to walk through the rain and then he got his lungs full of gasoline fumes. I suppose it's pneumonia." They were silent. "Excuse me," said Mrs. Goudeket. "I'm going downstairs, nobody should follow me until I come back." Mickey Groff thought: sensible woman. Somebody had to speak up. He stood for a moment over Sam Zehedi. The poor guy had died hard, fighting it; his eyes were ugly and his mouth contorted. His face in the dim light was bluish, the hue of a swimmer's lips when he's been in too long on a cool day. Groff went to the window. Some time during the night the rain had lightened; it pattered now instead of drumming. There was mist. He struggled with the window and managed to inch it open against the swelling of its frame and old incrustations of paint. Fresh air swept gratifyingly through the storage room--and then he thought of the burgess.