* * * * * Dr. Soames was the town's only specialist. He had built a white Georgian house and a three-car garage out of something less than a quarter of a cubic foot of the human female anatomy. He was an expert on every fold and canal from the _labium minus_ to the hydatid of Morgagni, and of the hundred and four babies born in the borough of Hebertown and surrounding territory in the past twelve months, he had delivered ninety-three. They told scandalous anecdotes about his extra-official life--"Mrs. Hoglund? Hoglund? Oh, I didn't recognize you with your pants up"--and there had been a suggestion at the County Medical Association that some of his most profitable pregnancies were not permitted to come to term. But there was no human being in Hebertown and environs who doubted that Dr. Soames was the greatest doctor on earth. And what good was he doing now, he demanded silently, swabbing alcohol on the morning's twenty-fifth rump to ready it for the needle. He sighed and jabbed home the needle of yellowish fluid. The kid jumped and howled; Dr. Soames's hand was not as dexterous with injections as it might once have been. They were working themselves into a coma, all three of the doctors, with routine shots against typhoid and penicillin to keep the sniffles of the kids from getting worse; but any ambulance driver could have done as much. What these people needed--homes; help; money--was not in their little black bags. "Dr. Soames!" Chief of Police Brayer was coming into the school's gym. The tired old face looked worried--almost panicked; Soames had thought the time for panic was over. "They're bringing Henry in, Doctor. He looks bad." The burgess came in, under clean blankets, on an aluminum-frame stretcher at last. Soames took a quick look. Fever; coma; and the unmistakable racking, hard-fought breaths. Pneumonia? "Wake up Doctor Brandeis," he ordered; but he found a hypodermic and loaded it without waiting. The other doctor's eyes were bleary when he staggered in, but there wasn't much doubt. "Pneumonites, all right," he said, auscultating the burgess's chest. "We ought to have oxygen, Frank." Chief Brayer listened to the doctors. He cut in, "Don't we have any oxygen?" Soames shook his head; and Brayer remembered. The oxygen was there, all right, in the firehouse, where it was handy for the pumpers to take along in case of drowning or asphyxiation or any of the other things Hebertown called out its fire department for; but it wasn't handy at all in case of floods, since the firehouse was in the Borough Hall. You couldn't even see the roof yet, though the water had gone down. He blundered out of the room and buttonholed one of the other volunteers. "Who've we got who can swim underwater?" he demanded. "We have to get the oxygen out of the firehouse--Henry needs it."