And it was due at least in part to Sharon Froman. He nodded to himself in the darkness, picking his way carefully down the slippery street. She had written the official announcement of the plan for a Tri-State Emergency Allocations Supervisory Board that he and the congressman--with Sharon Froman--had cooked up. Artie Chesbro chuckled out loud. Why, it was even Sharon who had been so resourceful about the matter of the benzedrine. He had been pretty near passed out with fatigue early in the day, even before the congressman had arrived; and she had produced, out of what she gaily called her "kit of writing tools," the little bottle of ten-grain tablets that had waked him up, sharpened his brain, made it possible for him to work on through the endlessly exhausting day. A fine girl. A great acquisition. They would go far together, thought Artie Chesbro, stumbling dreamily down the misty street, filled with the sense of power, alive with the joy of achievement--coked to the eyebrows. CHAPTER SIXTEEN Mr. Cioni saw the man approach jauntily. Who, he wondered, can be full of bounce at this hour--one of the new people from the field hospital? But as the man came into the cone of light from the shaded Coleman lantern he saw that the fellow wasn't army, that he wore in fact the uniform of an old-timer who had been through the day and a half on the spot. The uniform was a stained and shapeless suit, mud-caked shoes, red eyes and a growth of beard. "I'm Mr. Chesbro," the man said to Mr. Cioni. "I've come to pick up the car allotted to Mrs. Goudeket." "The hotel lady? She said she'd be back herself." Chesbro smiled and handed over the trip ticket. "She's exhausted. I'll pick her up and drive." "I see. It's that Dodge. Be careful." Artie almost laughed aloud at the absurdity of advice from this nobody to _him_, confidant of Akslund, Johnny on the most wonderful spot imaginable. He drove off. River Street? Yes; the broadcasters were at River Street. He turned left and heard faintly a shout from the little nobody of the motor pool. A fragment of the Rubaiyat--now _there_ was a poem, not like those jumbled things Polly wrote!--drifted by. _Would we not shatter it to bits, and then remold it closer to the heart's desire?_ Which was exactly what was going to happen. He had never really had a big chance before, but by waiting and building and sending out his lines of communication he had survived until the big chance came along. The county was shattered to bits, and he would remold it. It wouldn't look like much to an outsider--Akslund. To Akslund and his staff he would seem a disinterested and patriotic businessman working his guts out with no hope of personal gain to reconstruct the smitten area. He had better start thinking about his lists. * * * * *