"Fire chief," said the interphone.
"This is Henry, Chief. Red Brayer thinks, and I agree, that you should sound the general alarm for the volunteers, that they should be standing by in the engine house with their cars parked in the square. The Hollow's filling up fast—at least it must be; the water's twelve feet and rising at the bridge."
"Right, Henry. That all?"
"For the present, yes," the burgess sighed. He clicked the box off. Immediately he heard the klaxon on top of the building hoot three longs, then pause and hoot again and then again. It was the Emergency Muster signal, and it would galvanize fifty men scattered throughout the borough into dropping whatever they were doing, tearing to their cars and speeding to the borough hall, or more exactly to its ground floor left wing where the fire department—two LaFrance pumpers, one ancient and one beautifully new, two full-time employees, the chief and the driver—were housed. He hoped they wouldn't be too disappointed when they found they'd be on a boring standby.
And now, he thought, he really ought to get out and drive around on a tour of inspection. There wasn't any point to sticking in the office with the phone out and the firemen and police already committed to action. He had hoped for some usefulness out of the local radio station, but it was silent, had been for an hour. The news of the Hollow explained that; the transmitter tower, a modest spire, was planted in a marshy field down that way. It had something to do with a good ground, he had been told once, so they had a good ground and they were now bugged out the one time they'd be able to do a public service beyond broadcasting damnfool hillbilly music.
He was reaching for his raincoat, to the dismay of Mrs. Chesbro, when a big man came in. The burgess recognized him as her husband, the redoubtable Arthur Chesbro of Summit. He had, quite consciously, had as little to do with Arthur Chesbro as possible, but there was an irreducible minimum of contact with the man that couldn't be avoided. He was all over the place in Summit, a closely neighboring borough, and he had feelers out through the entire area. You heard of his interest in this and that—bankrolling a resort, buying a professional building a county away and turning it over fast, snapping up timber rights to a farmer's woodlot and turning them over to a firm from over the state line; snatching an FCC television construction permit from under the nose of heavy competition and then not building the station after all for mysterious and profitable reasons. He was a leading citizen, the burgess supposed, but he had nevertheless carefully avoided him whenever possible. He was not really sure why, but once after a couple of bourbons with Chief Brayer he had told the chief that he thought Arthur Chesbro suffered from a case of moral and ethical halitosis.
Physically, Chesbro was a picture of success, rather soaked and winded success at the moment, having hiked in the rain from Sullivan Street and climbed the steep stairs to the burgess's second-floor office.
He grasped the burgess's automatically extended hand with a firm and manly grip. "It's good to see you again, Henry," he intoned. "How's Bess?"
"Fine, thanks."
"And that boy of yours in medical school?"