“We are the fliers who dropped you the message,” said Jimmy. “We’ve come for the mats.”
“Good,” said the man. “Come up on the roof and talk to the boss.”
They ran up the steps to the roof. There sat the man Jimmy had seen at the desk. He was still typewriting. Jimmy made himself known.
“I’m from the New York Morning Press,” he said. “Tell me about the flood, and about your own situation and what you want me to do.”
“No use to tell you anything,” said the editor. “Every word I know about the flood is already in type. You can have complete proofs of it if you will take my mats to the office of the Berlin newspaper and get them to print the edition. I want 5,000 copies. They can send them back here by truck or any way they wish, but I must have them at the first possible moment. We’ll establish headquarters over on the shore, near the place from which you started. We’ve been watching every move you made. That’s near the highway that skirts the west side of the valley. Tell them to send their papers there just as quick as they can get them printed. By that time the water will have gone down some and maybe altogether. They are making arrangements to dynamite the jam at the gorge below town. That will let the water drain out.”
Meantime, a printer had been wrapping the mats up carefully in oiled paper. Another man had attached a long rope to Jimmy’s boat and had worked the boat around into the eddy at the down-stream side of the building. Still another printer came to the roof with duplicate sets of proofs for Jimmy.
The latter assured the News editor that he would not fail to carry out his commission. “I ask just one thing,” he said. “Give me an assurance that I have a start over the next reporter.”
“I’ll do that,” said the editor. “I can’t hold out any news, if any reporter questions me, but I’ll give out no more proofs. That’s only fair. It’s in return for your help. Now you’ll have to be hurrying, for there comes your first competitor.”
Jimmy whirled and looked upward. Sure enough, there was another plane coming down the valley.
Jimmy delayed only long enough to talk to some of the men on the roof. He soon found they knew little except the general story of the flood. They were all employees of the News. All had been at work in the building when the flood overwhelmed the town on the previous evening. They had remained there because they believed they were safe in the big steel and stone structure. But reporters had managed to get abroad and before the telephone lines were all down they had telephoned in dozens of stories about the flood. Later some of them had made their way back to the News building in a boat, with detailed stories of rescues, deaths and drownings, heroic acts, and the names of the flood victims whose bodies had been recovered and identified. And now Jimmy had proofs of all their stories, together with all the tales he and Carl had picked up, and their photographs and mental pictures of what was left of Northend.