“That makes sense!”
Hank nodded and his easy voice rose to a pitch of command: “Sykes! Evans! Maretti!
Get Jim’s car cleared and see him around to Baker Avenue! Hold everything up till he’s out of the parking yard!”
A woman wearing a warden’s arm band rushed up from a knot of people gathered around a placard that said, “Station Forty-two.” She cried anxiously, “Mr. Collins! I left rolls in the oven!”
Henry drew a breath, expelled it. “How often do we have to go through the routine, Mrs.
Dace? You’re supposed to check all those things before you jump in a car and start for your post.
You’ll have to get a phone priority slip and tell your neighbors to turn off the gas—”
“It’s a coal range.”
“All right! To turn down the drafts and haul out the pans.” Hank began searching the school grounds for somebody connected with telephone priorities. He wondered with a kind of good-humored annoyance how in hell the citizens of Green Prairie would learn to save lives when they couldn’t remember to salvage biscuits.
In that segment of the attic which had long ago been converted into “the boys’ room,”