and creeping forward into the hall. I had never seen the river come up
so fast. By noon the yard was full of floating ice, and at three that
afternoon the police skiff was on the front street, and I was wading
around in rubber boots, taking the pictures off the walls.

I was too busy to see who the Ladleys' visitor was, and he had gone
when I remembered him again. The Ladleys took the second-story front,
which was empty, and Mr. Reynolds, who was in the silk department in a
store across the river, had the room just behind.

I put up a coal stove in a back room next the bathroom, and managed to
cook the dinner there. I was washing up the dishes when Mr. Reynolds
came in. As it was Sunday, he was in his slippers and had the colored
supplement of a morning paper in his hand.

"What's the matter with the Ladleys?" he asked. "I can't read for
their quarreling."

"Booze, probably," I said. "When you've lived in the flood district as
long as I have, Mr. Reynolds, you'll know that the rising of the river
is a signal for every man in the vicinity to stop work and get full.
The fuller the river, the fuller the male population."

"Then this flood will likely make 'em drink themselves to death!" he
said. "It's a lulu."

"It's the neighborhood's annual debauch. The women are busy keeping
the babies from getting drowned in the cellars, or they'd get full,
too. I hope, since it's come this far, it will come farther, so the
landlord will have to paper the parlor."

That was at three o'clock. At four Mr. Ladley went down the stairs,
and I heard him getting into a skiff in the lower hall. There were
boats going back and forth all the time, carrying crowds of curious
people, and taking the flood sufferers to the corner grocery, where
they were lowering groceries in a basket on a rope from an upper
window.

I had been making tea when I heard Mr. Ladley go out. I fixed a tray
with a cup of it and some crackers, and took it to their door. I had
never liked Mrs. Ladley, but it was chilly in the house with the gas
shut off and the lower floor full of ice-water. And it is hard enough
to keep boarders in the flood district.

She did not answer to my knock, so I opened the door and went in.
She was at the window, looking after him, and the brown valise, that
figured in the case later, was opened on the floor. Over the foot of
the bed was the black and white dress, with the red collar.

When I spoke to her, she turned around quickly.