“No.”

“Well, I have a pretty good idea,” said the second C.I.D. man, and leaned forward to whisper confidentially. “That bastard Towser. Why else would he go around shooting his mouth off about me? Now, you keep your eyes open and let me know the minute you hear anyone even talking about Washington Irving. I’ll throw a security check on the chaplain and everyone else around here.”

The moment he was gone, the first C.I.D. man jumped into Major Major’s office through the window and wanted to know who the second C.I.D. man was. Major Major barely recognized him.

“He was a C.I.D. man,” Major Major told him.

“Like hell he was,” said the first C.I.D. man. “I’m the C.I.D. man around here.”

Major Major barely recognized him because he was wearing a faded maroon corduroy bathrobe with open seams under both arms, linty flannel pajamas, and worn house slippers with one flapping sole. This was regulation hospital dress, Major Major recalled. The man had added about twenty pounds and seemed bursting with good health.

“I’m really a very sick man,” he whined. “I caught cold in the hospital from a fighter pilot and came down with a very serious case of pneumonia.”

“I’m very sorry,” Major Major said.

“A lot of good that does me,” the C.I.D. man sniveled. “I don’t want your sympathy. I just want you to know what I’m going through. I came down to warn you that Washington Irving seems to have shifted his base of operations from the hospital to your squadron. You haven’t heard anyone around here talking about Washington Irving, have you?”

“As a matter of fact, I have,” Major Major answered.

“That man who was just in here. He was talking about Washington Irving.”

“Was he really?” the first C.I.D. man cried with delight. “This might be just what we needed to crack the case wide open! You keep him under surveillance twenty-four hours a day while I rush back to the hospital and write my superiors for further instructions.” The C.I.D. man jumped out of Major Major’s office through the window and was gone.

A minute later, the flap separating Major Major’s office from the orderly room flew open and the second C.I.D. man was back, puffing frantically in haste. Gasping for breath, he shouted, “I just saw a man in red pajamas jumping out of your window and go running up the road! Didn’t you see him?”

“He was here talking to me,” Major Major answered.

“I thought that looked mighty suspicious, a man jumping out the window in red pajamas.” The man paced about the small office in vigorous circles. “At first I thought it was you, hightailing it for Mexico. But now I see it wasn’t you. He didn’t say anything about Washington Irving, did he?”

“As a matter of fact,” said Major Major, “he did.”

“He did?” cried the second C.I.D. man. “That’s fine! This might be just the break we needed to crack the case wide open. Do you know where we can find him?”

“At the hospital. He’s really a very sick man.”

“That’s great!” exclaimed the second C.I.D. man. “I’ll go right up there after him. It would be best if I went incognito. I’ll go explain the situation at the medical tent and have them send me there as a patient.”

“They won’t send me to the hospital as a patient unless I’m sick,” he reported back to Major Major. “Actually, I am pretty sick. I’ve been meaning to turn myself in for a checkup, and this will be a good opportunity. I’ll go back to the medical tent and tell them I’m sick, and I’ll get sent to the hospital that way.”

“Look what they did to me,” he reported back to Major Major with purple gums. His distress was inconsolable. He carried his shoes and socks in his hands, and his toes had been painted with gentian-violet solution, too. “Who ever heard of a C.I.D. man with purple gums?” he moaned.

He walked away from the orderly room with his head down and tumbled into a slit trench and broke his nose. His temperature was still normal, but Gus and Wes made an exception of him and sent him to the hospital in an ambulance.

Major Major had lied, and it was good. He was not really surprised that it was good, for he had observed that people who did lie were, on the whole, more resourceful and ambitious and successful than people who did not lie. Had he told the truth to the second C.I.D. man, he would have found himself in trouble. Instead he had lied and he was free to continue his work.

He became more circumspect in his work as a result of the visit from the second C.I.D. man. He did all his signing with his left hand and only while wearing the dark glasses and false mustache he had used unsuccessfully to help him begin playing basketball again. As an additional precaution, he made a happy switch from Washington Irving to John Milton. John Milton was supple and concise. Like Washington Irving, he could be reversed with good effect whenever he grew monotonous. Furthermore, he enabled Major Major to double his output, for John Milton was so much shorter than either his own name or Washington Irving’s and took so much less time to write. John Milton proved fruitful in still one more respect. He was versatile, and Major Major soon found himself incorporating the signature in fragments of imaginary dialogues. Thus, typical endorsements on the official documents might read, “John Milton is a sadist” or “Have you seen Milton, John?” One signature of which he was especially proud read, “Is anybody in the John, Milton?” John Milton threw open whole new vistas filled with charming, inexhaustible possibilities that promised to ward off monotony forever. Major Major went back to Washington Irving when John Milton grew monotonous.

Major Major had bought the dark glasses and false mustache in Rome in a final, futile attempt to save himself from the swampy degradation into which he was steadily sinking. First there had been the awful humiliation of the Great Loyalty Oath Crusade, when not one of the thirty or forty people circulating competitive loyalty oaths would even allow him to sign. Then, just when that was blowing over, there was the matter of Clevinger’s plane disappearing so mysteriously in thin air with every member of the crew, and blame for the strange mishap centering balefully on him because he had never signed any of the loyalty oaths.

The dark glasses had large magenta rims. The false black mustache was a flamboyant organ-grinder’s, and he wore them both to the basketball game one day when he felt he could endure his loneliness no longer. He affected an air of jaunty familiarity as he sauntered to the court and prayed silently that he would not be recognized. The others pretended not to recognize him, and he began to have fun. Just as he finished congratulating himself on his innocent ruse he was bumped hard by one of his opponents and knocked to his knees. Soon he was bumped hard again, and it dawned on him that they did recognize him and that they were using his disguise as a license to elbow, trip and maul him. They did not want him at all. And just as he did realize this, the players on his team fused instinctively with the players on the other team into a single, howling, bloodthirsty mob that descended upon him from all sides with foul curses and swinging fists. They knocked him to the ground, kicked him while he was on the ground, attacked him again after he had struggled blindly to his feet. He covered his face with his hands and could not see. They swarmed all over each other in their frenzied compulsion to bludgeon him, kick him, gouge him, trample him. He was pummeled spinning to the edge of the ditch and sent slithering down on his head and shoulders. At the bottom he found his footing, clambered up the other wall and staggered away beneath the hail of hoots and stones with which they pelted him until he lurched into shelter around a corner of the orderly room tent. His paramount concern throughout the entire assault was to keep his dark glasses and false mustache in place so that he might continue pretending he was somebody else and be spared the dreaded necessity of having to confront them with his authority.