‘No one can hear us.’
‘Hey, knock it off down there,’ a voice rang out from the far end of the ward.
‘Can’t you see we’re trying to nap?’
‘What the hell are you, a wise guy?’ Dobbs yelled back and spun around with clenched fists, ready to fight.
He whirled back to Yossarian and, before he could speak, sneezed thunderously six times, staggering sideways on rubbery legs in the intervals and raising his elbows ineffectively to fend each seizure off.
The lids of his watery eyes were puffy and inflamed.
‘Who does he think,’ he demanded, sniffing spasmodically and wiping his nose with the back of his sturdy wrist, ‘he is, a cop or something?’
‘He’s a C.I.D. man,’ Yossarian notified him tranquilly.
‘We’ve got three here now and more on the way.
Oh, don’t be scared.
They’re after a forger named Washington Irving.
They’re not interested in murderers.’
‘Murderers?’
Dobbs was affronted. ‘Why do you call us murderers?
Just because we’re going to murder Colonel Cathcart?’
‘Be quiet, damn you!’ directed Yossarian.
‘Can’t you whisper?’
‘I am whispering.
I—’
‘You’re still shouting.’
‘No, I’m not. I—’
‘Hey, shut up down there, will you?’ patients all over the ward began hollering at Dobbs.
‘I’ll fight you all!’ Dobbs screamed back at them, and stood up on a rickety wooden chair, waving the gun wildly.
Yossarian caught his arm and yanked him down.
Dobbs began sneezing again.
‘I have an allergy,’ he apologized when he had finished, his nostrils running and his eyes streaming with tears.
‘That’s too bad.
You’d make a great leader of men without it.’
‘Colonel Cathcart’s the murderer,’ Dobbs complained hoarsely when he had shoved away a soiled, crumpled khaki handkerchief.
‘Colonel Cathcart’s the one who’s going to murder us all if we don’t do something to stop him.’
‘Maybe he won’t raise the missions any more.
Maybe sixty is as high as he’ll go.’
‘He always raises the missions. You know that better than I do.’
Dobbs swallowed and bent his intense face very close to Yossarian’s, the muscles in his bronze, rocklike jaw bunching up into quivering knots.
‘Just say it’s okay and I’ll do the whole thing tomorrow morning.
Do you understand what I’m telling you?
I’m whispering now, ain’t I?’
Yossarian tore his eyes away from the gaze of burning entreaty Dobbs had fastened on him.
‘Why the goddam hell don’t you just go out and do it?’ he protested.
‘Why don’t you stop talking to me about it and do it alone?’
‘I’m afraid to do it alone.
I’m afraid to do anything alone.’
‘Then leave me out of it.
I’d have to be crazy to get mixed up in something like this now.
I’ve got a million-dollar leg wound here.
They’re going to send me home.’
‘Are you crazy?’ Dobbs exclaimed in disbelief.
‘All you’ve got there is a scratch.
He’ll have you back flying combat missions the day you come out, Purple Heart and all.’
‘Then I really will kill him,’ Yossarian vowed.