Major Major grew despondent as he watched simple communications swell prodigiously into huge manuscripts.
No matter how many times he signed one, it always came back for still another signature, and he began to despair of ever being free of any of them.
One day—it was the day after the C.I.D. man’s first visit—Major Major signed Washington Irving’s name to one of the documents instead of his own, just to see how it would feel.
He liked it.
He liked it so much that for the rest of that afternoon he did the same with all the official documents.
It was an act of impulsive frivolity and rebellion for which he knew afterward he would be punished severely.
The next morning he entered his office in trepidation and waited to see what would happen. Nothing happened.
He had sinned, and it was good, for none of the documents to which he had signed Washington Irving’s name ever came back!
Here, at last, was progress, and Major Major threw himself into his new career with uninhibited gusto.
Signing Washington Irving’s name to official documents was not much of a career, perhaps, but it was less monotonous than signing
‘Major Major Major.’
When Washington Irving did grow monotonous, he could reverse the order and sign Irving Washington until that grew monotonous.
And he was getting something done, for none of the documents signed with either of these names ever came back to the squadron.
What did come back, eventually, was a second C.I.D. man, masquerading as a pilot.
The men knew he was a C.I.D. man because he confided to them he was and urged each of them not to reveal his true identity to any of the other men to whom he had already confided that he was a C.I.D. man.
‘You’re the only one in the squadron who knows I’m a C.I.D. man,’ he confided to Major Major, ‘and it’s absolutely essential that it remain a secret so that my efficiency won’t be impaired.
Do you understand?’
‘Sergeant Towser knows.’
‘Yes, I know.
I had to tell him in order to get in to see you.
But I know he won’t tell a soul under any circumstances.’
‘He told me,’ said Major Major.
‘He told me there was a C.I.D. man outside to see me.’
‘That bastard.
I’ll have to throw a security check on him.
I wouldn’t leave any top-secret documents lying around here if I were you.
At least not until I make my report.’
‘I don’t get any top-secret documents,’ said Major Major.
‘That’s the kind I mean.
Lock them in your cabinet where Sergeant Towser can’t get his hands on them.’
‘Sergeant Towser has the only key to the cabinet.’
‘I’m afraid we’re wasting time,’ said the second C.I.D. man rather stiffly.
He was a brisk, pudgy, high-strung person whose movements were swift and certain.
He took a number of photostats out of a large red expansion envelope he had been hiding conspicuously beneath a leather flight jacket painted garishly with pictures of airplanes flying through orange bursts of flak and with orderly rows of little bombs signifying fifty-five combat missions flown.
‘Have you ever seen any of these?’
Major Major looked with a blank expression at copies of personal correspondence from the hospital on which the censoring officer had written
‘Washington Irving’ or
‘Irving Washington.’
‘No.’
‘How about these?’
Major Major gazed next at copies of official documents addressed to him to which he had been signing the same signatures.
‘No.’
‘Is the man who signed these names in your squadron?’
‘Which one?
There are two names here.’
‘Either one.
We figure that Washington Irving and Irving Washington are one man and that he’s using two names just to throw us off the track.
That’s done very often you know.’
‘I don’t think there’s a man with either of those names in my squadron.’
A look of disappointment crossed the second C.I.D. man’s face.