‘He’s a lot cleverer than we thought,’ he observed.
‘He’s using a third name and posing as someone else.
And I think… yes, I think I know what that third name is.’
With excitement and inspiration, he held another photostat out for Major Major to study. ‘How about this?’
Major Major bent forward slightly and saw a copy of the piece of V mail from which Yossarian had blacked out everything but the name Mary and on which he had written,
‘I yearn for you tragically. R. O. Shipman, Chaplain, U.S. Army.’
Major Major shook his head.
‘I’ve never seen it before.’
‘Do you know who R. O. Shipman is?’
‘He’s the group chaplain.’
‘That locks it up,’ said the second C.I.D. man.
‘Washington Irving is the group chaplain.’
Major Major felt a twinge of alarm. ‘R. O.
Shipman is the group chaplain,’ he corrected.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why should the group chaplain write this on a letter?’
‘Perhaps somebody else wrote it and forged his name.’
‘Why should somebody want to forge the group chaplain’s name?’
‘To escape detection.’
‘You may be right,’ the second C.I.D. man decided after an instant’s hesitation, and smacked his lips crisply.
‘Maybe we’re confronted with a gang, with two men working together who just happen to have opposite names.
Yes, I’m sure that’s it.
One of them here in the squadron, one of them up at the hospital and one of them with the chaplain.
That makes three men, doesn’t it?
Are you absolutely sure you never saw any of these official documents before?’
‘I would have signed them if I had.’
‘With whose name?’ asked the second C.I.D. man cunningly.
‘Yours or Washington Irving’s?’
‘With my own name,’ Major Major told him.
‘I don’t even know Washington Irving’s name.’
The second C.I.D. man broke into a smile.
‘Major, I’m glad you’re in the clear.
It means we’ll be able to work together, and I’m going to need every man I can get.
Somewhere in the European theater of operations is a man who’s getting his hands on communications addressed to you.
Have you any idea who it can be?’
‘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.’