At the castle he was met not by MP’s but by three men in suits, big anonymous-looking men with the blunt faces of U.S. marshals or secret servicemen. Their very business suits suggested magicians’ costumes, bulging with what he took to be concealed pockets and trick linings, even their hatbands reversible perhaps, in emergency becoming signal strips seen for miles. Two of the men frisked him objectively, touching him heavily about his body, yet with a rapidity that made it all seem routine. They might have been checking him out to see if he was transporting fruit across a state line.
Afterward they led him through the first floor of the castle, which had been renovated and was honeycombed with offices. The women who worked in these cubicles probably knew more about the war and what was going on, Dick thought, than even old Ed Murrow back in London. Two of his escorts left him at a small elevator and he rode up with the third. He was surprised to see the man push the button for the nineteenth floor; he was quite certain that there could not be nineteen floors in the castle. Probably he was in some terrific nerve center and in reconstructing the building they had put in secret floors between floors and beneath ground level, like the extra pockets in the secret servicemen’s suits. They stepped out into a richly carpeted hallway that looked more like the corridor of a first-class hotel than it did of either a castle or the offices below (above?). The man led him toward a large door at the end of the hallway, where he made Dick stop and lean against the wall to be frisked a second time. This took longer than the first frisking and was not nearly so objective.
“Okay,” the man said finally, “you’re clean as a whistle.” Then he winked. “Incidentally, if you don’t mind my saying so, soldier, you’re mighty well hung.”
“You must be some security risk,” Dick said.
The man shrugged and knocked on the door. A voice that sounded vaguely familiar told them to come in. The secret serviceman opened the door and saluted. Dick gasped and saluted along with him; he was looking right into the eyes of a famous general. Like Dick’s guard, the general was dressed in civilian clothes and wore nothing to assert his identity save his famous face and a cluster of four small stars formed by diamonds and pinned to the breast pocket of his suit.
The secret serviceman was dismissed and the famous general narrowly studied Dick’s salute. “Pretty loyal all of a sudden, hey, young fella?” he said. Dick remained braced and continued to hold his salute. “By golly, you’re a regular West Point cadet. Off the record, lad, are you sure you’re the same fella that tells my people they’re just meat?”
Dick continued his salute, his chin so tightly drawn in toward his neck that the tendons began to quiver. “I can’t hear you, son,” the famous general said.
“Yes, sir,” Dick said. “I’m he, sir.”
“Ha. He admits it,” the famous general said, turning around. For the first time Dick noticed that several high-ranking officers from various services were also in the room. He was despondent with panic. What did the chiefs of staff — if that’s who they were — have to do with his case? Was he to be made an example? Suppose they charged him with treason? They could shoot him.
The famous general chuckled. “Child, that was sure some swell dodge your signing off that way. I’ve certainly got to hand it to you … At ease there, soldier … Yes sir, pulling all that traitor crap and then saying you were Dick Gibson instead of your real name. Of course, that wouldn’t win you an acquittal, but it’s lucky for you just the same that you thought of it. Isn’t it, boys?”
Several of the officers grunted.
“You know, my boy, your program is my favorite. Did you know that, youngster?”
“Is it, sir?”
“Hell, I’ll say so. Positively. That’s a fact. My favorite. Those songs. Stirring, absolutely stirring.”
“I’m very pleased you think so, sir.”
“Oh, I think you do a terrific job. If I have any objection at all I guess it’s that you don’t play enough golden oldies.”
“Golden oldies,” Dick said.
“Well, those were some pretty good songs they had back there in the first war,” the general said. “Not to take anything away from the stuff they’re doing now, of course,” he added quickly.
“He doesn’t play any cavalry tunes,” a colonel in the tank corps objected glumly.
“Do any of you fellows know ‘She’s the Mistress of the Quartermaster’?” another asked.
“How’s that one go, Bob?” a two-star general asked.
“You’re a lucky kiddy, son,” the famous general said, breaking in.
“I am, sir?”
“You’re mighty well told you are. Why, it’s only because I like your program so much that your case came to my attention at all. You know, it’s funny; I don’t really care all that much for music. My lady can never get me to go to a concert with her. I’m not even all that fond of a military band. I guess that as much as anything else it was you I was listening to. There was something about your voice. It reminded me of an experience I had, oh, back a few years now. Anyway, when there was a substitution for you on Patriot’s Songbook last Sunday I had to find out why. That’s how I heard about what you’d done. Well, naturally once I found out I just had to hear that record Lieutenant Collins had made. I can tell you one thing — you made me mad as hell. Why, I was all for hauling your ass up before a firing squad or something. Then, when you signed off saying you were Dick Gibson, why it suddenly came to me why I’d always been so fascinated by you.”
“I don’t understand, sir,” Dick Gibson said.
“Why, I guess you don’t. Well, of course you don’t. But I’ll get to it, son, I’ll get to it.” The general put his arm about Dick’s shoulder and led him toward a chair. “Do you recall a few years back working for a station in Nebraska?”
“KROP,” Dick Gibson said, “the Voice of Wheat.”
“Yes, that’s it, that’s the one. Well, sir, my first wife’s people live out in Atkinson, Nebraska, and when I was running the Fifth Army headquarters in Chicago, I sometimes had occasion to take old Route 33 to go see them. Well, I use the radio a lot when I drive. I kind of depend upon it; it helps me to stay awake. You see, I don’t like to stay in motor lodges or hotels — most of them aren’t very clean, you know; ’s ’matter of fact, the only place I like to stop is some army camp where they train inductees; I know that sort of place will be clean enough for any traveler to lay down his head — so usually I drive through. That’s where you come in. I was near the Iowa — Nebraska border, I remember, and suddenly I picked up this program, with this fella talking. Well, sir, as I already told these gentlemen, there was ice on that highway, and it was getting dark and I was tired — but I mean tired — and I’d already dozed off for a fraction of a second and only the sudden swerve of the car jolted me awake again. That’s when I picked up this program. Well, it wasn’t like anything I’d ever heard before. Something about the voice … but not just the voice, what the voice was saying … I was fascinated. It woke me up. I didn’t want to miss a word. That was you speaking, lad. I remembered the name soon as I heard it again on Lieutenant Collins’s record—Dick Gibson. I don’t even recall now what you said back then. All I know is that whatever it was, it helped. I followed your voice all the way to Atkinson.”