Lieutenant Mosely’s room showed a pedantic respect for military punctilio. The walls were daubed the same drab olive as the metal bedposts and wall locker. The uniforms inside the locker were arrayed as if for an inspection. After assuring myself of complete privacy, I took down his best dress uniform and pulled on the trousers. The Lieutenant, fortunately, had a good figure, and the pants fit reasonably well. His shirt proved to be a little loose at the collar, but I was able to correct that by tightening the tie.
The tie! That was nearly the death of my whole scheme. I had never worn a tie in my life, and if I had, I certainly would not have been obliged to tie it myself. I tried to improvise a knot or two, but nothing I could manage bore any resemblance to what I had seen about Frangle’s neck. Desperately I emptied out Mosely’s footlocker, hoping there might be a pre-knotted tie there. Instead, I found his Manual of Arms, where on page 58 there are instructions for the approved military four-in-hand. As the alarm clock on the window sill ticked off the minutes, I fumbled with the maddening piece of silk. At last it passed muster (Lax muster.) By then I was in such a state of frazzlement that I nearly forgot to remove the silver bars from the shoulders of Mosely’s jacket and replace them with the gold oak leaf from the overcoat I had been wearing. Then I tried to squeeze into Mosely’s parade shoes.
No go. They were sizes too small. I tried in the next room. (Capt. C. Quilty, M.D., the placard on the door announced.) Quilty’s shoes, though nowhere near so well polished, fit snugly. I left Mosely’s shoes in Quilty’s locker to cover up my theft.
As a finishing touch, I retrieved a ragged copy of G.I. Jokes from the tumble of personal items that had fallen out of the footlocker. Then, smartly turned out in dress uniform, I returned to the dismantled, dismayed Captain Frangle on the floor below.
“I’ve found what I sought, Captain. You may dress and accompany me back to the compound.”
Outside Captain Frangle was able to obtain silence (and they were supposed to be at attention!) by lifting one hand. After he’d given them appropriate hell, I had him place Lieutenant Mosely under arrest. His hands were cuffed, his feet shackled, and his mouth securely gagged.
“I have in my right hand,” I then announced in my stagiest voice, “evidence that this man, known to you as Mosely, is in reality an impostor, a spy, an agent and a tool of the Mastery. The High Command first grew suspicious of him at Shroeder, when he was seen to go alone into the bombed power station there…” A gasp went up among the men. “Captain, do you have a stone wheel—or something equally suitable for starting a fire?”
“I have a cigarette lighter.”
“Set this so-called ‘jokebook’ on fire, please. What harm has been done cannot be undone, but the enemy shall not receive this report, at least. Pray God we have stopped their plot in time.”
While the jokebook burned, Lieutenant Mosely struggled against his bonds and went: Mmmph! Mmmph! Nn! Nn! Mmmmph!
“Captain, I presume you have a cell where this man may be kept to await trial in solitary confinement?”
“We do, but there are ten pets locked in there now. We’re filled up… right to the brim, as I explained before, but of course… if you say…”
“Put the pets elsewhere. Mosely is to be kept strictly incommunicado. He will receive bread and water twice a day—under my personal supervision. The man is known to be devilishly persuasive. We can’t take chances. As for his room, I shall take that for myself. There may be other documents secreted there.”
“Yes sir. Will that be all, sir? May I release the men?”
“Not just yet. I must see Mosely put away, and then I’d like you to accompany me on a tour of the prison itself. If I wait till tomorrow the whole point of this inspection may have been lost. I trust you take my meaning, Captain?”
“Perfectly,” the old man assured me. “Like crystal.” But truth to tell, he did look a bit puzzled.
It was easy enough to put it in terms he did understand. “And then, my good Captain, you may explain your system of bookkeeping.” Which Frangle understood perfectly, like crystal.
Such is the wonder of military discipline that the guards remained at attention out in the compound until two a.m. and were quiet as churchmice all the while. Meanwhile I dined (the best meal I’d had since coming to Earth and the most heartily appreciated of my life), then with Frangle at my side took a leisurely tour of the prisons. It was…
Unspeakable: the crowding; close, fetid air; inadequate sanitary facilities. Since the meager electric current produced by the prison’s own emergency generators was required for the operation of the security system, the only light in the cellblock was what leaked in through the barred windows. The place was as gloomy as the Dark Ages. Miseries heaped upon miseries, tier upon tier. And this was only a single cellblock!
“How many more are there of these?”
“Besides this, nine.”
After I’d gone past only a few of the cells, playing the beam of a flashlight over those sad heaps of still-proud bodies (so much finer than the ramshackle flesh of the guards standing outside), meeting their anguished, pleading gazes, I felt the bottom drop out. Pity consumed me, and rage seemed close behind. Often, the puppies, less perfectly in control, would come to the bars and stretch out their little hands for food. Captain Frangle would slap them away with an indignant bellow. I am ashamed to say that I tolerated his behavior, for I was still afraid he would construe my humanitarian impulses as being un-Dingolike, and begin to suspect…
“Oh sir,” one of the puppies begged, “can’t you spare a scrap of food? For pity’s sake, sir, some food!”
“Food? You’ll get food, you little sonofabitch! You’ll taste this fist if you don’t lie back down there. Food? If you’re hungry you have only your father to blame—if you know who that is. There’s plenty enough food outside these walls for them as are willing to gather it up.”
This seemed to exceed the reasonable limits of abuse, and I said as much.
“But it is their fault, Major, if you’ll forgive my saying so. We’ve sent out work parties of hundreds of men to take in the harvests from the abandoned farms around here. It’s August, and that food is rotting away. The birds are eating it up, but these goddamned pets are so goddamned lazy they won’t lift their hands to feed their mouths.”
Though this seemed not quite credible, I determined to consult a calmer authority—if I ever had the time.
Time—that was the difficulty! For though I did feel obliged to exert the full force of my spurious but nonetheless potent authority for the welfare and (if possible) the freedom of these thirteen thousand pets, I knew that each new hour I spent with Frangle only made my discovery that much more inevitable. My mask was slipping, slipping…
But—if I could release them that very night, I would not only have done the prisoners a service but would myself benefit by their escape, for their very numbers would act as a smokescreen to conceal my own departure.
“I intend to examine all ten cellblocks, Captain, but you needn’t accompany me. Just give me the keys. The ones for the individual cells, as well as those for the cellblocks.”
“Impossible, Major. We don’t use keys, you know. Everything is done by electricity. You can’t beat that, you know… electricity!” He seemed to lay special importance upon this notion, and I nodded sagely. Encouraged, he went on: “Electricity is man’s most powerful servant. It is the doorway to tomorrow. It’s another Aladdin’s Lamp. I love electricity, and electricity loves me.”