The door opened at the top of the ramp and the colonel peered cautiously inside.
"Nobody here but us chickens," he said, sputtering in the rain, and the guard dropped the muzzle of the machine pistol and saluted.
The colonel stomped in onto the concrete floor, grumbling. He was followed by an enormous lieutenant, an immense, looming, cliff-shouldered man well over six feet tall. The lieutenant had to duck coming through the door, cast a downward salute to the startled guard. The colonel moved out from under the lieutenant's dripping overhang, pointed a lean wet finger down the hall.
"He here?"
"Yessir," said the guard, eyeing the monstrous lieutenant with respect.
The colonel wiped his face with a dry handkerchief, took off his hat and smoothed down his sparse white hair. Then he strode off down the concrete hall, motioning for the lieutenant to follow. Together they came to a bolted steel door. The colonel opened it without knocking, ushered the lieutenant inside.
The room they entered was wide and rich, oak-panelled, in great contrast to the white-washed concrete of the halls outside. In the center of the room was a mahogany desk, at which a small, sad, cigar-smoking man sat absorbedly drawing doughnuts on a white lined pad.
The colonel saluted. The man at the desk, whose name was Dundon, looked up at the big lieutenant and chomped on his cigar.
"Is this our man?"
"Yes sir. Lieutenant Hilton. He knows—"