by E. H. Jones
In getting away from the camp Hill and I had gained a new and more cheerful outlook. But we did not realize that we had already broken down the walls of our moral prison. There was no time to analyse the causes of our happiness. We were obsessed with the immediate situation, and especially with the necessity of getting the proof of Kiazim Bey’s complicity which would make the camp safe. Kiazim was not an easy man to trap: up to date there was nothing he could not explain by a theory of collusion between his subordinates and ourselves. He was perfectly capable of sacrificing the Pimple in order to save his own skin. He could range himself alongside Gilchrist and the other witnesses, and pose as the victim of a plot in which he had had no share. When alone with us he was as frank and open as a man could be. But we had no proof of his share in the plot. With typical Oriental cunning he kept himself well in the background. There was no hope of getting him to commit himself in the presence of others; yet, by hook or by crook, we must produce independent evidence that he was implicated in the treasure hunt.
Weeks ago we had conceived the idea of snapshotting Kiazim Bey, his satellites and ourselves, digging for the hidden gold. Cameras are a luxury forbidden to prisoners of war, but Hill had made one out of a chocolate box and half a lens, to fit films which a fellow prisoner possessed.31 The drawback to the camera was its bulk – it measured about twelve inches each way – which rendered concealment difficult. He had had serious thoughts of making the attempt with this as a last resort, but found a better way. On our first night in the Colonels’ House Hill put into my hands a Vest-Pocket Kodak, belonging to Wright, which somehow or another had escaped notice at the time of the latter’s capture. Films to fit it had arrived in a parcel, and Hill had palmed them under the nose of the Turkish censor while ‘helping’ him to unpack. He explained to me that as the films were his own, and the camera without films was only a danger to Wright, he had ‘borrowed’ it for our purposes without asking permission. It contained three films still unexposed – which would prove three ropes for the neck of Kiazim Bey, or for that of the photographer, according as the Goddess of Fortune smiled on Britisher or Turk.
It is not easy to take a group photograph at seven paces (the limit, we reckoned, for recognition of the figures) without somebody noticing what is being done. Discovery would be dangerous, for we were now very much in the Commandant’s power. It was no new idea to the Turkish mind, as we knew from the Pimple, to get rid of a man by shooting him on the plea that he was attempting escape; and in our case the camp was more than likely to believe the excuse. Besides, there are many other Oriental ways of doing away with undesirables, and if Kiazim Bey caught us trying to trap him he would regard us as extremely undesirable. Now that we were actually up against the situation it looked much less amusing than it had done from the security of the camp.
‘It’s neck or nothing,’ I grumbled. If we’re spotted everything goes smash, and we’ll probably be in for it. I’m hanged if those fellows in the camp who cussed us for nuisances are worth the risk.’
We were still pondering gloomy possibilities when heavy footsteps sounded on our stairs, and paused on the landing outside.
‘Htebsi-gituriorum-effendiler-htebsi-i-i.’
Hill and I looked at each other. The noise was like nothing on earth.
‘Htebsi-gituriorum-htebsi-i-i-i,’ again.
‘Somebody sneezing, I think,’ said Hill, and opened the door.
It was the Commandant’s second orderly. We never knew his name, so because he was in rags, and looked starved, and had the biggest feet in Asia, we called him ‘Cinderella’ for short.
In his hands was an enormous blue tray, piled with enamel dishes, from which came a most appetising odour of baked meats. Cinderella advanced cautiously into the room. He was obviously afraid of us two criminals, but he was much more nervous about the tray. He wore the look I have seen on the face of a bachelor holding a baby, and seemed to expect everything to come to pieces in his great hands. Very gingerly he sidled round the table, keeping it between him and ourselves, and placed the tray upon it.
‘Htebsi!’ he said again with a sigh of relief, and pointing to the tray he left us.
‘He was not sneezing after all, Bones. “Htebsi” must mean grub or something. Let’s see.’ Hill began to uncover the dishes, I helping him.
‘Soup!’ said he.
‘Meat – roast mutton!’ said I, lifting a second cover.
‘Potatoes – by Jove!’
‘Nettle-top spinach!!’
‘Chocolate pudding!!!’ Hill cried.
I peered into the only remaining dish – a small jug.
‘Coffee!’ I gasped, and collapsed into a chair. Compared with our customary dinner it was a feast for the gods. It came, as we knew, from ‘Posh Castle’, for under the Spook’s instructions the Commandant had requested that mess to send us food. It was the nearest prisoners’ house and therefore, we thought, it was the natural thing for the Commandant to do. Of course, we had no manner of claim on ‘Posh Castle’, but as we were putting ourselves to a certain amount of trouble for the sake of the camp, we had considered it right and proper they should do our cooking for us for a day or two. But we had not reckoned on their killing the fatted calf in this way, and our consciences pricked us.
‘This,’ said Hill in a very contrite voice, ‘this is the work of old Price –’
‘Who believes in the Spook,’ I groaned. ‘I’ve been stuffing him with lies for a year.’
‘Oh, what a pair of swine we are,’ we said together.
I took the camera from under the mattress where I had hidden it when Cinderella appeared, and gave it back to Hill.
‘I think, Hill, that risk or no risk –’
‘Of course!’ he snapped at me. ‘It’s got to be done now! And if it comes off, Posh Castle gets the photos. Have some soup?’
It was a merry dinner, and the coffee at the end was nectar.
‘Now,’ said Hill, by way of grace after meat, ‘let us begin to minimize that risk. Watch me!’
For fifteen minutes I stood over him, my eyes on his clever hands, watching for a glimpse of the camera as over and over again he took it out, opened it, sighted it, closed it, and returned it to his pocket. I rarely saw it until it was ready in position, and then only the lens peeped through his fingers, but when I did I told him. It was the first of a series of daily practices.
‘Once I know the feel of it I’ll do better,’ he said at the end; ‘I should be pretty good in about three weeks.’
‘You’re pretty good now, but where does my part come in?’
‘You’ll have to talk like a blooming machine gun, to drown the click of the shutter, and –’ Hill grinned and paused.
‘Yes?’
‘Well, if it is a dull day, it will be a time exposure, and you’ll have to pose the blighters, of course.’
I retired to my corner to think it out.
Chapter XIII
In Which the Pimple Learns His Future Lies In Egypt
We started our sojourn in the Colonels’ House with a great many irons in the fire. As an essential preliminary to our main plan we had the photograph to take, and in case any of the hundred and one possible accidents happened to the films, we must provide subsidiary evidence of Kiazim’s complicity. The main plan was, of course, to escape from Turkey. Our first aim was to persuade the Turks to convey us east, south-east, or south (the exact direction and distance would depend upon their convenience, but we hoped for about 300 miles) in the search for the treasure. Once within reasonable distance of safety we could trust to our legs. In case our persuasive powers proved inadequate for this rather tough proposition, we must simultaneously develop our second alternative. We must simulate some illness which would warrant our exchange. We fixed, provisionally, on madness. A third alternative, also requiring simultaneous development, was compassionate release. If we could get pressure from without brought to bear on the Turkish government they might, on the Fitzgerald precedent, compensate us with
freedom for our absurd imprisonment.
The first thing to do was to get news to England of our trial and sentence. We calculated enquiries might be expected at earliest about the middle of May. If, up to that time, we had failed to get the Commandant to move us from Yozgad, we were prepared to swear at the first breath of investigation that his real reason in imprisoning us had been to force us to use our mediumistic powers to find the treasure. In proof, we would produce the photograph (if that was successful), say he had put us on bread and water, and show our ‘tortured’ bodies. Indeed, we arranged to burn each other, when the time came, with red-hot coins, so as to have fresh scars to exhibit. It was a low-down plan, and we did not want to resort to it, to its full extent, until the last, but we were ready for it, if needs must and the others failed. It depended, of course, on enquiries being instituted from England.
In addition to the preparation of these three lines of escape, we had to keep up the interest of the Turks in the treasure, and to render absolute their belief in the powers of the Spook. In the event of success in this we decided, until we said goodbye to Yozgad, to assume the Commandant’s functions. We would, in the Spook’s name, take charge of the camp, increase its house-room, add to its liberties and privileges, improve its relations with the Turks, prevent parcel and money robbery, rid it of the Pimple, whom everybody cordially hated, and (as an act of poetic justice for what had been done to us) put its senior officer on parole! (All this we did.) All the time we must be eternally on the watch against making the slightest slip which would betray either the fact that we ourselves were the Spook, or that we had any ulterior motive in our spiritualism. Lastly, and most difficult of all, we had to be ready at a moment’s notice to checkmate any well-meant attempt at interference by our comrades in the camp.
An ambitious programme, perhaps, but not too ambitious. After the telepathy trial, anything ought to be possible.
The 8th of March was a busy day for Hill. As the practical man of the combine he had to manufacture a new spook-board (the old one had to be left behind in the camp) and also a semaphore apparatus, for we had arranged (should occasion arise) to signal to Matthews, who lived across the way in Posh Castle. While Hill worked I submitted for his criticism various plans by which our aims might be attained. Next day the Pimple came in and sat chatting for a couple of hours. He told us that after his effort at the trial the Commandant had suffered from a bad go of nerves, and had lain awake all night wondering what Constantinople would say, and what Colonel Maule would write in his next sealed letter to headquarters. Kiazim’s one ambition in life now was to get out of the treasure hunt and send us mediums back to the camp. But he could not risk his own prestige by doing so.
‘Pah!’ said the Pimple, ‘he is – what you call it? – très poltron!’
‘I don’t know German,’ said I.
‘That is French,’ the Pimple explained gravely. ‘It means what you call “windy beggar”.’
This sort of thing would never do! We held a séance. The Spook began at once to fan Kiazim’s waning courage. It pointed out that the task of the mediums was to get thoroughly in tune one with another, but that this was quite impossible so long as the Commandant created cross-currents of thought-waves by worrying. The Commandant, the Pimple, the Cook, and the two mediums – all, in fact, who were concerned to find the treasure – must remain tranquil in mind or success would be impossible. Let their trust in the Spook be absolute, and all would be easy. Was not the Unseen working for us night and day? Whence came Gilchrist’s paean of praise for the verdict? Surely the Commandant recognized that it had been put into his mouth by the Spirit to act as a bar to any further protest about the conviction? Thus had Gilchrist been firmly committed as a supporter of the Commandant’s view. And so with Colonel Maule. The Spook was pained at the Commandant’s fear of Maule: for was not Maule’s mind already under control? Did Kiazim imagine that the Spook was idle except at séances? Why, Maule’s head had been carefully filled with ideas by the Unseen Power; he was a plaything in the Spook’s hands. It had been an easy matter to put him in the same boat as Kiazim, to get him to stop all ‘spooking’ in the camp,32 to make him place Hill and Jones on parole not to telepathize or escape from Yozgad.
Here the Pimple interrupted the séance.
‘Did you two give paroles to Colonel Maule?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ I said, affecting surprise.
‘How on earth do you know? Did Maule tell you?’
‘The glass has just written it,’ said Moïse triumphantly; ‘from the Spirit nothing is hidden.’ (Then to the Spook): ‘Go on, sir.’
The Spook went on. As a final, though quite unnecessary, protection for the Commandant, it promised to control the mediums (Hill and myself) to write letters to England in praise of their new quarters. If the mediums did not complain of their treatment nobody else could do so with any effect. Let these letters be copied and sent through without delay in the censoring, that they might counteract any chance complaint from the camp which escaped the notice of the Spook.
The séance achieved its end. The Commandant had not previously realized that Gilchrist had been acting under the Spook’s influence, nor had he known about the parole. He was therefore much pleased to find that the Spook was taking so much trouble on his behalf, and had such powers of controlling people. The letters, he thought, were an excellent idea. We thought so too, and we wrote plenty of them. Every letter was loud in its praises of the Turk, but the eulogies cloaked a very pretty cipher which informed our friends at home of our absurd conviction and asked for an enquiry. And every letter went off by the first mail after it had been written – a good fortnight ahead of those of the rest of the camp which, as the Pimple confessed to us, were regularly held back at Yozgad for local censoring33. We thus created an express service of our own, and by its means sowed the seeds for our ‘Compassionate Release’ stunt. We have since learnt what happened to these letters. They reached England in good time; they were submitted to very high quarters by my father, and he was solemnly advised to take no action, on the grounds that to betray knowledge of our fate would result in making the Turks believe we had secret means of communication with England, a belief that might have awkward consequences for us! So nothing was done. Luckily we did not know, and had always the pleasure of hoping for the best, which was good for us – it kept our courage up.
We were now in smooth water again, and proceeded to make ourselves as comfortable as possible. The country was still under snow, and the charcoal brazier over which we warmed ourselves was quite inadequate for our needs. Considering we were going to present the Turks with a treasure worth, according to the Spook, £28,000, this was absurdly mean treatment. The Spook ordered us a stove – a real big one – and we got it! Donkey-loads of wood were bought for us in the bazaar, at cheap rates. The Cook was put on fatigue by the Spook, and made to chop the wood up for us, to light the fire of a morning before we were out of bed, to sweep out our rooms, to run messages to the bazaar, and generally to attend to our comfort. He was delighted to do it. He even brought us some very pleasing dishes of Turkish food, and two kerosine lamps, with an ample supply of oil. The camp had been without kerosine for a year or more. We had burned crude Afion oil – a thick and very messy vegetable oil – which gave a miserable light and made reading after dark more of a toil than a pleasure. The new lamps were a real luxury, and our enjoyment of them was not lessened by the Pimple’s explanation that the kerosine was really a Turkish Government issue for prisoners, but as its price in the market was fabulous the Commandant did not issue it to the camp. He kept it for pin money!
There is no doubt we could have obtained anything the Spook ordered, short of freedom. But we took care the Spook should not order too much. Even in Turkey there is such a thing as ‘obtaining money by false pretences’, and it would never do to have such motives ascribed to us, should an enquiry be held. The Spook therefore announced that after a short period our diet would be reduced to dry bread. The alleged object of t
he low diet was ‘to increase clairvoyant powers.’34 It promised to incite a certain officer to persuade the Commandant to stop the food from Posh Castle, so that the onus of our starvation should rest on the camp and not on the Turks. ‘Further,’ said the Spook, ‘the mediums must remember to accept no monetary gain. They must pay cost price for all they receive. They should expect and accept only acts of kindness which cost nothing. Nor must they hope for a reward for their services in money or its equivalent. Their reward will come later… When their time comes to pass over to other spheres the knowledge they have thus gained will be worth more to them than all the riches in Asia.’
‘Why?’ Moïse asked. ‘What is the reason they cannot get money?’
‘In order to confine the study to true seekers after knowledge,’ the Spook explained, ‘there must be no arrière pensée.’
The Cook was very much interested in the fact that we were to get none of the treasure. He questioned Moïse very carefully on the point. He was anxious to make sure that there was no possibility of a misunderstanding, and no chance of our claiming a share later. He was frankly out for business, was this ‘limb of Satan’, and quite openly delighted at the Spook’s orders.