by E. H. Jones
The séance opened with a little speech by Moïse. We encouraged him – or rather, the Spook did – to make these speeches, and gradually he formed the habit of writing them beforehand so as to make sure of omitting nothing of importance. In time, they amounted to a report of everything that had happened in connection with ourselves or with the rest of the camp since the last séance. In this way our knowledge was kept up to date, and we gained much important information. The speeches were delivered – not to us, but to the piece of tin which was our spook-board, and which Moïse always addressed as ‘Sir’. It contained for him as real a personality as the idol does for the savage, and he treated it with similar reverence. He lied to us, in our capacity as ordinary mortals, with a face of brass, but he never lied to his sacred piece of tin. Picture him, then, leaning over the board with paper and pencil ready to take down the Spook’s answer while we set our fingers on the glass, and as wooden as possible an expression on our faces, and listened to his oration.
Séance in Colonels’ House, 24th March, 5 p.m. to 7.45 p.m.
MOÏSE: ‘Good evening, Sir. Before starting the treasure business, let me first thank you for the speech you made for the Commandant to say at the Ski Club dinner. I think everybody was pleased. I did not come before to thank you because you gave us the order not to trouble you before five days; but I do it now. Second, I beg your pardon again for having so étourdiment ejaculated in the last séance, and I am ready, if possible, in order to correct the wrong I may have done, to share the hardships and restrictions you have inflicted on the mediums, if you think it convenient.’
SPOOK: ‘Thank you. Later on I may require your help. Not now.’
MOÏSE: ‘I am ready at any time.’
SPOOK: ‘I am going to prepare you for trance-talk. I am going to explain a very difficult thing. First, what time is it?’
MOÏSE: ‘It is ten minutes past five, according to camp time, ten minutes past ten by Turkish time.’
SPOOK: ‘When eleven o’clock comes will the present time be dead and gone?’
MOÏSE: ‘Will you explain, please?’
SPOOK: ‘Is yesterday still here or not? Is tomorrow here yet?’
MOÏSE: ‘We think that tomorrow is not here yet. We don’t quite understand.’
SPOOK: ‘It is difficult. Is last year here now?’
MOÏSE: ‘No, it is not. We are in 1918 now.’
SPOOK: ‘Is next year here now?’
MOÏSE: ‘No, we think it is not here.’
SPOOK: ‘Quite so. You think the past is one thing, and the future is another, and the present a third. Is it not so?’
MOÏSE: ‘I will say there are three things altogether.’
SPOOK: ‘I will try and show that you are wrong – that both the future and the past exist together now. But it is hard to explain because all human languages are deficient in the words I require. For instance, the phrase ‘in tune’ does not express exactly what I mean by it, nor does the French phrase ‘en rapport,’ nor the Greek ‘συμπά θεια’; nor any phrase in any human language. Well, you know sound can be trapped, for you have a clumsy method of doing it. Do you understand?’
MOÏSE: ‘The phonograph method?’
SPOOK: ‘Quite so. A past sound existing in the present. Is it not so?’
(Moïse consulted the mediums, and after a discussion, went on.)
MOÏSE: ‘Jones says, that the phonograph is only a record of a sound, it is not a sound existing at the present.’
SPOOK: ‘Stupid, the sound is there. All that is required is the proper instruments and conditions to bring it out. Do you understand?’
MOÏSE: ‘Yes, we understand that.’
SPOOK: ‘Now, look at the fire.’
MOÏSE: ‘Yes, I am looking.’
SPOOK: ‘Would you say it is burning now, or would you not?’
MOÏSE: ‘Yes, we would.’
SPOOK: ‘Why do you say it is blazing now – at present?’
MOÏSE: ‘Because we see it.’
SPOOK: ‘Quite so. Again, say something, Moïse.’ (Moïse spoke.) ‘You are talking now, now, now, are you not?’
MOÏSE: ‘Yes, I am.’
SPOOK: ‘How do the mediums know?’
MOÏSE: ‘Because they hear me.’
SPOOK: ‘Because you see and hear a thing you say it is happening in the present. Is it not so?’
MOÏSE: ‘Yes. It is so.’
SPOOK: ‘If you saw one star collide with another star you would say, “Look, that star is at present colliding with that other star”; is that so?’
MOÏSE: ‘Yes, I would.’
SPOOK: ‘Then do you think you would be talking sense?’
MOÏSE: ‘We think we are.’
SPOOK: ‘Ha! Ha! ha! Ha! ha! ha!! Listen! It takes what you call a hundred years for the light of some of the stars to reach the sphere you live in. So when you see a collision you may be watching a thing which really happened what you call a hundred years ago. For you it is the present time, because the rays of light have preserved it for you for all those things you call years. But you are looking at the past. Do you understand?’
MOÏSE: ‘I shall say, “I see the present,” but if I know astronomy, by thinking a little I will be persuaded that I am not looking at a present thing but a past thing, because the rays have taken a long time to reach my eyes.’
SPOOK: ‘What I am trying to prove is this: even to your imperfect senses, the past can exist in the present, also the future can exist in the present.’
MOÏSE: ‘How? An example about the future, please, Sir.’
SPOOK: ‘Bless you! Your mathematicians, as you call them, can fix the next eclipse of the sun to the nearest second. Because they happen to have discovered the laws ruling that little portion of the field of knowledge, that portion of the future is known and is laid bare in the present. So, in a sense, past, present, and future co-exist.’
MOÏSE: ‘No, the knowledge of them co-exists.’
SPOOK: ‘Silly. Is the fire existing now, or merely your knowledge of it?’
MOÏSE: ‘The fire is existing now.’
SPOOK: ‘Because you see it?’
MOÏSE: ‘Yes.’
SPOOK: ‘Silly. What about the stars?’
MOÏSE: ‘You are right! I understand now!’
SPOOK: ‘Time is an artificial division. All time is one. Do you understand?’
MOÏSE: ‘I know.’
SPOOK: ‘Past, present, and future all co-exist.’
MOÏSE: ‘Yes.’
SPOOK: ‘You do not know all the past – why? Because you have not yet discovered the – there is no word for it – call it the “telechronistic ray”. You do not know all the future, for the same reason. Do you understand?’
MOÏSE: ‘Give further explanation, please.’
SPOOK: ‘As you have seen, light rays and sound rays can preserve the past for your ears and eyes. The mathematical sense can know the future. In the same way the telechronistic rays preserve both the past and the future, for those who can develop the faculty to get into touch with the rays. This is what I am aiming at with the mediums. Tonight I shall test them. They will trance-talk if I am successful, and the simple food and solitude have had the desired effect. It must be done after dark. You must not interrupt or touch the mediums. The unfortunate thing is that as regards the past it is always possible for what you call a spirit to interpose between the mediums and the ray, like a man standing between you and a candle; but as regards the future, it is harder to interfere because the future ray is strong, and single, and distant like the sun. Do you understand?’
MOÏSE: ‘Not understood.’
SPOOK: ‘The future is a complete whole, a single blaze. It is all existing now, but it exists for you as an undivided entity. The past, however, exists for you as a series of small telechronistic rays. If I tried to show you a particular event in the past, it being a small event like the candle, it would be easy for OOO to interpose between you and the beam, e
specially if he knows the particular candle I want to show. Now, do you understand?’
MOÏSE: ‘Yes.’
SPOOK: ‘Do not touch the mediums or interrupt.’
MOÏSE: ‘No, I will not.’
SPOOK: ‘Be in the dark. Take down carefully everything they say. Then come back to me after they have recovered. Also note: it will not be me talking through the mediums; it will be the mediums themselves interpreting the ray. Au revoir, until after dark.’
MOÏSE: ‘May we have a lamp?’
SPOOK (angrily): ‘No!’
MOÏSE: ‘How can I write?’
SPOOK: ‘Make a small beam of light – a – small – beam – of – light.’
MOÏSE: ‘Yes. How?’
SPOOK (angrily): ‘Do it! Or I will not help. Blow your own nose! Don’t worry me with trifles!’
MOÏSE: ‘A candle covered with paper?’
SPOOK (interrupting angrily): ‘In a tin, in a tin!’
Lest he should make any mistake over the ‘beam of light’ Moïse decided to write in the dark. He sat at a table at one side of the room, while Hill and I sat at the other side. For some time there was dead silence. Then Hill and I began to grunt, and make strange noises in unison. The noises changed gradually from grunts to groans, and from groans to guttural sounds, thence to some unknown tongue, and finally into English. When we had practised together in private (it took a lot of practice to get grunt-and-groan perfect) we had never been able to proceed very far without laughing. Indeed it was the most ridiculous farmyard concert that mortal man ever listened to, and Hill had objected that we ran a great risk of laughing or being laughed at and spoiling everything. But what is ridiculous in daylight may be intensely eerie in the dark. And so it proved. The unhappy Pimple nearly fainted with fright, but he stuck to his post and his note-taking with a courage that roused our unwilling admiration. He showed us his notes afterwards – the paper was wet from the clamminess of his hands, and the writing showed clear traces of his jumpiness.
We pretended to be describing a scene before our eyes. We were following a man who carried a letter. We described how the messenger passed through a door into a garden. He had great difficulty in closing the door, for something was wrong with the latch. We followed him through the garden – past the trees and flowers and well, all of which we described – into a house with a curious window that stood out four-square to the right of the door. Thence up the steps, inside, through a small hall, up a staircase and into a bedroom, detailing the furniture and the pictures as we passed each article. We gave a minute description of the bedroom, the red carpet, the two ottomans, the position of the bed and the cupboard, and we were much struck by the enormous footstool on the right of the door, the wicker bag on the floor near the bed, and the sword on the wall between two pictures. The messenger gave the letter to someone on the bed, whom we could not see clearly. We heard him call, and a lady came in – a lady with very beautiful hands. They went out together, carrying a lantern. Another man joined them, with pick and shovel. Then everything turned black. There was a pause in the trance-talk for perhaps a minute. Then we cried out that we saw the group again. They had been digging. We could see the hole by the lamplight. They were pulling things out of the hole – boxes they looked like! Yes, boxes! The man with the pick raised it above his head and smashed open a box, and – ‘Gold! Gold! Gold!’ (so loud and so suddenly did we shout together that the Pimple leapt to his feet). Then blackness again, and a reversal of the opening proceedings – we lapsed first into the unknown tongue, and thence through the guttural sounds to the groans and the little farmyard grunts with which we had begun. A few minutes’ silence, and Hill spoke in his natural voice: –
‘I am afraid it’s no good,’ he said, ‘nothing is going to happen.’
The Pimple struck a match with shaking fingers, and lit the lamp.
‘Something has happened,’ he said, ‘you’ve both been in a trance. It was terrible!’
‘Have we?’ said I, and looked as dazed as I could. (It is easy to look dazed in a sudden glare of light.) ‘I feel just as usual, only very, very tired.’
At the Pimple’s request we got out the spook-board and he read over the record to the Spook.
‘That was the future,’ the glass explained; ‘did you recognize the picture, Moïse?’
MOÏSE: ‘No, Sir.’
SPOOK: ‘Stupid! What did they find? Who were they? What was the house? Don’t be silly! You know it well. Read it again!’
(Moïse reread the record.)
MOÏSE (in excitement). ‘Yes, Sir! I recognize it now. May I tell the mediums what the picture was?’
SPOOK: ‘Yes. Then no more tonight. Mediums are much improved, but this strains them.’
MOÏSE: ‘Goodnight, Sir. And many thanks.’
Turning to Hill and myself, Moïse explained that in our trance-talk we had given a perfect description of the Commandant’s house. He was half crazed with excitement and nervous strain. It was ‘wonderful’, ‘marvellous’, ‘undoubted clairvoyance’. He congratulated us ‘from the base of his heart’. It was a ‘beautiful word-picture’. It was more – a ‘word-photograph’ – and of a house we had never seen! It beat the photograph incident in Raymond (Moïse, by the Spook’s orders, had just finished translating Raymond to the Commandant), ‘for it was much more detailed’. He believed we were greater spiritualists than Sir Oliver Lodge. ‘Was it so?’ ‘Was it not so?’
‘Oh no, Moïse,’ said Hill. ‘We are only mediums. He is in your position, you know – an investigator and recorder. But I suppose it is not unlike the photograph incident, as you say.’
‘It is better – far better,’ said the Pimple.
I believe it was better. Only it spoils a conjuring trick or a psychical phenomenon to explain how it is done, and unfortunately I have already told the reader how Doc. O’Farrell described Kiazim’s house to me. So the photograph incident in Raymond will remain a ‘marvel’ while our word-picture is simply a fraud.
Chapter XVII
How The Spook Took Us Treasure-Hunting and We Photographed the Turkish Commandant
For the past fortnight Hill and I had known that a number of new prisoners were coming to Yozgad – forty-four officers and twenty-five men. These were the ‘Kastamouni Incorrigibles.’ After the escape by Keeling, Tipton, Sweet, and Bishop from Kastamouni in 1917, their comrades of Kastamouni Camp had been badly ‘strafed’. The whole camp was moved to Changri, where it was housed in the vilest conditions imaginable.45 In despair a number of officers gave the Turks their parole not to escape, in order to get reasonable quarters. The Turks accepted the parole and sent these to Gedos46. Then Johnny Turk began to wonder why the rest would not give parole, and very naturally concluded they must be intending to escape. The safest place in Turkey for restless gentlemen of this description was Yozgad, in the heart of Anatolia. So to Yozgad they were sent.
But at Yozgad the accommodation for prisoners was very limited. To make room for all forty-four incorrigibles the Turkish War Office decided to send twenty of the Yozgad officers to Afion Kara Hissar. As soon as this order arrived, Moïse came across and told us about it. The Commandant wanted the Spook to tell him which of the officers at present in Yozgad he should send away. Here was a great opportunity. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for us to send any twenty men we chose to select. We were much tempted to despatch to Afion the score whom we considered to be most vehemently opposed to all plans of escape. But we held our hand. We advised Moïse that we thought it wiser not to trouble the Spook with details, as the treasure business was sufficient worry at present. The Spook had several times told us to do as much as possible for ourselves.
Accordingly the camp was informed of the order in the usual way, but when we heard the result we were rather sorry we had not exercised our option. Moïse told us that the Commandant, in answer to enquiries, had said that Yozgad camp was in every way preferable to Afion. (As a matter of fact it was not.) In Yozgad, he
said, food was cheaper, the climate better and the housing much superior. Result: those officers who had at first been tempted by the idea of a change refused to budge. Indeed, practically nobody wanted to go, for what with the Hunt Club and the Ski dinner speech, and one thing and another, Yozgad prospects looked decidedly rosy for the summer. So, to a diapason of grousing by the victims, the fiat went forth that the twenty junior officers should pack up, and our senior officer did Hill and myself the honour of telling Kiazim Bey that, as we were not only junior but also ‘the black sheep’ of the camp, it would be distinctly advisable to include us in the twenty. (That ‘black sheep’ phrase hurt a little – we had never done anybody any harm – but it amused the Turks.) Kiazim, who wanted his treasure, refused to move us. Amid much grumbling, the twenty made their preparations for departure.
On the 26th March, at 6 p.m. Moïse brought the matter up in his ‘report’. ‘I have some news for you, Sir,’ he said to the board. ‘We have got the order for twenty officers to leave for Afion. Their names have been put down. You see we are trying to blow our own noses.’ (Moïse had got it into his head that this was an English idiom meaning to be self-reliant.) ‘But perhaps you can give us some good suggestions as you usually do. I told Colonel Maule we could not move the mediums when he asked about them.’