The Road to En-dor

by E. H. Jones

  MOÏSE: ‘Yes, Sir.’

  SPOOK: ‘Ha! Ha! Ha! So did OOO. Listen! I cannot tell you my plans beforehand, because it will lead to interference. I wanted OOO to read your thoughts last night to deceive him into helping us. Yesterday several of the twenty did not want to go. Today all wanted to go. OOO did that.’

  The Spook went on to explain that in addition to wasting OOO’s force on irrelevant matters, the real object of the message had been to let the camp know that the Commandant would send away Hill and myself as soon as possible, and so it was natural enough for us to remain in the Colonels’ House (where we were free to spook) instead of rejoining our respective messes. We would be sent away, but not to Afion. Then the following reply was dictated by the Spook:

  TO COLONEL MAULE –

  I have no desire to cause any inconvenience, so allow the matter to stand as it is at present. The reason for my message of yesterday was merely that I had been given to understand that several officers did not want to go. I simply sought an easy way of allowing two to stay. I do not wish to upset your arrangements, and if it is not necessary to keep Jones and Hill here, I can easily apply to Constantinople to punish them further by transferring them to Afion.

  Moïse was to add, verbally, that ‘immediately on receipt of Colonel Maule’s objections, the Commandant had written to Constantinople asking for Hill and myself to be transferred to another camp’. And he was to let it be known that, though we would not be included in the Afion party, we would be added to it, and travel with it at least as far as Angora. This Moïse did, and in due course reported that the reply ‘had comforted everybody’. Colonel Maule was very pleased, and thanked the Commandant.

  The secret plan on which Hill and I were now working was perhaps sufficiently ingenious to merit a detailed description. The Turks, of course, did not know it beforehand, but were to be introduced to it bit by bit as it developed. It was as follows:

  1. The Spook would ‘control’ Hill and myself into a nervous breakdown of sufficient severity to induce the Turkish doctors at Yozgad to recommend our transfer to Constantinople.

  2. The Spook would draft a letter to Constantinople from the Commandant reporting our sickness, enclosing copies of the Turkish doctors’ recommendations, and stating that he would seize the first opportunity of sending us to a Constantinople hospital. Office copies of this letter would be kept by the Yozgad office in the usual way. The original would be signed, sealed, and put in an envelope addressed to the Turkish War Office. But it would never be delivered. It would be ‘lost in the post’ for the simple reason that it would never be posted, though the office staff would think it had gone.

  3. As soon as news arrived that the Changri Commandant had left Angora en route for Yozgad, Kiazim was to telegraph to Constantinople about his own health, quoting the opinion of the doctors already obtained, ask for leave, and suggest that he hand over charge to the Changri Commandant. By the time the Changri man arrived, the answer should have come from the War Office, and, in view of his influence at headquarters, Kiazim had already told us he could (with the aid of the doctors’ recommendations) get leave at any time.

  4. A day or two before the arrival of the Changri Commandant Kiazim was to give the Pimple leave of absence. The Pimple would join the Afion party as far as Angora (railhead) in order to avail himself of the Government transport. (Note. – We modified this later, and the Pimple was actually sent on duty to look after the ‘nervous breakdowns’.)

  5. The Cook was to be detailed as one of the escort of the Afion party, but was to be under orders to accompany it only as far as Angora, where he was to stay behind ‘to make purchases for the Commandant’s wife’.

  6. In handing over charge of the camp Kiazim would point out to his successor from Changri the office copy of the letter about us (which had not been sent), and suggest we be added to the Afion party. This we could accompany as far as railhead at Angora, where there was a prisoners’ camp and a hospital in which we could wait till an opportunity arose for sending us on to Constantinople. (Note. – We would arrange, as we eventually did, to be taken not to the camp or the hospital, but to a hotel in Angora; but Yozgad would know nothing of this.) Had we been really ‘nervous breakdowns’ this would have been the natural thing to do. The Changri man would thus take over the camp two officers short, but would report the numbers as ‘complete and all correct’. We did not know if it was customary for the newcomer to report to headquarters the exact number of prisoners taken over by him, and the Spook intended to get Kiazim to dodge such a definite statement if possible. But we did know that the report, if sent, would be sent in writing (taking a week to ten days), and what with twenty officers and ten orderlies going to Afion, and forty-four officers and twenty-five orderlies coming in from Changri, with possibly some sick dropped en route, headquarters would either not notice the shortage or think it an arithmetical error. If they did happen to make any enquiries about it, the new Commandant would refer them to the letter about us, which they had never received, and we were quite sure that the result would be an ordinary interdepartmental wrangle as to the correctness of a set of figures, and possibly a post-office enquiry about a missing letter. I had not spent a dozen years in government service without learning how easy it is for the real point at issue to be obscured. And long before the War Office and Yozgad had got beyond the stage of arithmetical calculations, we hoped to be in Cyprus or Rhodes. As to Colonel Maule’s monthly letter to H.Q., we intended asking him, as a favour, to continue saying nothing about us.

  7. The Commandant, when going on leave, would travel with us. It would be the natural thing to do, because he would thus get a free passage by Government cart as far as railhead, and also, the country being full of bandits, he would have the advantage of an armed escort.

  If all went well, then, the effect would be that Hill and I would be on the road with the Pimple, the Cook, and the Commandant, and once the Afion party had left us behind in the hotel at Angora, nobody would know anything about us. Yozgad officials would not worry because we had set out for Constantinople; Constantinople would not worry because they would not know we were coming. Angora prisoners’ camp would not worry because we would be under our own escort, and not ‘on their strength’. It is an exceptional Turk who is a busybody – they are too lazy to interfere with affairs that are not their concern – and the gold epaulettes on Bimbashi Kiazim Bey’s uniform would be guarantee enough of our respectability. To make ourselves as inconspicuous as possible Hill and I would dress in the rough Turkish soldiers’ uniform which had been issued to the British orderlies at Yozgad – we each had a suit of it – and discard all badges of rank. There was no reason why anyone in authority should question two British prisoners who looked like miserable and half-starved privates – the sight was too common. We might go anywhere in Turkey with Kiazim Bey, and before we left Yozgad Kiazim Bey would know that his job was to take us to the Mediterranean seaboard.

  Our first task was to introduce the Turks, as carefully as possible, to the idea of taking us to the coast. Once that was accomplished we could tackle the Matthews problem.

  We worked at tremendous pressure, and developed all our main points simultaneously. During the five days when we held up Constantinople’s order to release us, Doc. O’Farrell visited us daily and secretly instructed us in the symptoms of nervous breakdowns. He told the Pimple he thought our minds were affected, and the Pimple thought the Spook had ‘controlled’ him into believing this. When we had thoroughly mastered the Doc.’s instructions, the Spook caused Kiazim to tell the camp we were free. The object of this, the Spook explained quite frankly to our Turkish confederates, was to enable us to have visitors, so that when visitors came we might be ‘controlled’ by the Spook into most eccentric behaviour. The result, as the Spook pointed out, was that the camp thought us crazy. The Turks came to the conclusion we hoped they would reach – that the Spook intended to get the doctors to recommend our removal from Yozgad. Kiazim was greatly pleased wi
th the idea, for the doctors’ recommendations would relieve him of all responsibility.

  Our first visitors were Matthews and Price, who came in with the Doc. To them, when they came, I made my long-delayed confession that every ‘message’ obtained through my ‘mediumship’ had been of my own invention, and that not only the Turks but also my friends in the camp had been victimized. It was then, for the first time, that I realized how difficult it is to convince a True Believer of the truth. In spite of what I said, these three, who were all my own ‘converts’, tried to force me to admit that there was ‘something in spiritualism’, and that at least some of the messages for which I was responsible were ‘genuine’. They quoted the incidents of ‘Louise’ and the code-test against me, and when I had explained these Matthews turned on me with, ‘Well, we have got one thing out of it, anyway! We have proved the possibility of telepathy. For I don’t believe that the show you two fellows gave at the concert could have been a fraud.’ In reply Hill picked up a small notebook, and handed it to Matthews.

  ‘There’s the code we used,’ he said.

  To tell a man that you have been ‘pulling his leg’ and ‘making a fool of him’ for your own ends is a very severe test of friendship, and for our friendship’s sake we had long dreaded this revelation. But we could not go on using these good fellows any longer without a full confession.

  ‘Hill and I hope you can forgive us,’ I concluded lamely.

  ‘Forgive you!’ cried Price. ‘I take my hat off to you! If there is anything we can do to help –’

  ‘Count on us,’ said Matthews, ‘we want to be in it.’

  ‘Faith,’ laughed the Doc., ‘I seem to be in it already, though it is little I knew it – an’ I mean to stay in it! From now on you’ve got to tell me everything. I couldn’t sleep o’ nights if you didn’t go on using me.’

  And that is how the Submarine Man, and the Sapper, and the Scientist from Central Africa took their generous and gentle revenge.

  For the rest the Spook was very thorough. It refused to allow us to wash, or shave, or sweep out our room. It made us infernally rude to many of our visitors. It controlled us into lodging wild accusations against our best friends. It made us refuse to go out, and ordered us to put a notice on our door –

  ‘GO AWAY! WE DON’T WANT TO SEE YOU!’

  Yet many good fellows forced their way in. Our condition distressed them. We were unshaven and dirty, our faces pale, drawn, and very thin. The fortnight’s starvation had put a wild look into our eyes. But our chief pride and horror was our hair – we had refrained from cutting it for the last two months, and now we did not brush it, so that it stood up round our heads like the quills of the fretful porcupine. To cap everything there was the studied filth of our room.

  The best way to get a man to agree to a plan is to make him think it is of his own invention. This was the system we followed with the Turks. After the ‘explosion’ the Turks had (of themselves, they thought) decided we must be moved from Yozgad. The Spook pointed out that two problems remained – how were we to be moved, and where were we to go? These, also, we caused the Turks to solve for us, in the way we wanted.

  I want to see you try the same problems as you are giving me to do,’ said the Spook, ‘because when we all think together, it helps.’

  MOÏSE: ‘We thought you had a plan ready.’

  SPOOK: ‘So I have, but I dare not tell it yet because of OOO. I want you all, the Sup. and the Cook too, to invent plans, because your thinking about these will confuse OOO, and so help me by reducing his force. Write down all your plans and bring them to me.’

  The Commandant, the Cook, and the Pimple spent all their spare time manufacturing plans. They appealed to Hill and myself to help, but we turned out to be singularly uninventive, and beyond an occasional suggestion (calculated to put them on the right lines) they got nothing out of us. We excused ourselves for our failure by saying that the English are a very practical race and have no imagination. The three Turks thought that however good we might be as mediums, we were hopelessly dull at what Moïse called ‘intrigue’.

  Within thirty-six hours of the explosion, the Commandant, inspired by Doc. O’Farrell’s fears as to our sanity, produced the following plan. I quote it in full from the Pimple’s notes, and the reader can see for himself how near it came to being what we wanted:

  ‘Écrire à Constantinople déclarant que deux officiers par suite du pouvoir qu’ils ont de communiquer par telepathie et ayant abusé de ce pouvoir, sont dans un état mental excessif qui pourrait avoir une influence néfaste sur leur physique ou cerveau. Par conséquence prière de les envoyer a Constantinople afin de les faire examiner par des spécialistes et de découvrir les moyens de les guérir. L’Interprète connaissant toutes ces questions, il serait utile de l’envoyer avec eux soit pour les empêcher de tâcher de communiquer soit pour les surveiller plus efficacement.’54

  There were several other plans by both Moïse and Kiazim, who were certainly inventive enough. The poor old Cook could only think of one plan – he was an unimaginative person like ourselves. It was to get horses and clap us on them, and gallop gaily across country wherever the Spook might want us to go. The Cook would have done it, and Hill and I would have been only too delighted to do it, but for Kiazim it was much too open and direct. He wanted his own tracks well hidden before he moved, and would not countenance it – at this stage.

  We were quite satisfied with Kiazim’s proposal as a basis for our plans. But we pretended to object to it very strongly. We said we were afraid we might be certified mad, and consequently lose our jobs when we returned to England after the war, as well as make our relatives anxious in the meantime. The Pimple asked for the Spook’s opinion on our objection, and the Spook was very angry.

  ‘I do not say this is my plan,’ said the Spook, ‘but I warn you if I order anything you must do it. IF YOU DISOBEY YOUR PUNISHMENT WILL BE REAL MADNESS! Choose! Obedience or real madness!’

  ‘Obedience, absolute obedience!’ said Hill and I together, ‘and please look after us.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said the Spook, and then announced its intention of developing the plan, but went no further for the present. (Note. – The lines on which we would develop it have already been indicated to the reader – paragraphs 1 and 2 of the plan above.)

  The how of our going having been solved, the Spook turned to the question of where we were to go. It suggested that the medical leave on which Kiazim’s mind was now set could be usefully employed for three purposes simultaneously; first, finding the treasure, second, curing the Commandant’s disease, and third, giving the mediums a well-deserved holiday and bringing them back to Yozgad with their health fully restored. Where, then, would Kiazim like to go or a holiday? Kiazim thought Constantinople would be the very place, for AAA was there; we could read his thoughts and find the third clue, and have a most excellent time. The Spook agreed that Constantinople would be first-rate for those purposes, provided AAA had not gone on tour to Tarsus or somewhere of that sort, but unfortunately a big town would be most prejudicial to Kiazim’s health. He required some quiet place, and the Spook asked the Turks what sort of place they preferred, whether mountains, desert, or sea.

  ‘We prefer sea,’ said Moïse, after vainly trying to get the Spook to agree to ‘a house near the mosque of Ladin in Konia.’

  SPOOK: ‘Noted.’

  MOÏSE: ‘Thank you, Sir. May the mediums choose a place? They want Cairo.’

  SPOOK: ‘They must go where I send them – ha! ha!’

  MOÏSE: ‘May I choose a place out of Turkey? Do you count Egypt in Turkey?’

  (This was delightful – it showed Moïse remembered the Spook’s secret advice to him to ‘seize the first opportunity of going to Egypt.’ But we must not move too fast.)

  ‘It is not yet in Turkey,’ said the Spook, and turned to another subject.

  The Turks were now settled in their own minds that we would go to some quiet place on the sea-coast. They would hav
e liked ‘a good time’ in Constantinople, but were quite reconciled to a seaside resort. We decided to do more than reconcile them to it – we would make them madly keen to go there. And this is how we did it.

  (I quote the records again.)

  SPOOK: ‘Do you understand wireless, Moïse?’

  MOÏSE: ‘Yes, I do, a little. I have just read something about it. (Note. – The Spook had previously instructed him to translate to the Commandant a very technical book on wireless telegraphy which was in the camp library.)

  SPOOK: ‘Now for thought-waves. They are fourth dimension waves, so you will find it difficult.’

  MOÏSE: ‘Please try to make us understand it.’

  SPOOK: ‘Thought is similar to wireless waves in some ways. For example, it travels best over water. Mountains interfere. A dry desert is bad. Thought-waves are stronger at night. Interference by other ions is easy. For example, what OOO did the other night’ (i.e., when he blocked the line to Constantinople) ‘was to intersperse what we call ‘teletantic ions’ amongst the telechronistic. So you got wrong letters. If Yozgad was flat and wet, or an island, it would be much harder for OOO to interfere.’

  MOÏSE: ‘You mean it is easier to interfere at night?’

  SPOOK: ‘No! It is not easier to interfere at night. I did not say that. I said the waves are stronger at night.’ (MOÏSE: ‘I am sorry, Sir.’) ‘I mean exactly what I say – interference by interspersing teletantic ions is easy, provided the waves are feeble – that is to say, if the distance is great or the locality is dry and mountainous. In all these respects it is like wireless. Also as regards the square of the distance, of which I told you.’

  MOÏSE: ‘Yes, Sir. We remember.’

  SPOOK: ‘Thought-reading at a distance requires conditions which are exactly the opposite of those necessary for clairvoyance. For clairvoyance you need a dry clear day, as in the case of KKK, and height helps. That is one reason why I was always doubtful if I could do all three clues here in Yozgad.’