by E. H. Jones
All these incidents, and many more of a similar lunatic nature, went into the Pimple’s diary of our doings, which the Spook edited each evening before it was written out in final form for presentation to the Constantinople doctors. We did our best to make the documentary evidence of our insanity complete, and the Spook under- rather than over-stated our eccentricities so that Bekir and Sabit, if questioned, would more than corroborate the Pimple’s notes. It was while we were in Angora that Hill developed the habit which he afterwards carried out with great success in the hospital of writing out texts from the Bible and pinning them above our beds while we slept. Thus Bekir, after a fierce quarrel with Sabit as to whose turn it was to take the first night watch, woke up to find ‘Love one another’ pinned over his head.
A roomful of Turks is not at the best of times as sweet as a bed of roses. If the room is small, and the Turks are common soldiers whose sole raiment is the ragged uniform on their backs, and you are with them night and day for a week, you may legitimately wonder why the Almighty created the sense of smell. There is a Dardanelles war story of the goat who fainted when put alongside some Turkish prisoners. Hill and I would not be surprised if it were true. And there are worse things than smells – grey things that crawl. Our sentries de-loused themselves daily, dropping their quarry as it was captured into the charcoal brazier. ‘Sabit holds the record,’ said Hill to me one evening, ‘I counted today; he caught forty-one on his shirt alone; but praise be it is not the typhus season.’
Everything comes to an end some time. On 6th May Moïse announced the train would leave that evening. In obedience to the orders of the Spook he had obtained for us a reserved compartment. We would travel in comfort. Our twenty fellow prisoners from Yozgad would go by the same train as far as Eski Shehir, where they would branch off to Afion.
The scene at Angora station beggared description. Our party consisted of Moïse, Bekir, Sabit, Hill and myself. Now Moïse had brought with him from Yozgad a quarter of a ton of butter, which he hoped to sell at a profit in Constantinople. This had fired the trading instincts of Bekir and Sabit, who purchased in Angora a 200 lb sack of flour and expected to make 100 per cent on their outlay. But neither Moïse nor the sentries wanted to pay carriage on their stock in trade. They therefore planned to smuggle all their wares into our compartment, and because they could not employ porters without fear of being detected they intended to carry the butter and the flour from cart to train themselves. It would take all three of them to do this because the packages were big and heavy. We had been behaving so nicely for the last day or two that they left us out of their calculations.
Hill and I decided to play the game of the fox, the goose, and the bag of corn. We crossed the platform quietly enough and entered the train. The off-door of the compartment was locked, the near door was in full view of the place where the luggage had been dumped. So the sentries thought they could safely begin the porterage. At the first sign of their leaving us alone I appeared to recollect that the Afion party was somewhere on the train and fell into a great fear of being murdered by the English while the sentries were away. After some time spent in a fruitless endeavour to quieten me, Bekir went off alone and brought as much of the lighter luggage as he could manage, while Moïse and Sabit stood guard over us. The butter and flour still remained at the station entrance: it was disguised in blankets and rezais borrowed from our bedding, and Sabit joined Bekir in an attempt to bring it over. It was too heavy for them, and the Pimple ran across to lend a hand. As soon as I was left alone I called up a railway official and held him in converse near the door of the compartment. The three came staggering along under their sack of flour, saw the railway official and incontinently dropped their load and tried to look as if it did not belong to them. I was hustled back into the compartment, the railway official was informed that I was mad, and politely bowed himself away. The three went back to their load, but as soon as they got their hands on it I started a hullabaloo about the English coming, which made them drop it again and come back to me. Next time they made the attempt I got hold of a gendarme, complained to him that my escort had disappeared, and tried to buy his revolver. Once more they had to explain I was mad and hustled me back. Finally, Moïse gave up the contest and tried to book his merchandise in the ordinary way. He was informed he was too late. Just as the train was starting, Bekir and Sabit, throwing concealment to the winds, got the last of their merchandise into the carriage and fell exhausted on top of it! The Spook then cursed Moïse roundly for crowding the mediums.
I may as well finish the history of the butter and flour. On our reaching Constantinople the railway authorities discovered the merchandise and forced Moïse to pay freight. The sentries sold the flour for exactly the amount they paid for it, so they had all their exertion for nothing and lost the cost of freight. Moïse lost about £50 on the butter deal, partly owing to the low price he obtained, and partly because the Cook (who was partner in the concern) swindled him out of £30 in making up the account. The whole affair was very satisfactory to the Spook, who had warned Moïse against profiteering.
The train took three nights and two days to reach Constantinople. Both sentries broke down from exhaustion and sleeplessness before we got to our destination, and for a time Bekir was seriously ill. He had high fever and a bad headache, and by way of remedy he smeared his head with sour ‘yaourt’ (curds), which gave him so laughable an appearance that Hill had much ado to remain melancholic.
While in the hotel at Angora, Hill and I had thoroughly discussed our future plans. It was of course impossible to talk to one another because we were perpetually under surveillance, and Hill, as a melancholic, was not supposed to talk; but we had a very simple and effective method of communication. We used the spook-board. The sentries knew this was a phase in our lunacy and saw nothing suspicious in it. If the Pimple came in while we were doing it we used a very simple cipher which made it seem to him that the glass was writing sheer nonsense. The key of the cipher was to read not the letter touched by the glass, but two letters to the right of it. Hill and I of course kept our eyes open as we worked, and in this way were able to communicate under the nose of our dupe. The Pimple thought we were acting ‘under control’, and questioned the Spook about it when next I twisted my button.
‘Yes,’ said the Spook, ‘they are under control. You see for yourself that the glass writes a lot of nonsense. You must tell the Constantinople doctors all about this and say Jones and Hill think all these nonsensical letters are really a cipher message from the dead.’
All of which, in due course, Moïse did.
The conclusion to which Hill and I came in the course of these spook-board discussions was that the hanging had been a completely successful take-in, and, if O’Farrell was correct, this, combined with our past history as retailed by the Commandant in his report and a little acting on our part, would be quite sufficient to win us our exchange. Prospects were so rosy that we considered exchange our best chance, and decided to go through to Constantinople. Indeed, it would have been difficult to do anything else, for on account of our attempted suicide the police had become officially interested in us, and looked out for us along the way. The Turkish gendarmerie is a very reasonably efficient organization, and its members are, in the main, intelligent and educated above the average of the Ottoman Public Services.
The only failure we contemplated was detection of our sham. In that case we might be put into gaol as a punishment, or we might be sent either separately or together to one of the prison camps. The most favourable contingency was that we might be sent back to Yozgad under charge of Moïse. If this happened we might persuade him to try the ‘Four Point Receiver’ en route. If he was not sent with us we could use our morphia tablets to drug our sentries in the train, and taking their rifles bolt for the coast from a favourable place on the railway. It must be remembered that at this time – May 1918 – the end of the war seemed as far away as ever.
Everything possible had been done to ensure the
deception of the doctors, and we now began to prepare our alternative in case of failure.
About 10 a.m. on the 8th May, when we were nearing Constantinople, Hill and I were ordered by the Spook to hold hands. For some minutes we sat in silence, and then we began a joint trance talk. Moïse soon realized we were in telepathic touch with AAA. Amidst great excitement on the part of the sitter we learned the position of the third clue: it was buried in OOO’s garden (now occupied by Posh Castle mess), five paces from the southern corner and two paces out from the wall.
‘As soon as you get to Constantinople,’ said the Spook, ‘send this information by letter to the Commandant, but warn him not to dig until you get back to Yozgad.’
The Pimple could not contain his delight. He began at once plotting what he would do with his share of the treasure. We allowed him ten minutes of unclouded enjoyment and then interrupted him.
‘Hello!’ said the Spook. ‘Here’s OOO; he is laughing.’
‘What is he laughing at?’ Moïse asked. ‘He should be weeping, he is beaten.’
‘What you say has made him laugh more than ever,’ the Spook replied. ‘He is laughing at us. Wait a minute while I find out what has happened.’
There was a pause for perhaps thirty seconds, and the Spook spoke again: ‘It’s all right! OOO pretends to have controlled Price to dig it up – that’s all! You needn’t look so alarmed, Moïse. Even if anything has gone seriously wrong, we can always fall back on the Four Point Receiver. When you get back to Yozgad, if you don’t find the clue ask Price about it,71 and if anything does go wrong remember the Four Point Receiver.’
Here the joint trance-talk ended. Hill’s eyes closed, his head fell back against the pile of butter boxes, and he seemed to go off into a deep trance-sleep. Sabit was snoring in his corner. Opposite Sabit, and diagonally opposite me, Bekir sat watching with glazed eyes, and moaning sometimes in semidelirium. His weather-tanned cheeks were flushed, for the fever was heavy upon him, and under its coating of clotted ‘yaourt’ his face looked like a badly white-washed red-brick wall. The Pimple paid no attention to the sick man, but kept his eyes fixed on my coat-button, and leant forward eagerly to catch the Spook’s words above the rattle of the train.
It was a grim audience, but the Spook made a memorable speech.
It began with the platitude that the world was in the melting-pot. Russia was broken for ever. Turkey was doomed. Britain, Germany, Austria, Roumania, Serbia, Italy, France – all were bled white, nor could they ever recover their old place in the world. Their day of pride and power was over, and those nations which came through the war would survive only to sink beneath the tide of red anarchy.
It had all happened before, many, many times. Thus had died the civilisations of China and Mexico, of India and Assyria, of the Persians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans. And now it was the turn of Europe. It was but the evening of another day in the history of the world. Fear not. Out of the ashes a new and more glorious phoenix would arise. The torches of civilization, of science, of knowledge must be rekindled from the dying flames of the European conflagration and kept burning brightly to herald the dawn of the most glorious day of all, the day of international brotherhood, of universal peace and goodwill over the whole surface of the globe. But whose hand was to kindle the torch?
‘America,’ said the Pimple. ‘America will do it.’
‘No,’ the Spook answered. ‘It will not be America. The Americans have the wealth and power to hold the lead for a few years, but it will only be the material leadership, and even that will be short-lived. They will never sit upon the moral throne of the world, for they have one possession too many, a possession which will hamper their every effort, and which dooms them to share the death of all the nations. They have a country; they are tied down to a strip of land, of common earth, which they regard as peculiarly their own, and which they are never done extolling and comparing with the territory of other nations. To them, as to every other nation in the world, their country comes first, and the great moral forces come second. Like the French or the Germans or the British, they will lay down their lives for their country with a perfect self-sacrifice; but simply because they are not too proud to fight for themselves, simply because even if their country be in the wrong they are prepared to die for it, they belong to the vanishing era of the past. The leaders of the future will be a nation without a country, or rather a nation whose country is the whole world.’
‘But there is no such nation,’ Moïse objected.
‘Isn’t there!’ said the Spook. ‘Are you quite sure? Has there not been for a thousand years and more, is there not now, a nation without territory but with a great national spirit, a nation whose sons have been scattered for centuries over the earth and yet have maintained their unity of blood, and won their places in the council chamber as leaders of men, wherever they have gone? And this they have done, not by strength of arm and weight of armament – these are the weapons of the dying present which will be discarded in the new era – but by the moral and intellectual supremacy which is theirs. Intellectual, moral and religious strength is to take the place of guns and ships and physical force, and in these weapons of tomorrow, this nation – the landless nation – of which I speak is supreme. Moïse! can you name the future leaders of humanity?’
‘The Jews,’ he said, and I noticed his eyes were blazing.
‘Of whom,’ said the Spook, ‘you are one, and if you will hearken unto me, and do that which I say, there is that in you which will make you leader of your kind.’
The Spook began to flatter Moïse. The fellow really was an excellent linguist. The Spook made the most of it, and magnified his quite reasonably acute intelligence into a gift of phenomenal brain power. It made out that Moïse was more richly endowed with the potentialities of greatness than any of the great leaders the world has ever seen. It insisted that moral force is infinitely more effective than physical. Moses, Mohammed, Buddha, Socrates, Jesus of Nazareth, each in his own way had had an influence more powerful and lasting and more widespread than any of the great soldiers in history; yet in no case had the influence of any one of them been world-wide or supreme, for each had taught only his own aspect of the universal truth. The old faiths, the old beliefs, the old social theories were worn out and obsolete. Mohammedism, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism – all these were only partial expressions of the truth. But now the time was ripe and men were ready for the complete expression of the universal. The world was waiting for a new leader and a new teacher who would heal its sores, weld it into one vast brotherhood of men, and guide it through an era of universal prosperity, happiness and well-doing to the millennium. And the finger of destiny pointed to the Jews as the chosen people, and to Moïse as the chosen leader of the Jews. He had the personality, the brain-power, the intellectual force – all the potentialities for the making of the greatest man the world has ever seen. But he must not lessen his own power for good by descending, as he had done at Yozgad, to acts that were mean or low or dishonest, acts that if persisted in would undermine and finally destroy the moral force of character on which his leadership would depend. The Spook lashed him for his past sins and then concluded: ‘Henceforth, if you wish to lead the world, you must walk humbly and do justly. You must live a righteous and austere life, so that at the appointed time you may join the mediums in Egypt. I shall then, if my precepts have been obeyed, reveal unto you how you may attain the goal of all the human race. Goodbye.’
Youth in general, and Jewish youth in particular, is blessed with a profound belief in its own capacity. Every young man in his inmost heart thinks that he is fitted for extraordinary greatness if he only had the luck, or the energy, or the knowledge necessary to develop the potentialities that lie dormant within him. The Pimple was no exception to the rule. He was not, I suppose, any more or any less ambitious than the average young Jew, but he undoubtedly had a very high opinion of himself. When that opinion was more than confirmed by the mysterious and infalli
ble being in whom he placed all his faith; when possibilities were shown him of which he had never dreamt; and the vista of a glorious future was spread before his excited imagination, he was stirred to the depths of his shallow soul. I have never seen a man more moved. Long before the end of the Spook’s speech he had burst into tears, and his suppressed sobbing shook him so that he dared not speak. For some time after the Spook had finished talking he sat with head bowed and averted, lest the sentries should see his face. Then he furtively dried his tears and implored us to promise to meet him in Egypt some day in the near future. We gave the promise and hoped it might be soon.
We reached Constantinople about three o’clock that afternoon, and Moïse left us on the station platform in charge of the sentries while he went off with his papers to arrange for our admission to hospital. We waited patiently, hour after hour. About seven o’clock Hill turned to me – the sentries were some way off.
‘There’s one thing worrying me,’ he whispered. ‘What is it, old chap?’
‘If the Pimple takes as long as this to get two lunatics into hospital, what sort of a job will he make of running the world?’
Chapter XXVII
Of The First Day in Haidar Pasha Hospital and the Preliminary Examination by the Specialists