It had all begun months earlier at Yózgad. To pass the weary time Jones and Hill dabbled in and experimented with hypnotism and telepathy. By making ingenuity and the conjuror's artifice (at which Hill was an expert) adjuncts of their seances, they nonplussed fellow-prisoners and Turks alike; for it was impossible to tell whether trickery or something inexplicable was the basis of their astonishing demonstrations. By means of the Spirit of Music (a hidden lamp with the wick turned too high), the Buried Treasure Guarded by Arms (some coins and an old pistol that were first placed in position and then "revealed" by digging), the Miraculous Photographs (taken with a secret camera designed and constructed by themselves), and other devices, they reduced the camp commandant and his staff to a state of bewildered fear. When they had hoodwinked the commandant into the belief that they could exchange mind-messages with local civilians, he confined them in a small room, and allowed no communication with other prisoners.
From this time onward, moreover, Jones and Hill showed apparent dread of their fellow-prisoners. The British officers at Yózgad wanted to destroy them, they informed the Turkish commandant, adding a plea for protection. Meanwhile, their hair and beards grew longer and more untrimmed, their general appearance stranger and wilder. Perhaps their most impressive exploit at Yózgad was when a guard found them hanging side by side on ropes that were suspended from a beam, the chairs that supported their weight having been kicked away just before he entered the room. He cut down the dangling bodies, and his tale confirmed the commandant in the belief that the spiritualistic prisoners were altogether insane. A few days later they went under escort to Constantinople, and were admitted to Haidar Pasha Hospital.
From this hospital their reputation spread all over Constantinople. Long before they were transferred to Gumuch Souyou I had heard how Hill read the Bible all day, and uttered never a word except when he prayed aloud; and how Jones, having in two months learned to talk Turkish perfectly, proclaimed himself a Turk, and would speak no other language. His name, he insisted time and again, was Ahmed Hamdi Effendi. He disregarded all Britishers in Haidar Pasha Hospital unless it were to tell the Turkish doctor that Jones was mad, and therefore, as the afflicted of Allah, not to be blamed.
Once he threw himself into the pond in the garden. Once, having received the usual Red Cross monthly remittance from an official of the Dutch Legation, he tore the bank-notes in two, threw the scraps of paper across the room, and declared that he wanted no English money. During an air-raid over Constantinople he ran into the open and demanded a gun, so that he might shoot down the British aeroplanes.
At about sundown on his first evening with us Hill closed the Bible, stepped out of bed, and knelt down, facing the east. Then, without a pause, he recited prayers in a loud voice for twenty minutes. Several Turks came in to listen, while Jones, tapping his befezzed head, explained to them that the kneeling figure was mad.
Each morning and each evening Hill knelt on the floor and prayed aloud. Sometimes during the night he would walk to another bedside, wake up its occupant, and exhort him to prayer. For the rest he spoke never a word other than "Yes" or "No," or "I don't know," in answer to questions. All day he sat in bed, with eyes riveted on the Bible by unswerving concentration, or clasped his head and appeared lost in meditation. When the doctor examined him he paid not the slightest attention, but when an effort was made to take away the Bible, he clutched it desperately, and was evidently ready to use violence. His hair and beard grew longer and more tousled, until he was forcibly shaved; whereupon, with his hollowed cheeks and sunken, glowing eyes, he looked more of a scarecrow than ever.
Jones kept himself quite dapper in his own peculiar fashion. His curly golden beard and moustache seemed to be his especial pride. At first Ms. attempted conversations with him; but as he always turned away and showed fright, we left him alone. Yet twice he sought out the chief doctor, and complained that the British officers wanted to murder him. Being a Turk, he continued, why was he kept in a room with Englishmen, who were his enemies and wanted to hurt him?
Beyond laughing and remarking how sad it was that our comrade should be so mad, the chief doctor took no notice. Thereupon Ahmed Hamdi sat down and wrote a letter of furious complaint to His Excellency Enver Pasha, Minister of War in the Young Turk government, and incidentally the most ruthless desperado in that all-desperado body, the Committee of Union and Progress.
I still remember every detail and movement of an absurd scene. Ms. lay asleep one hot afternoon, with a bare foot protruding through the bars at the bottom of the bed. R. crawled across the floor, intending to crouch beneath Ms.'s bedstead and tickle the sole of his foot with a feather. Jones, whose bed was next to that of Ms., shrank back and made a tentative move toward the door as R. glided nearer. R. looked up casually from his all-fours position and found the lunatic's face glaring at him with wide-open, rolling eyes. The pair stared at each other surprisedly for a few seconds, then Ahmed Hamdi Jones yelled, leaped from his bed, and ran out of the room.
If that was acting, we agreed, it was very wonderful acting. We inclined to the theory that Hill and Jones had in the beginning merely shammed lunacy, as a passport for England, but that under the mental stress and nervous strain of living their abnormal rôles they had really become insane. Another suggestion was that they lost their reason already at Yózgad, as a result of dabbling overmuch in spiritualism.