“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, southeast, 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 good-bye 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.