“We are hopeless, sir,” said Moïse.
“1, 32,” said the Spook, “then 5, 11, 20, 31, 1, 15, 24, 18, 20, 22. Now go home and puzzle it out.”
Moïse went home and after an hour’s good hard work with the dictionaries found that the clue meant “South” “West,” the numbers given representing the position of the letters in the Armenian alphabet. First south and then west were the directions in which to measure.
The second clue was a circle containing in the margin two numbers, either of which might be 61 or 19. (Armenian figures are the same as our own.) The Spook told the Turks that with the aid of a good compass it would be quite easy to decipher. (We wanted them to produce a good compass, and when the time arrived we would “dematerialize” it—for it would be most useful to us. We liked that word “dematerialize.” It was much nicer than “steal.”) And there, for the present, the deciphering of the second clue remained, and we turned our attention to the discovery of the third, and last.
The Spook first made an attempt to get into telepathic touch with AAA through the board. The séance was in many ways most interesting. We had the greatest difficulty in getting through to Constantinople, and for a while it looked as if OOO & Co. had captured the thought-wave exchange, or as if it had been nationalized by the Government of the next sphere, for we were connected up in turn with all sorts of people with whom we did not particularly want to talk. We got on to Colonel Maule’s mind, and were able to assure the Turks that he was not mentioning our case in his monthly letter to Headquarters. (We had learned this fact from the Doc., who had questioned Maule.) Then we were switched on to the British War Office and discovered that our plight was already known there, and that enquiries were to be made. Next we got Turkish headquarters in Palestine, and German headquarters in France, and learned interesting things about the war, but do what we would we could not get Constantinople. The Spook appealed to us for one last effort. We made it, got Constantinople, got AAA on the other end of the “thought-wave,” and immediately got jammed. The opposition had blocked us. The Pimple was almost in tears—we were so near success and yet so far away!
“It is that damned OOO again,” he wailed, “he is getting more powerful since he organized his company.”
Our Spook made us try again and again till the unhappy Pimple was completely worn out with recording the meaningless gyrations of the glass. For us mediums this was easy work—there was no guiding to do, and we pushed the glass about anywhere, in comfort. When Moïse was half dead with fatigue, the Spook admitted defeat. But he said there were other methods. He first offered to control AAA into committing suicide with a view to getting into touch with his spook afterwards, as in the case of YYY and KKK. It was easy enough to do, we were told, but the objection to this method was that the Spook of AAA would learn what had happened, and might join the opposition out of revenge for his own death. Besides, even if he proved willing to communicate, it would be some time before he could learn how to do so, as had already been pointed out. (Vide our own séances and Raymond passim.)
The Pimple declined to take the risk, and asked that AAA be left alive. Needless to say his petition was granted.
There remained, said the Spook, telepathic trance-talk, but this involved enormous risk to all concerned. Failure might mean loss of sanity, or even death to the mediums, and equal danger to the sitter if he made any mistake. There was no other method of finding out the third clue in Yozgad, and the only alternative was to move us away from Yozgad.
This led to a long discussion between the Pimple, Hill, and myself. Hill and I objected strongly to the idea of being moved from Yozgad. We pointed out that the Commandant was our friend, that we were very comfortable (except for the starvation), and that nowhere else in Turkey could we expect to pass our imprisonment under such pleasant conditions. Therefore we proposed trying the telepathic trance-talk, however dangerous it might be, and expressed ourselves willing to run any risk rather than be moved to another camp and another Commandant.