The idea of the immense wealth that awaited them at the coast filled the minds of the Turks to the exclusion of everything else. The original treasure—a mere £18,000—became insignificant and paltry; and, compared with the Four Cardinal Point Receiver, the methods of discovering it were cumbersome and uncertain. The Cook, especially, was in flames to start at once, and had he been our Commandant the next day would have seen us galloping for the coast. For the Cook was a very thorough sort of rascal and he saw no sense in bothering about regulations and the War Office when a bit of hard riding would put him in a position of affluence where he could bribe the whole of Turkey, if necessary. We could get to the coast and back again, he urged, before the War Office knew we had left Yozgad, so why bother the Spook to get Kiazim leave or to get the mediums formally transferred? Let us go!
Unfortunately the Spook had promised to make the Commandant safe with his superiors at each step, and Kiazim, being a timid man, wanted to be satisfied that no harm could come of it to himself before he moved. He would have liked to have adopted the Cook’s suggestion, but the Commandant feared some tell-tale in the Yozgad office might inform headquarters of his departure. Once we were on the road together that fear would cease to exist, but we must leave Yozgad openly and for a sufficient cause. His medical leave, and our transfer, would be ample excuse.
Had Hill and I been at all uncertain of our ability to effect what Kiazim desired, the Spook might have insisted on our adopting the Cook’s suggestion. But so far as we could see, our plans were perfect. We had only to hoodwink the Turkish doctors into recommending our transfer to get everything that Kiazim required, and he would then come with us joyously, of his own free will, instead of nervously and under orders. As the Pimple pointed out to the impatient Cook, Kiazim could then conduct us to the destination recommended by the doctors via the coast.
Besides, there was Matthews. Apart from our friendship for him and our anxiety to get a third man out of Turkey, his assistance would be invaluable to us. Our plan to include him in our party was what the Turks call the “cream of the coffee.” Hill and I had gone over it scores of times, inventing, selecting, discarding, improving, until at last we could see no flaw. It involved waiting for the Afion party to leave, but we already intended to do that in order to get hold of the Commandant, and we saw no danger in the delay. So we had sent word to Matthews that all was going well and that he would get his “operation orders” in a day or two. Meantime, while he busied himself with astronomical calculations and invented a sun-compass (which was afterwards used, I believe, by Cochrane and his party in their escape), we made our final preparations for deceiving the Turkish doctors into ordering our transfer and reduced our daily rations to five slices of dry toast in my case, and three slices for Hill, who considered himself still obnoxiously fat.
Then, with the sudden unexpectedness of thunder in a clear sky, the crash came.
The reader will remember that when replying to Colonel Maule’s objections to our taking the places of two members of the Afion party, the Spook had told Moïse to let it be known that although we would not take anyone’s place, we would be added to the party because the Commandant was anxious to get rid of us. Moïse had obeyed the Spook, and it was soon known in the camp that we were leaving Yozgad. We had not imagined any possible harm could come of our friends knowing it. It would have been perfectly easy to keep the camp in complete ignorance of our movements until the day came to leave Yozgad. We paid dearly for our mistake.
One of the members of the Afion party was X. X was a close friend of mine. When Hill and I were locked up by the Commandant, he put both his possessions and his services entirely at our disposal, offered to send word about us to England by means of his private cipher system, and was as ready as any to incur risks on our behalf, Indeed, throughout our imprisonment he had been a thorn in the flesh of the Pimple, for he let no opportunity slip of pestering that unhappy individual with questions about our welfare, and was constantly trying to discover the Commandant’s intentions towards us. Such was his assiduity in what he supposed were our interests that he had become something of a nuisance to the Turks, and they several times complained about him, contrasting his interference with the laissez-faire attitude of the rest of the camp. The Spook had seized the first opportunity to name X as the “medium” through whom OOO was trying to discover our plans.[[40]] This had explained X’s questions at the time to everybody’s amusement and satisfaction, but it was to have most woeful consequences.
Shortly after Moïse had made his intimation about us to the camp, Hill and I were debating how soon our starvation would have reduced us enough to face the doctors with security, and had just decided that another three or four days should be sufficient, when the Pimple came in.
“Once again,” he announced, “X has been at it. He says he does not want to travel with you two in the same party.”
“Why not?” we asked in genuine amazement. “What on earth is the matter with him now?”