The Road to En-Dor / Being an Account of How Two Prisoners of War at Yozgad in Turkey Won Their Way to Freedom

by E. H. Jones

ACTIVE SERVICE

The telegram from Kemal Pasha, ordering us to be sent to Constantinople, arrived on the 16th April. The prisoners from Changri, bringing with them the Interpreter who was to take the place of the Pimple, reached Yozgad on the 24th. Hill and I left for Angora on the 26th.

The Spook explained that though we would probably read AAA’s thoughts and discover the position of the third clue as soon as we got to Constantinople, it was essential for our safety that the Constantinople specialists should, for a time, think us slightly deranged and in need of a course of treatment. Therefore it behoved Moïse to endeavour to bring this about by reporting to the Constantinople authorities the things which the Spook would tell him to report, and learning his lesson carefully.

“What will happen to the mediums,” the Pimple asked, “if the specialists do not think them slightly deranged?”

“Jail, mon petit cheri chou!” said the Spook. “Jail for malingering, and they will not return to Yozgad to continue our experiments. You must play your part.”

The Pimple’s part, the Spook explained, was to observe and note carefully everything the mediums said and did. At the request of the Spook, as soon as the Yozgad doctors had declared us mad, the Commandant publicly ordered Moïse to make notes of our behaviour, for the benefit of the doctors at the Haidar Pasha hospital. The Spook declared that from now on the mediums would be kept “under control” so as to appear mad, for control being a species of hypnotism the oftener we were placed in that condition the easier it would be for the Spook to impose its will on us in Constantinople to deceive the specialists. Thus, while the Turks thought the Spook was practising on us, making us appear mad, we were really practising our madness on the Turks. Doc. O’Farrell visited us every day. The Turks thought he too was “under control” and that he was puzzled by our symptoms. In point of fact he was coaching us very carefully in what things were fit and proper for a “melancholic” and “a furious” to do and say, for we had decided to adhere to the two distinct types of madness diagnosed by the Yozgad doctors. What he secretly taught us each morning, the Spook made us do “under control” each evening, when it was duly noted down by the Pimple. These notes were revised and corrected by the Spook at regular intervals. In this way we piled up a goodly store of evidence as to our insanity.

Every evening, after the rest of the camp had been locked up, we held séances, and at every séance the poor Pimple was put through his lesson. Over and over again he was made to recite to the spook-board what he had to say to the Constantinople doctors. It made a strange picture: Moïse, leaning over the piece of tin that was his Delphic oracle, told his tale as he would tell it at Haidar Pasha. His face used to be lined with anxiety lest he should go wrong and incur the wrath of the Unknown. Hill and I, pale and thin with starvation, and the strain of our long deception, sat motionless (and, as Moïse thought, unconscious), with our fingers resting on the glass and every sense strained to detect the slightest error in the Pimple’s story or in his tone or manner of telling it. And when the mistakes came (as to begin with they did with some frequency), the glass would bang out the Spook’s wrath with every sign of anger and there would follow the trembling apologies and stammered emendations of the unhappy Interpreter. Hill and I had got beyond the stage of wanting to laugh, for we were working now at our last hope. It was absolutely essential that the Pimple’s story should be without flaw.

In order to minimize the chance of error, the Spook expounded to the Pimple every bit of medical lore which Doc. O’Farrell had imparted to us, for he was less likely to go wrong if he knew what the doctors were driving at in their questions. Indeed, there were only three points on which we kept him in ignorance. These were (i) that there was no Spook and we were not “under control” but acting; (ii) that O’Farrell was helping us, and (iii) that our object was “exchange” and not “treasure.” The Spook warned him that it would be much harder to hoodwink the Constantinople doctors than it had been to deceive the local men.

“Entre nous,” it said, “O’Farrell and the doctors here know nothing about mental diseases. To deceive Major Osman and Captain Suhbi Fahri I made the mediums behave in the way an ignorant man thinks lunatics behave. But when we are up against the Constantinople doctors, and especially the Germans, it will be a different business. You will be surprised, mon vieux. My method will be to make the mediums appear quite sane to the lay eye, but they will have little lapses and little mannerisms which the specialists will note.” The Spook “controlled” us in turn to show Moïse what he meant by “mannerisms.” It first made Hill sit with a vacant stare of his face, twiddling his thumbs and pleating and unpleating the edge of his coat. Then it threw me into a trance where I picked imaginary threads and hairs off my own clothes or the clothes of the person I happened to be talking to, and twisted a button ceaselessly between finger and thumb.

“All that,” the Spook explained to Moïse, “appears quite sane to you. You will not recognize in it a sign of madness, nor should you put it down in your notes, but a doctor who knows his job will remark it at once. If he asks you, ‘Have you noticed that before?’ be sure to say, ‘Oh yes, he is always doing that!’ in a tone as if you did not know what was behind the question, or that such action had any significance.”