Again, as to the Pimple’s manner of telling his story, the Spook was very emphatic. “I want you to tell your story in such a way that you will appear not to know what is important. You might begin by saying you do not know what the doctors want to know about. Let them question you, as far as possible. Don’t recite it like a set piece, but get them interested. Speak so as to entice questions. Now, one word of explanation and warning: you will find that the mediums will deny a great many things you say they have done. That will be understood by the doctors as a madman’s cunning, and at the same time it will prove that you and the Commandant are not in league with the mediums. So do not be alarmed by their denials.”
One thing worried Moïse greatly, and at length he ventured to ask the board, “Won’t they think it funny that two officers go mad at the same time?”
“Yes,” said the Spook, “they will. If you say they ‘went mad at the same time’ it will spoil everything. I have never said they went mad at the same time.”
“That is true, Sir,” Moïse agreed, “but what am I to think?”
“They were discovered to be mad at the same time by the Yozgad doctors, but the important point is that for the last two years they have been gradually going mad quite separately and independently. It was the fact of their being regarded as peculiar by the other officers that threw them together, combined with their common interest in spiritualism and telepathy. What you should say is that, looking back in the light of what you have since learned from the doctors, it is your belief that the mediums have always been mad ever since you knew them, and you cannot account for their peculiarities in any other way. Recently their madness became more pronounced, which caused the Commandant to call in medical advice. This is why their past history is so important. Do you see?”
“Yes, Sir,” said Moïse meekly.
When at last by dint of ceaseless tuition Moïse had thoroughly grasped the situation, and the nature of the story he was to tell, the Spook held an examination and asked every conceivable question we and O’Farrell thought the Constantinople doctors might set. Moïse passed the test with great credit; and we felt we were ready for the road.
In addition to teaching the Pimple, the Spook had a good deal of “cleaning up” to do. We wanted to leave our comrades as comfortably off as possible. Many officers had been complaining of the non-arrival of remittances from England, and we suspected that a good deal of the missing money had stuck to the palms of the Commandant on the way between Post Office and camp. By sheer good luck the Commandant asked the Spook whom he should send to the Post Office for the money whilst Moïse had gone. He complained that he could not trust any of the other officials to bring it to him. The Spook advised him to send a British officer from the camp, along with any one of the Turkish officials. Whether or not this was done after our departure we do not know.
The camp was crowded, and would be still more crowded when the Changri men arrived. We had long since decided to get more house-room for our comrades. Across the road were two small houses which we had planned to add to the camp. The fact that one of them was inhabited by the witch who read the cards for Kiazim in hours of stress merely made us additionally keen. For we objected to rivals. The Spook, therefore, turned her out of the house just before the Changri people arrived, and Hill and I went into it. The second house was already empty. The Commandant agreed to hand over these two houses to the camp after we were gone, but Colonel Maule, being ignorant of our plans, nearly spoiled everything by arranging for the disposal of the Changri prisoners in the accommodation already at his command. Kiazim at once converted the second house into a guard-room for the sentries, and it took a good deal of diplomacy to make him promise to hand over the one we were in to our fellow-prisoners. However, we managed it.
We felt something ought to be done to Kiazim as a punishment for his cowardice over the affair of X. The Spook therefore informed him that the time had come for him to go “on diet,” and although we did not reduce his food to our own starvation rations, we gave him a pretty thin time. Whether on account of this, or for some other reason, Kiazim had a recurrence of his biliary colic. He asked the Spook for a remedy—indeed, he suspected the Spook of bringing on the attack! In reply the Spook offered to call up the shade of Lord Lister for a consultation. The Commandant was so delighted with Lister’s advice, that we felt much tempted to make the Spook demand a hundred guinea fee.