4.—The attempted suicide at Mardeen, which was vouched for by the magistrates and police of the town, by the hotel-keeper and by a number of independent witnesses in addition to Moïse and the sentries, but denied by me, and only very reluctantly admitted by Hill.
5.—The Pimple’s diary of our conduct, apparently a straight-forward record of events kept by order of his superior officer, Kiazim, for the use of the doctors, but really a record of our acting, edited by the Spook.
6.—The answers of the Pimple to questions set him. Owing to O’Farrell’s help, the Spook had been able to foresee every single question that was asked, and the Pimple had been thoroughly tutored in his replies.
7.—Our mad letters to the Sultan, Enver Pasha, etc., the mad drawings of the Island Uprooter, and of the gigantic aeroplane, and the other documentary evidence of insanity found (apparently concealed) in our possession.
All this evidence was brought forward by the Turkish authorities themselves, who had apparently no motive for seeking to prove us insane. Mazhar Osman Bey was told that the English doctor at Yozgad (O’Farrell) had tried to prevent us being brought to Constantinople and that he refused to admit we were suffering from anything more serious than mild neurasthenia. This certainly did not look like collusion between us and our own medical man. We ourselves strenuously claimed to be quite well and contradicted many of the assertions the Pimple made against us. My resolute denial of the hanging and Hill’s very reluctant admission of it particularly impressed the doctors. So did my apparently inadvertent admission of previous incarceration in an asylum under M—— (another suggestion of O’Farrell’s), and subsequent denial of all knowledge of M——.
The position, so far as Mazhar Osman Bey could see, was that the Turks were trying to prove us mad while we were both anxious to be considered sane. He had not the vestige of a reason for disbelieving any of the statements made by the Pimple and the Turkish officials of Yozgad. For while, in our speech with the doctors, we sought to deny the salient points in the evidence against us, the whole of our conduct in hospital was aimed at corroborating the Pimple’s story. The fact that Hill’s behaviour was so absolutely different from mine was another point in our favour. The only theory that could hold water at all was that we had bribed the Turks, but against such a theory was first the large number of people who had given evidence against us and second the Commandant’s apparently hostile conduct towards us at Yozgad—Mazhar Osman knew we had been “imprisoned on bread and water” for telepathy.
Only a medical man can decide whether or not the evidence of the Turks and our answers in the preliminary examinations justified Mazhar Osman Bey in being predisposed to a belief in our insanity. We ourselves believed then, and we still believe, that so long as we could avoid traps and keep up our acting on the lines O’Farrell had dictated, no doctor on earth could prove we were malingering. And we had one tremendous asset on our side: Mazhar Osman was too busy a man to be able to devote much of his time to observing us. We never avoided him—indeed I did rather the reverse, and used to rush up to him on every possible occasion—but except for what he saw of us during his morning visit he had to depend on the reports of his subordinates. Had things been otherwise, we think we would have been “caught out,” but as it was we had to deal mainly with men who believed their Chief infallible, and who knew of his inclination to consider us mad. That knowledge probably affected their judgment and their powers of observation.
Our task was “to keep it up” until the exchange steamer arrived. It was a desperate time for both of us. We were watched night and day. We knew that a single mistake would spoil everything for both. The junior doctors (acting no doubt under instructions from Mazhar Osman), set traps for us, tested us in various ways, and reported the results. We did not take it all lying down. In order to find out what they thought from time to time, and how the wind was blowing, we in our turn set traps for the junior doctors.[[57]]
In my own case the doctors began by suspecting General Paralysis of the Insane, a disease commonly due to syphilis. I knew the diagnosis was bound to be upset by the negative results of the Wassermann tests, and did not feel at all comfortable until they began showing me off to visiting doctors as a rara avis. What Mazhar Osman Bey’s final diagnosis was I never discovered, because it was written on my medical sheet in technical language, and my small Turkish dictionary did not contain the words used; but I think from the interest shown in me by students and strange doctors, it was something pretty exceptional. I also think that for a long time Mazhar Osman Bey was not a little dubious about it. Indeed I believe that out of the kindness of his heart—for he was a kindly and humane man—he decided to risk his professional reputation rather than do me a possible injustice, and gave me the benefit of the doubt.
About Hill, I think none of the real experts were ever in two minds. He was quite an ordinary case of acute Religious Melancholia. But he went through a terrible month in Gumush Suyu Hospital, where the treatment meted out to him by the doctors there was such as nearly killed him. To all appearances Hill was a genuine melancholic, or he could never have deceived men like Mazhar Osman Bey, Helmi Bey, Chouaïe Bey, and our own British doctors, as he did. Yet, merely because he was a prisoner of war, these doctors at Gumush Suyu jumped to the conclusion that he must be malingering, and on this supposition they treated him not as an ordinary malingerer is treated, but with a cruelty that was unspeakable.[[58]] That they took no trouble to acquaint themselves with the history of his case may be excused on the ground that it was ordinary Turkish slackness, though it was slackness such as no doctor should be guilty of. But at this time Hill was not merely a malingering melancholic. He was genuinely ill from a very severe bout of dysentery, and was sick almost unto death. The most ordinary microscopic examination would have revealed the nature of his complaint. Whether the Gumush Suyu men made it or not I do not know. But this I know: they showed a callousness and a brutality in their treatment of Hill which drew violent expostulations from the British patients in the hospital, and for which the doctors deserve to be horsewhipped. Whatever their suspicions as to the melancholia may have been, they have no excuse for their utter neglect of a man who was obviously in the throes of severe dysentery; they cannot be pardoned for leaving him for days without medicine or proper diet; and they should answer in Hell for sending him back by a springless donkey cart to Psamatia Camp (the journey took Hill five hours) when he was too weak to walk downstairs without assistance. All these things they did. Captain Alan Bott, then a prisoner-patient in the hospital, protested vigorously, but in vain, against the cruelty of that journey. One thing only his protests achieved—the donkey cart. Without Captain Bott’s assistance Hill would have had no conveyance whatsoever, and some idea of the man’s condition may be gathered from the fact that though his normal weight is 12 stone, at this time he weighed less than 100 lbs.