Freeland and I had spent a whole afternoon concocting the replies. It was most annoying that they should thus be consigned to the scrap-heap. I was also doubtful if I could manufacture a fresh series at such short notice, but I put my fingers on the glass and somehow the answers came and elicited general approval.
“There you are,” said Price at the end of the séance, putting the record before me. “Read that, my son!”
“The Spook’s the boy,” laughed the Doc. “If the Pimple has got any epidermis left to his feelings when he has read through those answers, you can call me a Dago. It’ll frighten the little cad out of his seven senses. Look at question eight, will ye! ‘What will my friends think?’ Bones gives a wishy-washy, non-committal answer, and says, ‘Your friends won’t know.’ Spook says, ‘You have NO friends.’ That’s the stuff to keep him awake o’nights. I’m all in favour of leaving it to the Spook every time; there’s not a man of us can come within shoutin’ distance of him.”
“Yes, it’s a good job we left it to the Spook,” said Alec; “he gets there every time, right on the solar plexus—a regular knock-out.”
It has always been the same. Far-away birds have fine plumage. A prophet’s meed of honour varies directly as the square of the distance. Still, every man wants to consider himself an exception to the rule. To me it was at first a little disappointing to be one more example of its application and to find the utterings of an unknown spook so much preferable to my own.
However, the answers created a deep impression on Moïse the Interpreter, who, at this time, was not a believer in spiritualism. He had only reached the stage of wondering if there might not be something in it. Moreover, he was a well-educated man (he had spent some years in the Ecole Normale in Paris), and had all the natural intelligence and acumen of the cosmopolitan Jew. I felt I had a difficult task in front of me and walked warily. I pretended an absolute indifference as to whether he believed in the Spook or not and never suggested that he should come to séances. The result was that he consulted the Spook once, twice and again. Every time, without knowing it, he gave something away. I privately tabulated his questions, studied them hard, and determined above all to hold my own counsel until the time was ripe.
On May 6th, 1917, an order was posted forbidding prisoners to communicate in their letters to England “news obtained by officers in a spiritistic state.” This was encouragement indeed! It showed that the Turks were taking official notice of my humble efforts. At the same time I could not believe that it was the Interpreter who was responsible for this new prohibition. He was by now deeply interested if not already a believer, and was too anxious to keep on good terms with the mediums to risk offending them by attacking their spiritualism. It behoved me therefore to find out who was behind it. I waited my opportunity and waylaid Moïse in the lane.
“That’s a poor trick of yours,” said I, “stopping us writing home about spiritualism. We only want verification of what the Spook says. The matter is one of scientific interest. It has no military significance at all.”
“I say so to the Commandant,” said Moïse, “but he would not agree! He says it is dangerous.”
“Get along, Moïse! The Commandant has nothing to do with that notice. You put it up yourself to crab our amusements.”