Then we turned to the board for advice as to procedure. The Spook promised to tell all, but warned us it would take time. It instructed us to get proper mediums and place them in a proper environment. It indicated Hill as the best medium in the camp, but informed us that he was afraid to “spook,” and had kept his powers dark.
Next day the Pimple came to me beaming. He reported having approached Hill, who with great reluctance had confessed to being a medium. Hill had not seemed anxious to take part in a séance, but under great pressure had agreed to do so. The Pimple was greatly pleased. He did not know how carefully Hill’s reluctance had been rehearsed. He reported to the Commandant that thanks to a hint from the Spook and his own persuasive powers, he had secured the best possible man to help me in my task. Nothing was further from his thoughts than that Hill and I were confederates.
CHAPTER IX
HOW THE SPOOK WROTE A MAGIC LETTER AND ARRANGED
OUR ARREST
The Thought-Reading Exhibition had aroused great interest. A number of our fellow prisoners wanted Hill to give them lessons, but most of them fought shy of the three days’ starvation which was the necessary preliminary. A few—amongst them some of our best friends in camp—offered to undergo the fast, and Hill had all his work cut out to persuade them not to. He finally resorted to the plea that he could not undertake more than one pupil at a time. The exhibition had one good result. Hearing Hill explain that my progress in telepathy was being hampered by lack of privacy, Doc. O’Farrell placed his Dispensary at our disposal for our experiments. As a quid pro quo we promised that he should be taken on as the next pupil as soon as my education was completed.
The Dispensary was a tiny room over the Majors’ wood-store. It was exactly the place we needed. Here we could meet without fear of interruption. Everybody knew we were studying the problems of telepathy, which was a sufficient explanation of our constant hobnobbing, both for the Turks and for our fellow-prisoners. So nobody suspected us of plotting to escape, as they would infallibly have done had there been no ready-made reason assignable for our conferences. Here, then, we discussed our plans, and here the Pimple came from time to time to get the benefit of our discussions in the form of oracular utterances by the Spook.
The policy pursued by Hill and myself throughout our long campaign against the Turk was always to concentrate on the obstacle immediately ahead, and while taking every reasonable precaution about the future, not to trouble about it overmuch until we had crossed the nearest fence and seen what lay on the other side. In pursuance of our object not to implicate the others, we decided that the first thing to be done was to get moved out of the camp. But the flitting must be so arranged that the camp would not suspect we ourselves had planned it, while the Commandant, on the other hand, must be equally convinced that we had no other motive than to find the treasure. We felt that escape from separate confinement outside the camp would make it difficult for the Commandant to charge our comrades with complicity, and at the same time it would make it easier for us to devote our whole energies to getting a strangle-hold on Kiazim Bey. The danger of discovery would be lessened by more than half; for we stood in greater fear of the detective abilities of our fellow-prisoners than of those of the Turk. Discovery by either would have meant our being stopped.[[14]]
While reconnoitring the ground up to this obstacle—and we did so very carefully—it struck us that there was no reason why the move itself should not be so engineered as to become the direct cause of our release by the Turks. Johnny Turk is a queer mixture of brutality and chivalry. It was quite on the cards that if we could get the Commandant to commit a glaring faux pas at our expense, and if we could at the same time get the British or neutral authorities to represent the matter to Constantinople, the Turkish War Office might compensate us by granting us a compassionate release. Indeed, such a release had already been granted to an officer named Fitzgerald who had been wrongfully thrown into prison early in the War. So it was not entirely a castle in Spain that we were building.
We decided to induce Kiazim Bey to sentence us to a term of imprisonment, under conditions as harsh as we could get him to impose. There was little chance, however, that he would so sentence us wrongfully; he stood in too great a fear of his own War Office to do that. But perhaps we might succeed in getting him to do so on a charge which to everyone but himself was manifestly and on the face of it absurd. If there is one thing the Young Turk desires it is to be regarded by Europe as civilized, and if there is one thing he fears it is the ridicule of civilization. If we could arrange something, the publication of which would render him a laughing-stock in the eyes of Europeans, the Young Turk Government at Constantinople would gladly either cut our throats to ensure our silence, or grant us a compassionate release to prove that they had the civilized standpoint and to throw the blame on the local subordinate. We thought it was about an even chance which course they would pursue, but decided that the risk was worth while.