“I know it does,” I said. “Haven’t I tried to withdraw? But the Spook threatens us, and we can’t! What are we to do?”
“If Moïse will keep quiet about what we have said,” Hill suggested, “perhaps the Commandant will still think it all an invention of the Spook’s.”
“Could you delete from your record that last sentence where the Spook says it is all true?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Moïse, and drew his pencil lightly through it.
“And you promise not to tell the Commandant we have really been working this telepathy business with somebody outside the camp, won’t you? We fear he will be seriously angry and really punish us. If it wasn’t for the Spook’s threats we would stop now!”
The Pimple soothed our fears, gave us his promise—and broke it (as we hoped he would) as soon as the séance was ended.
All this was not merely gratuitous by-play. We were making a strong bid to capture the Commandant’s full belief, and every step in the séance had been carefully planned beforehand. The manner in which the magic letter was written, in broad daylight and on a piece of paper selected by Moïse himself, seemed of itself something of a miracle. It was quite enough to impress the Commandant with the belief that he was up against supernatural forces. (Of course it really was nothing more than an extremely fine specimen of Hill’s sleight-of-hand. So deft were his movements that even I, who knew what to expect, had missed seeing the actual substitution of the prepared letter for Moïse’s blank paper, which had been “forced” on him, watermark and all, much as one “forces” the choice of a card.)
Then the matter of the magic letter, if true, was of extreme importance to the Commandant, for it indicated that amongst his prisoners of war were two mediums capable of sending and receiving messages of military importance. Our agitation, our attempt at withdrawal, our confession to the Pimple and our request that he should hide from the Commandant the fact that the contents were really true—all these were certain to be reported to Kiazim Bey, and we hoped that our anxiety for him to consider the contents of the letter as pure spiritistic fiction would have exactly the opposite effect.
Once he believed the contents of the letter were true, he must necessarily conclude that Hill and I were the tools of the mysterious agency which had written it and not vice versa. So we pretended It had given away a secret which we had wished to be kept hidden, and which endangered our safety. The central idea on which our whole plan pivoted, and on which not only our success but our very safety would depend, was that we were mere mouthpieces of the Spook, unconscious of what was being said through us and quite incapable of altering or adding to it of our own will. The Commandant must learn to treat us as impersonally as he would treat a telephone on his office table.
After the interlude of the confession, the Pimple asked the Spook to explain what was to be done with this mysterious letter, and how it was going to attain for us the seclusion necessary for “our thoughts to become one thought, and our minds one mind.”