Apart from our political moves I tried to the very best of my powers to persuade him to get d'Arici out of prison. But d'Arici's machiavellian spirit had so many ramifications that I think he was commonly feared by all parties. I knew him, however, as a brave and reliable man once one understood his code. He was still within measurable distance of death, yet he dared to give me written information to carry outside. This would have completed the noose, and I was fully conscious of it when I carried the packet around. In fact, the day I took it I had resolved that at any cost I wouldn't allow the posta to get it.
Great days. De Nari brought me messages from this Turk and that. I told nothing, but waited. I felt that with a very little the Turks could be persuaded to give in, and said I was ready to take their suggestions and to promise to return to captivity if nothing happened. But against all that the set Government party wanted, or that the Union and Progress wanted, was the solid rebellious faction without a head, some against the Germans, some against the cost of living, some for the old regime, some for Bouharneddin, and some for the new party. Turkey in faith and tradition is too disciplined to be Bolshevik. Otherwise her rebellious factions would have united and hurled out the war cabinet in twenty-four hours. It was on one of these factions I had stumbled through the old Arab in the prison. Their scheme had now grown to blowing up Bilijik Viaduct, thus stopping the German offensive against Baghdad, a wholesale slaughter in Stamboul (d'Arici and I resolved how in this case we would floor postas and escape in their kit), and the opening of the Dardanelles. The police were seething with disaffection. The garrison at the Dardanelles had quarrelled with the Germans there, and a hundred or so of the latter had become casualties. This was confirmed from several sources. We began to hope for a sortie of the Dardanelles Turkish Garrison. But the success of the German offensive nullified this. Then came more quarrelling about the Black Sea Russian Fleet. The Turks insisted on taking it from the Germans. The latter had long since altered their cry from Berlin to Baghdad into Baku-Bokhara, and here got at loggerheads with the Turkish advertised programme. Turkish finance was in a deplorable state. Everything pointed to peace. But the German management that had kept Turkey in so long was efficient beyond words. A little opening, a little altering of the disposition of troops, and Turkey was out. Such was the state of Stamboul in May, 1918. I went to tea on more than one occasion at my friend Forkheimer's home. We talked Cambridge and the phenomenon of war as if we had been back among the cloistral stillnesses beside the Cam. He told me frankly what state Austria was in.
In the middle of all this political welter I was suddenly summoned to the court-martial. Arrived there one morning with my guard, I was shown into a passage, and the first person's head I saw among those peering around the corner was Castell's. He was heavily guarded. The place swarmed with sentries and spies. By making several requests in English and French I soon found no one there understood these languages. A little kitten had been playing in the room. I enticed it to come and talked to it and played with it with a piece of string. The Turks all became most interested, and thus talking to the little kitten I informed Castell exactly as to the stage of the case, and what was not known. I told him that it was my opinion nothing was known of the actual attempt, and that he must give guarded answers and evade every question that might divulge this. Our procedure was to avoid implicating the restaurant, who had had little or nothing directly to do with us. This I had purposely arranged beforehand. Also I wanted our stories to agree in evasion, as it was useless for me to evade one question, if he did not.
He had, it appeared, been transported to Angora, and had been kept under the closest confinement there, until one day, when he was informed he was to go to the war prison at Stamboul for court-martial for assisting British officers to escape. He was thus dreadfully in the dark, and had an idea the whole scheme was out. The other officer had kept inside the margin of my statement, and I intended Castell to do the same.
While keeping strictly to the truth in any statement, I intended to block and confuse their prosecution as much as possible. I now ordered Castell to abandon a scheme for hiding his identity which he had made months before. He was from Smyrna, and very little proof of his identity seemed forthcoming. He had intended taking the name of a British officer who had died on the trek. This was to save his neck, if imperilled, as he had some doubts whether, in spite of his British nationality, the Turks would not hang him without further ado as a Turkish subject. Much of Turkish justice depended on the state of the German offensive, which now seemed to have partly fizzled out. The Turks appeared to know it was the last bolt.
I was taken into a room with even more officials present than before. The court arose and bowed, and I saluted them. They gave me cigarettes, and inquired of my bath. I thanked them, and pointed out that this happened to be a bath day. An old judge smiled amusedly, as if I had already been ordered to be shot and tendered a petition for reprieve on account of its being my bath day.
They took particulars, and, showing me the letter, asked many questions at once. I informed the court, through Ali Bey, that I would do my best not to waste these gentlemen's time if they first allowed me to ask a question or two. After some discussion they agreed. Pointing to the letter, I asked if this, and this alone, was the only matter in issue, and if all questions and answers were to be concerned with it, or did they want to go into Gelal Bey's inquiry, and many other letters I had written? They looked puzzled, and would not commit themselves. However, after an hour of futile questioning about something or other in the letter, I gave them all kinds of contradictory statements and meetings with other persons, and about a dozen plans of escape, as if I were keen on making a clean breast of all my delinquencies. This they took down letter by letter, and, of course, actually found out on cross-examining me that these things related to other letters and other individuals, and led us into most interesting sidelights about our earlier letters to Bach Pacha, and Heaven knows what, but did not advance the case in hand. At last, mopping their brows—it was a hot day, and we had been at it over two hours—they said very severely that the trial was only concerned with the attempt to escape, and with the particular letter. This eased my conscience, as it cut out the actual attempt, and confined matters to the Black Sea affair. Except when they grew tired (I sympathized with them), they were quite pleasant, and my eyes pouring with water, an old colonel examined them, and went into an account of how his eyes had been similar once in the Caucasus. This I made lead to a digression on the war in the Caucasus and German propaganda there. (Germans were in hospital at Haida Pacha, with bad eyes, had they come from there?) We got on to the French Front, and the whole court crowded around to hear my opinion of the situation there.... I quoted the generals from Brusa, that they predicted an early dislocation of the German push. We got on to politics, and, later in the afternoon, after a most enjoyable day, marred only by the proximity of certain questions to embarrassing ones, I had managed to explain that the letter had been sent to Castell, c/o. the Embassy, as I didn't know his address. I had first seen him in church holding the plate. I didn't say where I had last seen him, which had been in the boat. Also I managed to save Doust, who had been a starter in the original scheme, although his name wasn't mentioned, by not answering, saying it was not decided as to who would go, but we had left a place for a spare passenger. As a matter of fact, one officer had changed his mind at the last moment. The Turks got to this point before at Psamatia, but instead of sending for officers concerned, they sent for Lieutenant Galloway, an officer who had given his parole, and was sunning himself pleasantly at the parole camp at Gedos. But as it was merely his travelling a few miles against a chance of Doust's neck, we three in the know were inwardly conscience easy.
The Turks congratulated me on my statement and one called me a shaitan (devil) to his colleague. I was to return to Brusa shortly, provided I answered the most important question. What matter? said I. Having answered so many, what was one extra for so great a boon? In fact, if they offered to return me to England I wouldn't mind repeating the whole performance. They clapped me on the shoulder, and then, amid a deathly silence, asked me to explain how it was the rope was actually seen down the wall. (They had evidently mixed up the occasion.) I said if they would produce the person who saw it I would endeavour to extract the reason from him, the wisdom of putting down a rope to escape when the plan had not only not been delivered, but, on the contrary, discovered.
This answer delighted the old judge, who said I was birinji (first-class), and wouldn't have me hectored further. I have forgotten to record that early in the trial they had admitted that Fauad, the interpreter, had played a most villainous game, that the letter had never been to the censor, that he had stamped it, taken it to a post-office to have a post-mark put on it, and then, tearing it open, had reappeared with it days later, saying it had cost him so many hundreds of pounds, etc. I now congratulated myself on having been so circumspective about the case, and that my opinions and theory had been so extraordinarily correct.