In the middle of the night I saw a ghoulish figure, wearing a large, black mantle and with stark, staring eyes, stalking me from bed to bed. With all the uncanny anticipation of one's every movement that usually happens only in a nightmare he divined my every move, for I also tried to get to the door. Then I started to talk German. At this an attendant came for him. I breathed freely as he left. I thought what a pity it was after all my experiences to meet my end from a mad fellow-prisoner. After this he fled on seeing me, although I kept up the German identity. Then I got a note written to me from him, a veritable mad document assuring me he hated the English and that he feared I was going to kill him. This arrived just after I had met him in daylight. He wore a black overall, a yard of which he had picked into threads, which his busy fingers did incessantly. His hair was long, he wore a beard, and his white, sunken cheeks gave him a ghastly appearance.
I had wished him a polite "Good evening" in Turkish, and then the note had arrived. I replied to it in German, and he replied again that he didn't know German, and if I didn't promise not to kill him he would kill himself. We met alone, and, in an extraordinary way, with some postas looking on, I discovered Jones to be quite sane.
It is a wonderful story. I refer only casually to it here. From this moment we acted consistently when together, he pretending he hated all of us except me, and at periods even me, if postas were difficult. He had had a most lonely time for months. The strain had been awful. He had heard of my adventures and regretted, he said, that we had not been together in a camp to try some escape. He told me of his long story, commencing with spiritualistic séances at Yozgad, which the commandant attended, and how he had almost persuaded the commandant to take him to the Black Sea in search of treasure, the whereabouts the spook had revealed to Jones. The fate of the Turk before the treasure was found seemed to have promised to be a watery grave or bondage. That fizzled out, and then he and another subaltern named Hill, also pretending he was mad, acted with such persistence that they were finally sent for medical treatment to Stamboul. On the way they were spied on and Jones, besides pulling out all his teeth, had, with Hill, pretended to hang himself, kicking off from a table as they heard the guard entering. This, he explained, was necessary to convince the Turk. They had arrived in Stamboul a few months before. On the preceding Monday Hill had left on exchange and Jones, who had had to act he didn't want to go to England as he was a Turk, had either overdone it or else one or two Turkish doctors believed him more or less sane. There can be little doubt that more than one medical officer and possibly the commandant of the hospital, saw through Jones' pretence, excellent as it was.
Some Turk suggested to me, with a most confiding smile, that Jones, in pretending for so long he was mad, was actually going mad, and by the armistice would be so mad then that he would have to be exchanged!! The Chef d'Hôpital, a very decent fellow, discussed Jones at great length with me. Jones, he said, would not return because he feared a court-martial, as one mule had had a grudge against him for getting his guns in a mess at Kut, and that as I had rescued him I was the only Englishman Jones would tolerate. The commandant was quite baffled about the mule, which, on inquiry, turned out to be Colonel Maule. On the plea that I was also down for exchange, in fact had passed both examinations for this in the hospital, and that I believed I could get Jones along with me if I said I would defend him and get him off at the court martial, the commandant asked permission from headquarters for us to go. Jones continued to make himself so troublesome through the whole hospital, knocking people into wells and doing and undoing jobs, that they allowed us together on the plea that we were to concoct a defence. Jones had already purposely written about twenty volumes of rubbish on this. He was a daring actor but not quite finished, and more than once I thought just overdid it before the commandant. Once alone over our law books, with a huge kettle of tea and some food from parcels that now were arriving, we talked of our plans and of his great loneliness for months. I knew more than he did of local politics, but he was very useful and altogether a first-rate companion.
Mademoiselle X, Colonel Newcombe's friend, now visited me in hospital with another lady who had been kind on occasion. She showed me her engagement ring, and told me how the Colonel had turned up with a basket of fish after getting across the Marmora in a fishing boat, and had gone into hiding there. He seems to have had a sporting time of it and displayed considerable daring. I had posted him pretty well up to date with news for de Nari, and I now heard he had more or less supplanted me as to going home, owing to my disinclination to support any party programme of Turks or any one else.
The next day I got out to Pera for my baths. To accomplish this takes hours of patient waiting for a chance to remind the commandant, and heavy bribery inside the hospital. I found that the city was seething with intrigue, that I was watched, that Enver and Telaat were preparing to flee, that Rahmi Bey, a clever but notorious Albanian at Smyrna, was trying to commence pourparlers. General Townshend who had, so the papers said, become Turcophile, and had frequently acknowledged his good treatment by the Turks, was now rumoured to be enthusiastic to go out with the terms of peace. His agent, the lady who had visited me in hospital, had now got more or less in touch with de Nari, i.e. my line of communications. I was sorry so many things did not seem understood by well-meaning senior officers in captivity. After some hours with my friend de Nari, the posta being outside, and reading between the lines, it appeared that certain parties were stalking Enver and Telaat, who now resigned. That these parties were stalked by General Townshend, and he, in turn, was stalked by de Nari representing the U. and P. and Italy. Some one was required to stalk him.
The U. and P. were most immensely unpopular. Marshal Izzet Pasha, a soldier of standing, became Grand Vizier after Tewfiq Pasha, the friend of England and ambassador in London before the war, had refused. But while the U. and P. was supposed to be definitely ousted from the war cabinet that has brought and kept Turkey in the war, I found that their elaborate spy system had definitely obscured the political identity of certain politicians until then. These, wearing no outward badge but secretly U. and P., now had a preponderance in the cabinet, although not a heavy one. The Journal d'Orient (run by Carossa, the millionaire) and the Ak Sham spoke out strongly for peace.
We were now on the Somme and the Bulgarians were being hammered back. The dying cries of the Osmanisher Lloyd, a blatant Prussian paper that had crowed over Stamboul all the war, were very humorous.
I went into town day after day. Regulations were relaxed, and although I had a posta, I was more free. The universal ruin that threatened seemed to invite every one to make a little backsheesh first. Day after day I saw Forkheimer, who was as kind and sporting as ever. He seemed to have no idea of the extent of the calamity that must threaten his country and Germany if, as it seemed, this was the end. He was disgusted at the state of Turkish policy and put me au courant with much news that helped me and could not damage them. They had seen a lot.
It is now October 20th. Exchange is panicking, politics in a frightful tangle. The exchange of prisoners is hung up. Marshal d'Esperey, with British and French forces, is still thrashing the Bulgarians, who are reported likely to make peace at any moment. Other political parties here want to forestall them. Zia Bey, the interpreter from Brusa, has helped me to get in touch with the Prince Subaheddine's party, whose chief virtue is that it is opposing political profiteers.