IN WHICH THE SPOOK CONVICTS MOÏSE OF THEFT, CONVERTS
HIM TO HONESTY, AND PROMISES OMNIPOTENCE
Next morning the hotel-keeper came in early to survey the damage. His
suspicions about our insanity had been partially set at rest by Moïse,
who had shown him copies of the Yozgad doctors’ certificates of lunacy,
but he still had his doubts and was out to get what compensation he
could. He produced his broken clasp-knife and demanded another in its
place.
“Why should we give you another?” I said, “it has nothing to do with
us.”
“I broke it in cutting your companion down,” he said indignantly,
pointing to Hill. “You’d have been dead by now but for this knife.”
I told him he was a liar and denied that we had ever tried to hang
ourselves. He got furious and said the whole town knew we had attempted
suicide. I got equally furious and denied it. For some minutes we argued
together, and he called on the sentries to corroborate him, which they
did. Then I changed my tune, begged him not to say such a thing about us
or we would be put in gaol, and gave him my knife in place of his own.
This mollified him a little, but he still stuck to his point that we had
attempted suicide. I pretended to grow desperate, dropped on my knees,
and beseeching him to deny the hanging for our sakes, I gave the fellow
forty liras. He took the notes from me and Moïse (under the Spook’s
orders) took them from him. (He surrendered them to Moïse without a
word, but his face was a picture.) Then I gave him a tin of tea and this
the Spook allowed him to keep. He could retail it at a shilling a cup
which would amply compensate him for any damage caused to his
furnishings.
To get to the door he had to step over Hill, who was busy praying in the
Mussulman fashion, prostrate on the floor, but with his boots on and
facing towards London instead of Mecca! The hotel-keeper shook his head
sympathetically, and went away fully convinced we were both hopelessly
mad.
Various local officials came in during the morning and questioned us. We
stoutly denied having hanged ourselves. Moïse, under the Spook’s orders,
pretended to be alarmed at this and drew up an account of the hanging
which was signed by a number of witnesses. This was to counteract our
denial at Constantinople should we deny it. The hotel-keeper told
everybody how we had tried to bribe him into silence, and boasted of his
honesty in the matter of the forty liras. He did not mention the pound
of tea. A telegraphic report was sent to the Commandant at Yozgad, and
we learned later that Captain Suhbi Fahri and Major Osman were delighted
at the correctness of their diagnosis.
About midday we left Mardeen. We had, as an addition to our escort, the
officer in charge of the Mardeen gendarmerie, who rode with us to the
next gendarmerie post, twenty miles away, and handed us over to the
police there. Indeed we were handed on from police officer to police
officer all the way to railhead, for we were now regarded as dangerous
lunatics.
Proof of our dangerous character was forthcoming at every halt, and we
were privileged to learn at first hand how Turkey deals with its
criminals. Every night until we reached the railway we were put into the
strong room of the village where we halted, and in addition to our own
sentries, our drivers, Moïse and the policemen in charge, a guard of
from six to a dozen villagers was mounted over us. Another attempt on my
part to buy a weapon from one of our guards led to us being searched
again. Hill allowed them to find about twenty liras more, which Moïse
took in charge. They were then satisfied that we had no more money, but
when I announced my intention of stealing a rifle to shoot the English,
if I could not get one in any other way, Bekir and Sabit began to lose
their nerve. In spite of the extra guards either Bekir or Sabit remained
awake all the time, and held on to his own and his comrade’s rifle with
grim intensity. I pretended to think all this vigilance was for my
sake—to keep the English from getting at us—and I made a point of
getting up once or twice a night, and waking those of our sentries whose
turn it was to sleep in order to curse them for not maintaining a better
watch. As soon as they settled down again, Hill would get up and pray in
a loud voice, startling them all into nervous wakefulness once more. We
ourselves could sleep in security whenever we wished to do so, but our
unhappy sentries dared not close an eye. We soon had them completely
worn out.
On the last day’s march, while we were resting on the roadside near
Angora, I went up to Hill and slipped something into his pocket. Moïse,
who had been warned by the Spook to look out for this, drew the
attention of the sentries and asked me what it was. I refused to say. He
then ordered the sentries to search us. To their consternation they not
only found about ten pounds more in notes, but also a revolver cartridge
on each of us. Bekir shook Hill savagely and asked where he got the
ammunition. (We had brought it from Yozgad.)
“From Jones,” said Hill, beginning to weep. “He put it in my pocket just
now.”
It was then my turn to be questioned. I said that I had bought the
cartridges in the last village for five pounds apiece, and the fellow
who had sold them to me had promised to bring me a revolver to fit them
for twenty pounds, so that I might shoot the English. They vowed I had
had no opportunity to buy them. I replied I did it while they slept.
Each then accused the other of sleeping in his watch. When they said I
can’t have paid for them as we had no money, I pointed to the notes they
had just taken from us and laughed in their faces. They searched us
carefully again, making us take off most of our clothing, so that they
might examine it thoroughly. They found nothing more. When they had
quite finished Bekir handed me back my coat. I put my hand in the pocket
he had just searched and drew out a gold lira.
“You missed this,” I said, handing it over. Bekir swore, snapped a
cartridge into his rifle and held it at the ready while Sabit searched
me for the third time that morning. He found some more notes—I had
learned a trick or two from Hill.
“I can’t help it,” I said, “my pockets breed money.”
They next turned on my companion. Hill had made no attempt to put his
clothes on again; he was sitting on the grass mournfully reading his
Bible. When ordered to dress he murmured something about clothes being a
mockery and a snare, and went on reading. He refused to dress and there
seemed no prospect of our moving on that day.
Then Sabit raised his hands to heaven and prayed to Allah to deliver him
from these two infidels, who were undoubtedly in league with the devil.
While this affecting little scene was being enacted at the roadside, a
carriage passed us. It had a bagful of bread slung to the axle. The bag
must have had a hole in it, because when at last we moved on, we came
upon a loaf or a biscuit every few hundred yards for some distance. The
sentries got out and collected them—the bread was fresh and they were
much delighted. In my rôle of general manager of the universe I took all
the credit.
“There,” I said. “You take our money and it rains bread.”
Bekir and Sabit, who had an uneasy belief in our magic powers, did not
know what to make of it. They had not noticed the carriage.
At Angora, where we arrived on May 1st, we had to wait six days for a
train. In accordance with Spook’s orders we were taken to a hotel
instead of to the prisoners’ camp. Bekir and Sabit were by now in such a
state of nerves that when, as occasionally happened, either of the two
was left alone with us he always sat in the doorway, clinging to his
rifle in a position that looked very much like “ready to run.” One day
when Sabit (who was if anything the more nervous of the two), was
keeping the gate in this way, I happened to require some tobacco. My
tobacco jar where I kept my reserve stock was made of two
eighteen-pounder cartridge cases, my sole memento of the siege of Kut.
How Sabit had missed seeing it before I do not know—perhaps Bekir had
searched the portion of my kit in which it lay. Sabit watched me
suspiciously from the doorway as I rummaged amongst my bedding and when
I drew out the shell case he jumped to his feet with a yell, grabbed it
from me and stood with it clasped in both hands. He was shivering with
fright and kept crying “_Bomba, bomba, bomba,_” over and over again in a
terror-stricken voice. He looked as if he expected the “bomb” to explode
at any moment, and he certainly did not know what to do with it now he
had got it.
It took a long time to explain matters in my broken Turkish, but after
much persuasion he very carefully opened the lid, and finding only
tobacco where he expected to see high explosive, he fell a-trembling
more than ever, as does a man who has just escaped some great danger.
But this was the finishing touch to his nerves. He and Bekir insisted
henceforward on having extra help to guard us, and fetched in King Cole
(a Yozgad sentry who happened to be on leave in Angora) to help them.
Before we left Angora the Afion party arrived from Yozgad, and we were
able to do one of their number—Lieut. Gallup—a good turn. During the
journey we had noticed a pair of new valise straps round the Pimple’s
luggage. They were made of first-class leather with good solid brass
buckles, the whole finish being obviously English. Now we knew that
Gallup had been expecting a pair of valise straps from home, and that
the parcel which should have contained them had never turned up. We
decided that these must be the missing straps, and that we would try to
get them returned to their owner, so one day at Angora I began to twist
my coat-button.
“Sir!” Moïse was all attention as usual.
“If you want to find this treasure you will have to learn to be honest.”
“Why, what have I done?” the Pimple asked in alarm.
“You are using stolen goods,” said the Spook. “You must return them to
their owners.”
“What do you mean, Sir? My pocket-book, my knife, the tinned food.”
“Go on,” said the Spook. “Name them all, I’m listening.”
Moïse went on naming things he possessed which he had stolen from
prisoners’ parcels, interlarding his list with expressions of regret and
appeals for forgiveness. He blamed the Cook, I remember, for teaching
him to steal. We felt a fierce anger against the little skunk as he went
on telling the tale of his thefts. At last he came to the valise straps.
“Return them all, every one,” said the Spook angrily, “or you will never
find the treasure.”
“But I forget whose parcels I got them from,” the Pimple whined.
“You can begin with the straps,” said the Spook; “they belong to Gallup,
and he is in Angora now. As to the other things, I won’t help you. You
must put them back into broken parcels when you return to Yozgad, and
you must promise to be honest in future.” Then the Spook went on to give
him a lecture on honesty, and the Pimple was deeply affected.
“Thank you,” he said, “in future I _will_ be honest. It does me good to
talk to you, Sir. But about these straps. How am I to send them back?
What can I say? I would rather destroy them than tell Gallup I stole
them.”
The little man was nearly in tears. As the important point was to get
the straps back to Gallup we let him off the confession.
“Clean the straps so that they will look unused,” said the Spook, “and
parcel them up. I shall make Jones write a note to Gallup under control,
which will explain the matter.”
The Spook then made me write to Gallup saying _I_ had stolen the straps
“as an act of revenge,” and asking him to take them back and forgive me
for my sin. Hill added as a postscript something religious about the
“blessedness of forgiveness” and my being “sore afraid.” Then Moïse took
Gallup the note and the straps. We next met Gallup in Alexandria six
months later. Many a man would have twaddled to his fellow-prisoners
about such a confession, for there is little enough to talk about in
prison camps. Except that we had been mess-mates for two years he had no
reason to keep silence. But he did, and whether he thought I had added
kleptomania to my other forms of lunacy or not, he had kept the whole
matter strictly secret.
* * * * *
During the journey from Yozgad Hill and I had treated ourselves rather
better in the matter of food, but for several days after the hanging we
were forced, whether we liked it or not, to resume our starvation
tactics, for our throats were too painful to allow us to swallow
anything solid, and even the milk and curds which the sentries obtained
for us were at first something of an ordeal. As our throats improved we
were assailed with the most dreadful longing for cooked food (we had
been for six weeks on dry bread), and on our second day in Angora we
indulged in a plateful each of stewed mutton and haricot beans. The
sentries and Moïse, who shared our repast, thoroughly enjoyed
themselves. Next day, on their own initiative, they ordered a similar
dinner (at our expense, of course, for they always made us pay for
everything and everybody). It was brought into our room from a
neighbouring restaurant; but meantime the Afion party had arrived from
Yozgad, and my fear of being poisoned by the English reasserted itself.
I would not eat anything myself. I forbade Hill to eat anything. And
just as the sentries were sitting down to their portion I seized the
plates and threw them away. On no account would I allow my only
protectors to poison themselves! Everybody must henceforth eat dry bread
and nothing else. Simple as it was, the food cost forty piastres (about
seven shillings) a plate, but the look of disappointment on the faces of
Bekir and Sabit was well worth the money.
All these incidents, and many more of a similar lunatic nature, went
into the Pimple’s diary of our doings, which the Spook edited each
evening before it was written out in final form for presentation to the
Constantinople doctors. We did our best to make the documentary evidence
of our insanity complete, and the Spook under- rather than over-stated
our eccentricities so that Bekir and Sabit, if questioned, would more
than corroborate the Pimple’s notes. It was while we were in Angora that
Hill developed the habit which he afterwards carried out with great
success in the hospital of writing out texts from the Bible and pinning
them above our beds while we slept. Thus Bekir, after a fierce quarrel
with Sabit as to whose turn it was to take the first night watch, woke
up to find “Love one another” pinned over his head.
A roomful of Turks is not at the best of times as sweet as a bed of
roses. If the room is small, and the Turks are common soldiers whose
sole raiment is the ragged uniform on their backs, and you are with them
night and day for a week, you may legitimately wonder why the Almighty
created the sense of smell. There is a Dardanelles war story of the goat
who fainted when put alongside some Turkish prisoners. Hill and I would
not be surprised if it were true. And there are worse things than
smells—grey things that crawl. Our sentries de-loused themselves daily,
dropping their quarry as it was captured into the charcoal brazier.
“Sabit holds the record,” said Hill to me one evening, “I counted today;
he caught forty-one on his shirt alone; but praise be it is not the
typhus season.”
Everything comes to an end some time. On May 6th Moïse announced the
train would leave that evening. In obedience to the orders of the Spook
he had obtained for us a reserved compartment. We would travel in
comfort. Our twenty fellow-prisoners from Yozgad would go by the same
train as far as Eski Shehir, where they would branch off to Afion.
The scene at Angora station beggared description. Our party consisted of
Moïse, Bekir, Sabit, Hill and myself. Now Moïse had brought with him
from Yozgad a quarter of a ton of butter, which he hoped to sell at a
profit in Constantinople. This had fired the trading instincts of Bekir
and Sabit, who purchased in Angora a two-hundred-pound sack of flour and
expected to make 100% on their outlay. But neither Moïse nor the
sentries wanted to pay carriage on their stock in trade. They therefore
planned to smuggle all their wares into our compartment, and because
they could not employ porters without fear of being detected they
intended to carry the butter and the flour from cart to train
themselves. It would take all three of them to do this because the
packages were big and heavy. We had been behaving so nicely for the last
day or two that they left us out of their calculations.
Hill and I decided to play the game of the fox, the goose, and the bag
of corn. We crossed the platform quietly enough and entered the train.
The off-door of the compartment was locked, the near door was in full
view of the place where the luggage had been dumped. So the sentries
thought they could safely begin the porterage. At the first sign of
their leaving us alone I appeared to recollect that the Afion party was
somewhere on the train and fell into a great fear of being murdered by
the English while the sentries were away. After some time spent in a
fruitless endeavour to quieten me, Bekir went off alone and brought as
much of the lighter luggage as he could manage, while Moïse and Sabit
stood guard over us. The butter and flour still remained at the station
entrance: it was disguised in blankets and _rezais_ borrowed from our
bedding, and Sabit joined Bekir in an attempt to bring it over. It was
too heavy for them, and the Pimple ran across to lend a hand. As soon as
I was left alone I called up a railway official and held him in converse
near the door of the compartment. The three came staggering along under
their sack of flour, saw the railway official and incontinently dropped
their load and tried to look as if it did not belong to them. I was
hustled back into the compartment, the railway official was informed
that I was mad, and politely bowed himself away. The three went back to
their load, but as soon as they got their hands on it I started a
hullabaloo about the English coming, which made them drop it again and
come back to me. Next time they made the attempt I got hold of a
gendarme, complained to him that my escort had disappeared, and tried to
buy his revolver. Once more they had to explain I was mad and hustled me
back. Finally, Moïse gave up the contest and tried to book his
merchandise in the ordinary way. He was informed he was too late. Just
as the train was starting, Bekir and Sabit, throwing concealment to the
winds, got the last of their merchandise into the carriage and fell
exhausted on top of it! The Spook then cursed Moïse roundly for crowding
the mediums.
I may as well finish the history of the butter and flour. On our
reaching Constantinople the railway authorities discovered the
merchandise and forced Moïse to pay freight. The sentries sold the flour
for exactly the amount they paid for it, so they had all their exertion
for nothing and lost the cost of freight. Moïse lost about £50 on the
butter deal, partly owing to the low price he obtained, and partly
because the Cook (who was partner in the concern) swindled him out of
£30 in making up the account. The whole affair was very satisfactory to
the Spook, who had warned Moïse against profiteering.
The train took three nights and two days to reach Constantinople. Both
sentries broke down from exhaustion and sleeplessness before we got to
our destination, and for a time Bekir was seriously ill. He had high
fever and a bad headache, and by way of remedy he smeared his head with
sour “_yaourt_” (curds), which gave him so laughable an appearance that
Hill had much ado to remain melancholic.
While in the hotel at Angora, Hill and I had thoroughly discussed our
future plans. It was of course impossible to talk to one another because
we were perpetually under surveillance, and Hill, as a melancholic, was
not supposed to talk; but we had a very simple and effective method of
communication. We used the spook-board. The sentries knew this was a
phase in our lunacy and saw nothing suspicious in it. If the Pimple came
in while we were doing it we used a very simple cipher which made it
seem to him that the glass was writing sheer nonsense. The key of the
cipher was to read not the letter touched by the glass, but two letters
to the right of it. Hill and I of course kept our eyes open as we
worked, and in this way were able to communicate under the nose of our
dupe. The Pimple thought we were acting “under control,” and questioned
the Spook about it when next I twisted my button.
“Yes,” said the Spook, “they are under control. You see for yourself
that the glass writes a lot of nonsense. You must tell the
Constantinople doctors all about this and say Jones and Hill think all
these nonsensical letters are really a cipher message from the dead.”
All of which, in due course, Moïse did.
The conclusion to which Hill and I came in the course of these
spook-board discussions was that the hanging had been a completely
successful take-in, and, if O’Farrell was correct, this, combined with
our past history as retailed by the Commandant in his report and a
little acting on our part, would be quite sufficient to win us our
exchange. Prospects were so rosy that we considered exchange our best
chance, and decided to go through to Constantinople. Indeed, it would
have been difficult to do anything else, for on account of our attempted
suicide the police had become officially interested in us, and looked
out for us along the way. The Turkish gendarmerie is a very reasonably
efficient organization, and its members are, in the main, intelligent
and educated above the average of the Ottoman Public Services.
The only failure we contemplated was detection of our sham. In that case
we might be put into gaol as a punishment, or we might be sent either
separately or together to one of the prison camps. The most favourable
contingency was that we might be sent back to Yozgad under charge of
Moïse. If this happened we might persuade him to try the “Four Point
Receiver” en route. If he was not sent with us we could use our morphia
tablets to drug our sentries in the train, and taking their rifles bolt
for the coast from a favourable place on the railway. It must be
remembered that at this time—May, 1918—the end of the war seemed as far
away as ever.
Everything possible had been done to ensure the deception of the
doctors, and we now began to prepare our alternative in case of failure.
About 10 a.m. on the 8th May, when we were nearing Constantinople, Hill
and I were ordered by the Spook to hold hands. For some minutes we sat
in silence, and then we began a joint trance talk. Moïse soon realized
we were in telepathic touch with AAA. Amidst great excitement on the
part of the sitter we learned the position of the third clue: it was
buried in OOO’s garden (now occupied by Posh Castle mess), five paces
from the southern corner and two paces out from the wall.
“As soon as you get to Constantinople,” said the Spook, “send this
information by letter to the Commandant, but warn him not to dig until
you get back to Yozgad.”
The Pimple could not contain his delight. He began at once plotting what
he would do with his share of the treasure. We allowed him ten minutes
of unclouded enjoyment and then interrupted him.
“Hello!” said the Spook. “Here’s OOO; he is laughing.”
“What is he laughing at?” Moïse asked. “He should be weeping, he is
beaten.”
“What you say has made him laugh more than ever,” the Spook replied. “He
is laughing at _us_. Wait a minute while I find out what has happened.”
There was a pause for perhaps thirty seconds, and the Spook spoke again:
“It’s all right! OOO pretends to have controlled Price to dig it
up—that’s all! You needn’t look so alarmed, Moïse. Even if anything has
gone seriously wrong, we can always fall back on the Four Point
Receiver. When you get back to Yozgad, if you don’t find the clue ask
Price about it,[50] and if anything does go wrong remember the Four
Point Receiver.”
Here the joint trance-talk ended. Hill’s eyes closed, his head fell back
against the pile of butter boxes, and he seemed to go off into a deep
trance-sleep. Sabit was snoring in his corner. Opposite Sabit, and
diagonally opposite me, Bekir sat watching with glazed eyes, and moaning
sometimes in semi-delirium. His weather-tanned cheeks were flushed, for
the fever was heavy upon him, and under its coating of clotted
“_yaourt_” his face looked like a badly white-washed red-brick wall. The
Pimple paid no attention to the sick man, but kept his eyes fixed on my
coat-button, and leant forward eagerly to catch the Spook’s words above
the rattle of the train.
It was a grim audience, but the Spook made a memorable speech.
It began with the platitude that the world was in the melting-pot.
Russia was broken for ever. Turkey was doomed. Britain, Germany,
Austria, Roumania, Serbia, Italy, France,—all were bled white, nor could
they ever recover their old place in the world. Their day of pride and
power was over, and those nations which came through the war would
survive only to sink beneath the tide of red anarchy.
It had all happened before, many, many times. Thus had died the
civilisations of China and Mexico, of India and Assyria, of the
Persians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans. And now it was the
turn of Europe. It was but the evening of another day in the history of
the world. Fear not. Out of the ashes a new and more glorious phœnix
would arise. The torches of civilization, of science, of knowledge must
be rekindled from the dying flames of the European conflagration and
kept burning brightly to herald the dawn of the most glorious day of
all, the day of international brotherhood, of universal peace and
goodwill over the whole surface of the globe. But whose hand was to
kindle the torch?
“America,” said the Pimple. “America will do it.”
“No,” the Spook answered. “It will not be America. The Americans have
the wealth and power to hold the lead for a few years, but it will only
be the material leadership, and even that will be short-lived. They will
never sit upon the moral throne of the world, for they have one
possession too many, a possession which will hamper their every effort,
and which dooms them to share the death of all the nations. They have a
country; they are tied down to a strip of land, of common earth, which
they regard as peculiarly their own, and which they are never done
extolling and comparing with the territory of other nations. To them, as
to every other nation in the world, their country comes first, and the
great moral forces come second. Like the French or the Germans or the
British, they will lay down their lives for their country with a perfect
self-sacrifice; but simply because they are _not_ too proud to fight
_for themselves_, simply because even if their country be in the wrong
they are prepared to die for it, they belong to the vanishing era of the
past. The leaders of the future will be a nation without a country, or
rather a nation whose country is the whole world.”
“But there is no such nation,” Moïse objected.
“Isn’t there!” said the Spook. “Are you quite sure? Has there not been
for a thousand years and more, is there not now, a nation without
territory but with a great national spirit, a nation whose sons have
been scattered for centuries over the earth and yet have maintained
their unity of blood, and won their places in the council chamber as
leaders of men, wherever they have gone? And this they have done, not by
strength of arm and weight of armament—these are the weapons of the
dying present which will be discarded in the new era—but by the moral
and intellectual supremacy which is theirs. Intellectual, moral and
religious strength is to take the place of guns and ships and physical
force, and in these weapons of tomorrow, this nation—the landless
nation—of which I speak is supreme. Moïse! can you name the future
leaders of humanity?”
“The Jews,” he said, and I noticed his eyes were blazing.
“Of whom,” said the Spook, “you are one, and if you will hearken unto
me, and do that which I say, there is that in you which will make you
leader of your kind.”
The Spook began to flatter Moïse. The fellow really was an excellent
linguist. The Spook made the most of it, and magnified his quite
reasonably acute intelligence into a gift of phenomenal brain power. It
made out that Moïse was more richly endowed with the potentialities of
greatness than any of the great leaders the world has ever seen. It
insisted that moral force is infinitely more effective than physical.
Moses, Mohammed, Buddha, Socrates, Jesus of Nazareth, each in his own
way had had an influence more powerful and lasting and more widespread
than any of the great soldiers in history; yet in no case had the
influence of any one of them been world-wide or supreme, for each had
taught only his own aspect of the universal truth. The old faiths, the
old beliefs, the old social theories were worn out and obsolete.
Mohammedism, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism—all these were only
partial expressions of the truth. But now the time was ripe and men were
ready for the complete expression of the universal. The world was
waiting for a new leader and a new teacher who would heal its sores,
weld it into one vast brotherhood of men, and guide it through an era of
universal prosperity, happiness and well-doing to the millennium. And
the finger of destiny pointed to the Jews as the chosen people, and to
Moïse as the chosen leader of the Jews. He had the personality, the
brain-power, the intellectual force—all the potentialities for the
making of the greatest man the world has ever seen. But he must not
lessen his own power for good by descending, as he had done at Yozgad,
to acts that were mean or low or dishonest, acts that if persisted in
would undermine and finally destroy the moral force of character on
which his leadership would depend. The Spook lashed him for his past
sins and then concluded: “Henceforth, if you wish to lead the world, you
must walk humbly and do justly. You must live a righteous and austere
life, so that at the appointed time you may join the mediums in Egypt. I
shall then, if my precepts have been obeyed, reveal unto you how you may
attain the goal of all the human race. Good-bye.”
Youth in general, and Jewish youth in particular, is blessed with a
profound belief in its own capacity. Every young man in his inmost heart
thinks that he is fitted for extraordinary greatness if he only had the
luck, or the energy, or the knowledge necessary to develop the
potentialities that lie dormant within him. The Pimple was no exception
to the rule. He was not, I suppose, any more or any less ambitious than
the average young Jew, but he undoubtedly had a very high opinion of
himself. When that opinion was more than confirmed by the mysterious and
infallible being in whom he placed all his faith; when possibilities
were shown him of which he had never dreamt; and the vista of a glorious
future was spread before his excited imagination, he was stirred to the
depths of his shallow soul. I have never seen a man more moved. Long
before the end of the Spook’s speech he had burst into tears, and his
suppressed sobbing shook him so that he dared not speak. For some time
after the Spook had finished talking he sat with head bowed and averted,
lest the sentries should see his face. Then he furtively dried his tears
and implored us to promise to meet him in Egypt some day in the near
future. We gave the promise and hoped it might be soon.
We reached Constantinople about 3 o’clock that afternoon, and Moïse left
us on the station platform in charge of the sentries while he went off
with his papers to arrange for our admission to hospital. We waited
patiently, hour after hour. About 7 o’clock Hill turned to me—the
sentries were some way off.
“There’s one thing worrying me,” he whispered.
“What is it, old chap?”
“If the Pimple takes as long as this to get two lunatics into hospital,
what sort of a job will he make of running the world?”