The Light of Day by Eric Ambler Page A

contents are within your legal jurisdiction. I am not. I was refused entry because my papers were not in order. Therefore, legally, I was not in Turkey and should have been at once returned to the Greek side of the border. In Greece, I have a permis de séjour which is in order. I think that when your superiors learn these facts, you will find that you have a lot to answer for.'
    It was quite well said. Unfortunately, it seemed to amuse him.
    'So you are a lawyer, as well as a journalist, a chauffeur and an arms-smuggler.'
    'I am simply warning you.'
    His smile faded. Then let me give you a word of warning, too. In Edirne you will not be dealing with the ordinary police authorities. It is considered that there may be aspects to your case and it has been placed under jurisdiction of the Second Section, the Ikinci Büro.'
    'Political aspects? What political aspects?' I tried, not very successfully, to sound angry instead of alarmed.
    That is not for me to say. I merely warn you. The Director Second Section is General Haki. It will be his men who will interrogate you. You will certainly end by co-operating with them. You would be well advised to begin by doing so. Their patience, I hear, is quite limited. That is all.'
    He went.   A moment or two later the security man came in.
    I was driven to the garrison jail in a covered jeep with my right wrist handcuffed to a grab-rail, and an escort of two soldiers. The jail was an old stone building on the outskirts of the town. It had a walled courtyard, and there were expanded metal screens as well as bars over the windows.
    One of the soldiers, an N.C.O., reported to the guard on the inner gate, and after a few moments two men in a different sort of uniform came out through a smaller side door. One of them had a paper which he handed to the NC.O. I gathered that it was a receipt for me. The N.C.O. immediately unlocked the handcuffs and waved me out of the jeep. The new escort-in-charge prodded me towards the side door.
    'Girmek, girmek!' he said sharply.
    All jails seem to smell of disinfectants, urine, sweat and leather. This was no exception. I went up some wooden stairs to a steel gate which was opened from the inside by a man with a long chain of keys. Beyond it and to the right was a sort of reception-room with a man at a desk and two cubicles at the back. The guard shoved me up to the desk and rapped out an order. I said in French that I didn't understand. The man at the desk said : 'Vide les poches.'
    I did as I was told. They had taken all my papers and keys from me at the frontier post. All I had left in my pockets was my money, my watch, a packet of cigarettes and matches. The desk man gave me back the watch and the cigarettes, and put the money and the matches into an envelope. A man in a grubby white coat now arrived and went into one of the cubicles. He was carrying a thin yellow file folder. After a moment or two he called out an order and I was sent in to him.
    The cubicle contained a small table and a chair and a covered bucket. In one corner there was a wash basin, and on the wall a white metal cabinet. The white-coated man was at the table preparing an inking plate of the kind used for fingerprinting. He glanced up at me and said in French: 'Take your clothes off.'
    People who run jails are all the same. When I was naked, he searched the inside of the clothes and the shoes. Next, he looked in my mouth and ears with a flashlight. Then he took a rubber glove and a jar of petroleum jelly from the wall cabinet and searched my rectum. I have always deeply resented that indignity. Finally, he took my fingerprints. He was very businesslike about it all; he even gave me a piece of toilet paper to wipe the ink off my hands before he told me to dress and go into the next cubicle. In there, was a camera, set up with photofloods and a fixed focus bar. When I had been photographed, I was taken along some corridors to a green wooden door with the word ISTIFHAM lettered on it in