I remained silent.
"Who forged it?" he insisted.
"May I look?" said I. "Is that really your signature?"
"It is indeed. With it you could easily have got out of the country."
"What an idiot I was not to use it!" I said with quite unfeigned annoyance.
"You were!" he laughed—"they would have passed you straight through the Customs on seeing this."
I felt very faint at this moment, and staggered against the table. But I recovered after an instant. I quite forget his next few remarks, but I know that I committed myself to a story that I had bought the passport from a man in a restaurant whom I could not now recognise.
"But where have you been living all these weeks?" he asked.
"I was living in the ruins near the Fatih mosque," I said glibly—"and I used to lunch and dine at various cafés in the city, a different one every day. It was in one of these places that I bought the passport."
Djevad Bey considered this statement for a moment. There was a nasty look in his eye when he spoke again.