of Hassoun's!" retorted Fajala Mokarzel the grocer. "And," he added in a lower tone, "of Sophie Tadros, his wife."
There was a subdued snicker from the crowd, and Murphy inferred that they were laughing at him.
"But this man," he shouted wrathfully, pointing at Sardi Babu, "says you all know there's a camel up there. An' this kid's seen it! Come along now, both of you!"
There was an angry murmur from the crowd. Sardi Babu turned white.
"I said nothing!" he declared, trembling. "I made no complaint. The gendarme will corroborate me. What care I where Kasheed Hassoun stables his camel?"
Maloof shouldered his way up to him, and grasping the Maronite by the beard muttered in Arabic: "Thou dog! Go confess thy sins! For by the Holy Cross thou assuredly hast not long to live!"
Murphy seized Babu by the arm.
"Come on!" he ordered threateningly. "Make good now!" And he led him up the steps, the throng pressing close upon his heels.
"What's all this?" inquired Magistrate Burke bewilderedly an hour later as Officer Murphy entered the police court leading a tall Syrian in a heavy overcoat and green Fedora hat, and followed by several hundred black-haired, olive-skinned Levantines. "Don't let all those Dagos in here! Keep 'em out! This ain't a moving-picture palace!"
"Them ain't Dagos, judge," whispered Roony the clerk. "Them's Turks."
"They ain't neither Turks!" contradicted the stenographer, whose grammar was almost sublimated by comparison with Roony's. "They're Armenians—you can tell by their complexions."
"Well, I won't have 'em in here, whatever they are!" announced Burke. "I don't like 'em. What have you got, Murphy?"
"Shoo! Get out of here!" ordered the officer on duty.
The crowd, however, not understanding, only grinned.
"Avanti! Alley! Mouch! Beat it!" continued the officer, waving his arms and hustling those nearest toward the door.
The throng obediently fell back. They were a gentle, simple-minded lot, used in the old country to oppression, blackmail and tyranny, and burning with a religious fervor unknown to the pale heterodoxy of the Occident.
"This here," began Murphy, "is a complaint by Sardi Babu"—he swung the cowering little man with a twist before the bench—"against one Kasheed Hassoun for violating the health ordinances."
"No, no! I do not complain! I am not one who complains. It is nothing whatever to me if Kasheed Hassoun keeps a camel! I care not," cried Babu in Arabic.
"What's he talkin' about?" interrupted Burke. "I don't understand that sort of gibberish."
"He makes the complaint that this here Hassoun"—he indicated the tall man in the overcoat—"is violating Section 1093d of the regulations by keeping a camel in his attic."
"Camel!" ejaculated the magistrate. "In his attic!"
Murphy nodded.
"It's there all right, judge!" he remarked. "I've seen it."
"Is that straight?" demanded His Honor. "How'd he get it up there? I didn't suppose—"
Suddenly Sardi Babu threw himself fawning upon Hassoun.
"Oh, Kasheed Hassoun, I swear to thee that I made no complaint. It is a falsification of the gendarme! And there was a boy—a red and yellow boy—who said he had seen thy camel's head above the roofs! I am thy friend!"
He twisted his writhing snakelike fingers together. Hassoun regarded him coldly.
"Thou knowest the fate of informers and provocateurs—of spies—thou infamous Turk!" he answered through his teeth.
"A Turk! A Turk!" shrieked Sardi Babu frantically, beating the breast of his blue blouse. "Thou callest me a Turk! Me, the godson of Sarkis Babu and of Elias Stephan—whose fathers and grandfathers were Christians when thy family were worshipers of Mohammed. Blasphemy! Me, the godson of a bishop!"
"I also am godson of a bishop!" sneered Kasheed. "A properly anointed bishop! Without Tartar blood."
Sardi Babu grew purple.
"Ptha! I would spit upon the beard of such a bishop!" he shrieked, beside himself.
Hassoun slightly raised his eyebrows.
"Spit, then, infamous one—while thou art able!"
"Here, here!" growled Burke in disgust. "Keep 'em still, can't you? Now, what's all this about a camel?"
"That's the very scuttle, sir," asseverated Scraggs to the firm, as Tutt & Tutt, including Miss Wiggin, gazed down curiously out of their office windows at the penthouse upon the Washington Street roof which had been Willie's target of the day before. "I don't say," he continued by way of explanation, "that the camel stuck his head out because Willie hit the roof with the bottle—it was probably just a circumstance—but it looked that way. 'Bing!' went the ink bottle on the scuttle; and then—pop!—out came the camel like a jack-in-the-box."
"What became of the camel?" inquired Miss Wiggin, cherishing a faint hope that—pop!—it might suddenly appear again in the same way.
"The police took it away last night—lowered it out of the window with a block and tackle," answered the scrivener. "A sort of breeches buoy."
"I've heard of camel's-hair shawls but not of camel's-hair breeches!" murmured Tutt. "I suppose if a camel wore pants—well, my imagination refuses to contemplate the spectacle! Where's Willie?"
"He hasn't been in at all this morning!" said Miss Wiggin. "I'll warrant—"
"What?" demanded Mr. Tutt suspiciously.
"—he's somewhere with that camel," she concluded.
Now, Miss Minerva, as her name connoted, was a wise woman; and she had reached an unerring conclusion by two different and devious routes, to wit, intuition and logic, the same being the high road and low road of reason—high or low in either case as you may prefer. Thus logic: Camel—small boy. Intuition: Small boy—camel. But there was here an additional element—a direct personal relationship between this particular small boy and this particular camel, rising out of the incident of the ink bottle. She realized that that camel must have acquired for William a peculiar quality—almost that of a possession—in view of the fact that he had put his mark upon it. She knew that Willie could no more stay away from the environs of that camel than said camel could remain in that attic. Indeed we might go on at some length expounding further this profound law of human nature that where there are camels there will be small boys; that, as it were, under such circumstances Nature abhors an infantile vacuum.
"If I know him, he is!" agreed Mr. Tutt, referring to William's probable proximity to Eset el Gazzar.
"Speaking of camels," said Tutt as he lit a cigarette, "makes me think of brass beds."
"Yes," nodded his partner. "Of course it would, naturally. What on earth do you mean?"
"I mean this," began Tutt, clearing his throat as if he were addressing twelve good and true men—"a camel is obviously an unusual—not to say peculiar—animal to be roosting over there in that attic. It is an exotic—if
