"Oh, I don't know."

"Got to be something with heft to it," said Willie. "'S got to overcome the resistance of the atmosphere."

"How about that paperweight?"

"'S too heavy."

"Well--"

"I know!" exclaimed William suddenly. "Gimme that little bottle of red ink. 'S just about right. And when it strikes it'll make a mark so's we can tell where we hit--like a regular target."

Scraggs hesitated.

"Ink costs money," he protested.

"But it's just the thing!" insisted Willie. "Besides, you can charge me for it in the cash account. Give it here!"

Conscience being thus satisfied the two eagerly placed the ink bottle in the proper receptacle, which Willie had fashioned out of a stogy box, twisted back the bow and aimed the apparatus at the slanting scuttle, which projected from a sort of penthouse upon the roof of the tenement house across the street.

"Now!" he exclaimed ecstatically. "Stand from under, Scraggs!"

He pressed a lever. There was a whang, a whistle--and the ink bottle hurtled in a beautiful parabola over Greenwich Street.

"Gee! look at her go!" cried Willie in triumph. "Straight's a string."

At exactly that instant--and just as the bottle was about to descend upon the penthouse--the scuttle opened and there was thrust forth a huge yellow face with enormous sooty lips wreathed in an unmistakable smile.

On the long undulating neck the head resembled one of the grotesque manikins carried in circus parades. Eset el Gazzar in a search for air had discovered that the attic scuttle was slightly ajar.

"Gosh! A camel!" gasped Willie.

"Lord of love!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Scraggs. "It sure is a camel!"

There was a faint crash and a tinkle of gla.s.s as the bottle of red ink struck the penthouse roof just over the beast's head and deluged it with its vermilion contents. Eset reared, shook her neck, gave a defiant grunt and swiftly withdrew her head into the attic.

Sophie Ha.s.soun, the wife of Kasheed, seeing the violent change in Eset's complexion, wrung her hands.

"What hast thou done, O daughter of devils? Thou art bleeding! Thou hast cut thyself! Alack, mayhap thou wilt die, and then we shall be ruined!

Improvident! Careless one! Cursed be thy folly! Hast thou no regard? And I dare not send for Doctor Koury, the veterinary, for then thy presence would be discovered and the gendarmes would come and take thee away.

Would that we had left thee at Coney Island! O, great-granddaughter of Al Adha--sacred camel of the Prophet--why hast thou done this? Why hast thou brought misery upon us? _Awar! Awar!_"

She cast herself upon the improvised divan in the corner, while Eset, blinking, licked her big yellow hind hump, and tumbled forward upon her knees preparatory to sitting down herself.

"A camel!" repeated Willie, round-eyed. He counted the roofs dividing the penthouse from where Morris Street bisected the block. "Whoop!" he cried and dashed out of the office.

In less than four minutes Patrolman Dennis Patrick Murphy, who was standing on post on Washington Street in front of Nasheen Zereik's Embroidery Bazaar talking to Sardi Babu, saw a red-headed, pug-nosed urchin come flying round the corner.

"One--two--three--four--five. That's the house!" cried Willie Toothaker.

"That's it!"

"What yer talkin' 'bout?" drawled Murphy.

"There's a camel in there!" shouted Willie, dancing up and down.

"Camel--yer aunt!" sneered the cop. "They couldn't get no camel in there!"

"There is! I seen it stick its head out of the roof!"

Sardi Babu, the oily-faced little dealer in pillow shams, smiled slyly.

He had thick black ringlets, parted exactly down the middle of his scalp, hanging to his shoulders, and a luxuriant black curly beard reaching to his middle; in addition to which he wore a blue blouse and carpet slippers. He was a Maronite from Lebanon, and he and his had a feud with Ha.s.soun, Majdalain, and all others who belonged to the sect headed by the Patriarch of Antioch.

"_Belki!"_ he remarked significantly. "Perhaps his words are true! I have heard it whispered already by Lillie Nadowar, now the wife of Butros the confectioner. Moreover, I myself have seen hay on the stairs."

"Huh?" exclaimed Murphy. "We'll soon find out. Come along you, Babu!

Show me where you was seein' the hay."

By this time those who had been lounging upon the adjacent doorstep had come running to see what was the matter, and a crowd had gathered.

"It is false--what he says!" declared Gadas Maloof the shoemaker. "I have sat opposite the house day and night for ten--fifteen years--and no camel has gone in. Camel! How could a camel be got up such narrow stairs?"

"But thou art a friend of Ha.s.soun'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 Ha.s.soun 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 a.s.suredly 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.