"_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 Ha.s.soun 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 Ha.s.soun 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 Ha.s.soun"--he indicated the tall man in the overcoat--"is violating Section 1093d of the regulations by keeping a camel in his attic."

"Camel!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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 Ha.s.soun.

"Oh, Kasheed Ha.s.soun, 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. Ha.s.soun 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 G.o.dson of Sarkis Babu and of Elias Stephan--whose fathers and grandfathers were Christians when thy family were worshipers of Mohammed. Blasphemy! Me, the G.o.dson of a bishop!"

"I also am G.o.dson 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.

Ha.s.soun 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," a.s.severated 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 circ.u.mstance--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 circ.u.mstances 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 bra.s.s 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 I may use that term. It is as exotic as a bra.s.s bed from Connecticut would be, or is, in Damascus or Lebanon. Now, therefore, a camel will as a.s.suredly give cause for trouble in New York as a bra.s.s bed in Bagdad!"

"The right thing often makes trouble if put in the wrong place,"

pondered Mr. Tutt.

"Or the wrong thing in the right place!" a.s.sented Tutt. "Now all these una.s.similated foreigners--"

"What have they got to do with bra.s.s beds in Lebanon?" challenged Miss Wiggin.

"Why," continued Tutt, "I am credibly informed that the American bra.s.s bed--particularly the double bed--owing to its importation into Asia Minor was the direct cause of the Armenian ma.s.sacres."

"Tosh!" said Miss Wiggin.

"For a fact!" a.s.serted Tutt. "It's this way--an amba.s.sador told me so himself--the Turks, you know, are nuts on beds--and they think a great big bra.s.s family bed such as--you know--they're in all the department-store windows. Well, every Turk in every village throughout Asia Minor saves up his money to buy a bra.s.s bed--like a n.i.g.g.e.r buys a cathedral clock. Sign of superiority. You get me? And it becomes his most cherished household possession. If he meets a friend on the street he says to him naturally and easily, without too much conscious egotism, just as an American might say, 'By the way, have you seen my new limousine?'--he says to the other Turk, 'Oh, I say, old chap, do you happen to have noticed my new bra.s.s bed from Connecticut? They just put it off the steamer last week at Aleppo. Fatima's taking a nap in it now, but when she wakes up--'"

"What nonsense!" sniffed Miss Wiggin.

"It's not nonsense!" protested the junior partner. "Now listen to what happens. Some Armenian--the Armenians are the p.a.w.nbrokers of Asia Minor--moves into that village and in three months he has a mortgage on everything in it, including that bra.s.s bed. Then the Turkish Government, which regards him as an undesirable citizen, tells him to move along; and Mister Armenian piles all the stuff the inhabitants have mortgaged to him into an oxcart and starts on his way, escorted by the Sultan's troops. On top of the load is Yusuf Bulbul Ameer's bra.s.s bed. Yusuf looks out of his doorway and sees the bed moving off and rushes after it to protect his property.

"'Look here!' he shouts. 'Where are you going with my bra.s.s bed?'

"'It isn't yours!' retorts Mister p.a.w.nbroker. 'It's mine. I loaned you eighty-seven piasters on it!'

"'But I've got an equity in it! You can't take it away!'

"'Of course I can!' replies the Armenian. 'Where I goeth it will go. The Turkish Government is responsible.'

"'Not much,' says Yusuf, grabbing hold of it, trying to pull it off the cart.