By Advice of Counsel
that he has signified his willingness to turn state's evidence, but
that his offer has not been accepted. So far as can be ascertained
this is the first time either Hogan or Simpkins has been accused of
a criminal offense. District Attorney Peckham stated that in
addition to separate indictments for extortion and perjury he would
ask for another, charging all three defendants with the crime of
conspiracy to obstruct the due administration of the law.
At the conclusion of the proceedings Judge Watkins permitted a
voluntary collection to be taken up by Mr. Tutt on behalf of the
accused among the jury, the court attendants and the spectators,
which amounted to eleven hundred and eighty-nine dollars. In this
connection the judge expressed the opinion that it was unfortunate
that persons falsely accused of crime and unjustly imprisoned should
have no financial redress other than by a special act of the
legislature. The defendant in the case at bar had been locked up for
six weeks. Among the contributions was found a new
one-thousand-dollar bill.
"Talk about crime!" quoth the Deacon savagely to Charlie Still, of the
_Sun_. "That feckless fool at the city desk committed assault, mayhem
and murder on that story of mine!" Then he added pensively: "If I
thought old man Tutt would slip me a thousand to soothe my injured
feelings I'd go down and retain his firm myself!"
The Kid and the Camel
Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
--LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL.
The shortest street in the world, Edgar Street, connects New York's
financial center with the Levant. It is less than fifty feet through
this tiny thoroughfare from the back doors of the great Broadway office
buildings to Greenwich Street, where the letters on the window signs
resemble contorted angleworms and where one is as likely to stumble into
a man from Bagdad as from Boston. One can stand in the middle of it and
with his westerly ear catch the argot of Gotham and with his easterly
all the dialects of Damascus. And if through some unexpected convulsion
of Nature 51 Broadway should topple over, Mr. Zimmerman, the
stockbroker, whose office is on the sixth story, might easily fall clear
of the Greek restaurant in the corner of Greenwich Street, roll
twenty-five yards more down Morris Street, and find himself on
Washington Street reading a copy of Al-Hoda and making his luncheon off
_baha gannouge_, _majaddarah_ and _milookeiah_, which, after all, are
only eggplant salad, lentils and rice, and the popular favorite known as
Egyptian Combination.
To most New Yorkers this is a section of the city totally unknown and
unsuspected, yet existing as in a fourth dimension within a stone's
throw--and nearer--of our busiest metropolitan artery--and there within
one hundred yards of the aforesaid Mr. Zimmerman's office above the
electric cars of Broadway, and within earshot of the hoots of many a
multimillionaire's motor, on a certain evening something of an Oriental
character was doing in the hallway of a house on Washington Street that
subsequently played a part in the professional lives of Tutt & Tutt.
Out of the literally Egyptian darkness of the tenement owned by
Abadallah Shanin Khaldi issued curious smothered sounds, together with
an unmistakable, pungent, circuslike odor.
"Whack!"
There came an indignant grunt, followed by a flabby groan and a
straining and squeaking of the jerry-built staircase as Kasheed Hassoun
vigorously applied a lath to the horny backsides of Eset el Gazzar.
"Ascend, dog of a dog!" panted Kasheed. "Move thy accursed feet, O
wizened hump! Daughter of Satan, give me room! Thou art squeezing out my
life! Only go on, child of my heart! It is but a step upward, O Queen of
the Nile. Hold the rope tight, Kalil!"
The camel obediently surged forward, breaking off a section of banister.
Through the racket from the hallway above faintly came the voice of
Kalil Majdalain.
"Her head is free of the ceiling. Quick, Kasheed! Turn her, thou, upon
the landing!"
"Whack!" responded the lath in the hand of Kasheed Hassoun.
Step by step the gentle shaggy brute felt her way with feet, knees and
nozzle up the narrow staircase. What was this but another of those
bizarre experiences which any camel-of-the-world must expect in a land
where the water wells squirted through a tube and men rode in chariots
driven by fire?
"Whack!"
"Go on, darling of my soul!" whispered Kasheed. "Curses upon thy father
and upon the mother that bore thee! Wilt thou not move?"
"Whack!"
"Ouch! She devil! Thou hast trod upon my foot!"
Outside, that the Western world might not suspect what was going on,
Shaheen Mahfous and Shanin Saba unloaded with as much noise as possible
a dray of paper for Meraat-ul-Gharb, the Daily Mirror. By and by a
window on the fourth floor opened and the head of Kalil Majdalain
appeared.
"_Mahabitcum!"_ he grinned; which, being interpreted, means "Good
fellowship to all!"
Then presently he and Kasheed joined the others upon the sidewalk, and,
the rolls of paper having been delivered inside the pressroom, the four
Syrians climbed upon the truck and drove to the restaurant of Ghabryel &
Assad two blocks farther north, where they had a bit of _awamat_, coffee
and cigarettes, and then played a game of cards, while in the attic of
the tenement house Eset el Gazzar munched a mouthful of hay and tapped
her interior reservoir for a drink of clear water, as she sighed through
her valvelike nostrils and pouted with her cushioned lips, pondering
upon the vagaries of quadrupedal existence.
Willie Toothaker, the office boy of Tutt & Tutt, had perfected a
catapult along the lines of those used in the Siege of Carthage--form
derived from the appendix of Allen and Greenough's Latin Grammar--which
boded ill for the truck drivers of lower Gotham.
Since his translation from Pottsville Center, Willie's inventive genius
had worked something of a transformation in the Tutt & Tutt offices, for
he had devised several labor-saving expedients, such as a complicated
series of pulleys for opening windows and automatically closing doors
without getting up; which, since they actually worked, Mr. Tutt, being a
pragmatist, silently, patiently and good-naturedly endured. To-day both
partners were away in court and Willie had the office to himself with
the exception of old Scraggs.
"Bet it'll shoot a block!" asserted Willie, replacing his gum, which he
had removed temporarily to avert the danger of swallowing it in his
excitement. "Caesar used one just like this--only bigger, of course. See
that scuttle over on Washington Street? Bet I can hit it!"
"Bet you can't come within two hundred feet of it!" retorted the
watery-eyed scrivener. "It's a lot further'n you think."
"'Tain't neither!" declared Willie. "I know how far it is! What can we
shoot?"
Scraggs' eye wandered aimlessly round the room.
"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!" ejaculated Scraggs. "It sure is a camel!"
There was a faint crash and a tinkle of glass 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 Hassoun, 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 Hassoun, 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 Hassoun's!" retorted Fajala Mokarzel the
grocer. "And," he added in a lower tone, "of Sophie Tadros, his wife."