call of the calendar, looking quite vaguely as if he had never heard of
the case before, round Part I, which was as usual crowded, hot, stuffy
and smelling of unwashed linen and prisoners' lunch. "People versus
Mathusek? What do you want done with this case, Mr. O'Brien?"
"Ready!" chanted the red-headed O'Brien, and, just as he had expected,
the Hon. Raphael Hogan limbered up in his slow, genial way and said: "If
Your Honor please, the defendant would like a few days longer to get his
witnesses. Will Your Honor kindly adjourn the case for one week?"
He did not notice that the stenographer was taking down everything that
he said.
"I observe," remarked Judge Watkins with apparent amiability, "that you
have had five adjournments already. If The People's witnesses are here I
am inclined to direct you to proceed. The defendant has been under
indictment for six weeks. That ought to be long enough to prepare your
defense."
"But, Your Honor," returned Hogan with pathos, "the witnesses are very
hard to find. They are working people. I have spent whole evenings
chasing after them. Moreover, the defendant is perfectly satisfied to
have the case go over. He is anxious for an adjournment!"
"When did you last see him?"
"Yesterday afternoon."
The judge unfolded the papers and appeared to be reading them for the
first time. He wasn't such a bad old actor himself, for he had already
learned from Mr. Tutt that Hogan had not been near Tony for three weeks.
"Um--um! Did you represent the defendant in the police court?"
"Yes, Your Honor."
"Why did you waive examination?"
Hogan suddenly felt a lump swelling in his pharynx. What in hell was it
all about?
"I--er--there was no use in fighting the case there. I hoped the grand
jury would throw it out," he stammered.
"Did anybody ask you to waive examination?"
The swelling in Hogan's fat neck grew larger. Suppose McGurk or Delany
were trying to put something over on him!
"No! Certainly not!" he replied unconvincingly. He didn't want to make
the wrong answer if he could help it.
"You have an--associate, have you not? A Mr. Simpkins?"
"Yes, Your Honor." Hogan was pale now and little beads were gathering
over his eyebrows.
"Where is he?"
"Downstairs in the magistrate's court."
"Officer," ordered the judge, "send for Mr. Simpkins. We will suspend
until he can get here."
Then His Honor occupied himself with some papers, leaving Hogan standing
alone at the bar trying to work out what it all meant. He began to wish
he had never touched the damn case. Everybody in the courtroom seemed to
be looking at him and whispering. He was most uncomfortable. Suppose
that crooked cop had welshed on him! At the same instant in the back of
the room a similar thought flashed through the mind of Delany. Suppose
Hogan should welsh on him! Coincidentally both scoundrels turned sick at
heart. Then came to each the simultaneous realization that neither could
gain anything by giving the other away, and that the only thing possible
for either was to stand pat. No, they must hang together or assuredly
hang separately. Then the door opened and a tall officer entered,
followed by a very nervous Mr. Joey Simpkins.
"Come up here!" directed the judge. "You are Mr. Hogan's assistant, are
you not?"
"Yes, sir!" quavered the anxious Simpkins.
"How much money have you taken from Mrs. Mathusek?"
"Four hundred and thirty-five dollars."
"For what?" sharply.
"For protecting her son."
"Where? How?"
"Why--from his arrest to the present time--and for his defense here in
General Sessions."
"Have either you or Mr. Hogan done anything as yet--except to waive
examination in the police court?"
Mr. Simpkins turned hastily to Mr. Hogan, who realized that things were
going badly.
"Your Honor," he interposed thickly, "this money was an agreed fee for
my services as counsel. This examination seems to me somewhat uncalled
for and unfair."
"Call Tony Mathusek to the bar!" suddenly ordered the judge.
It was a dangerous play, but Hogan decided to bluff it through.
"In view of the fact that I have not received my fee I shall refuse to
appear for the defendant!" he announced brazenly.
"Indeed!" retorted the judge with sarcasm. "Then I will assign Mr.
Ephraim Tutt to the defense. You two gentlemen will please sit down--but
not leave the courtroom. We may need you."
At that moment, just as the defendant was led to the bar, Mr. Tutt
emerged from behind the jury box and took his stand at Tony's side.
Nothing much to look at before, the boy was less so now, with the prison
pallor on his sunken little face. There was something about the thin
neck, the half-open mouth and the gaunt, blinking, hollow eyes that
suggested those of a helpless fledgling.
"Impanel a jury!" continued the judge, and Mr. Tutt conducted Tony
inside the rail and sat down beside him at the table reserved for the
defendant.
"It's all right, Tony!" he whispered. "The frame-up isn't on you this
time, my lad."
Cowering in the back of the room Delany tried to hide himself among the
spectators. Some devilish thing had gone wrong. He hadn't heard all that
had passed between the judge and Hogan, but he had caught enough to
perceive that the whole case had gone blooey.
Judge Watkins was wise! He was going after Hogan just as old Tutt would
go after him, Delany. There was a singing in his head and the blood
smarted in his eyes. He'd better beat it! Half bent over he started
sneaking for the door.
"Who is that man trying to go out?" shouted the judge in terrifying
tones that shook Delany to the ankles. Hastily he tried to sit down.
"Bring that man to the bar!"
Half blind with fear Delany attempted to make a show of bravado and
swagger to the rail.
"What is your name?"
"Delany. Officer attached to the Second Precinct."
"What were you leaving the room for?"
Delany could not answer. His wits were befogged, his throat numb. He
simply stared vacuously at Judge Watkins, his lips vibrating with fear.
"Sit down. No; take the stand!" cried Judge Watkins. "I'll try this case
myself."
As if his foot were already attached to a ball and chain Delany dragged
himself up--up--hundreds of feet up, it seemed--to the witness chair. As
if from a mountain side he saw dim forms moving into the jury box, heard
the judge and Mr. Tutt exchanging meaningless remarks. The faces before
him grinned and gibbered at him like a horde of monkeys. They had got
him at last--all for a few pieces of rotten beef! That lean, hungry
wolfhound would tear his tongue out by the roots if he even opened his
mouth; claw wide open his vitals. And old Tutt was fixing him with the
eye of a basilisk and slowly turning him to stone. Somebody sure had
welshed! He had once been in a side show at Coney Island where the room
simulated the motion of an ocean steamer. The courtroom began to do the
same--slanting this way and that and spinning obliquely round and round.
Through the swirl of its gyrations he could see old Tutt's vulture eyes,
growing bigger, fiercer, more sinister every instant. It was all up with
him! It was an execution, and the crowd down below were thirsting for
his blood, waiting to tear him to bits!
"You saw this boy throw a brick through Mr. Froelich's window, didn't
you?" coaxed Judge Watkins insinuatingly. Delany sensed that the old
white fox was trying to trick him--get him for perjury. No! He wouldn't
perjure himself again! No! But what could he do? His head swung
stupidly, swaying like a dazed bull's. The sweat poured from every pore
in his vast bulk. A hoarse noise--like a death rattle--came from his
throat. The room dissolved in waves of white and black. Then in a
vertigo he toppled forward and pitched headlong to the floor.
* * * * *
Deacon Terry, star reporter for the _Tribune_, who happened to be there,
told his city editor at noon that he had never passed such a pleasant
morning. What he saw and heard really constituted, he alleged, a great
big full front-page story "in a box"--though it got only four sticks on
the eleventh page--being crowded out by the armistice. Why, he said, it
was the damnedest thing ever! There had been no evidence against the
defendant at all! And after the cop had collapsed Judge Watkins had
refused to dismiss the case and directed Mr. Tutt to go on in his own
way.
The proceeding had resolved itself into a criminal trial of Hogan and
Simpkins. Tony's good character had been established in three minutes,
and then half a dozen reputable witnesses had testified that the brick
had been thrown by an entirely different boy. Finally, Sussman and his
assistant both swore positively that Delany had been in the back of the
tobacco shop with his back to the door, holding them up for cigars, when
the crash came.
Terry wanted two columns; he almost cried when they cut his great big
full-page story to:
SHYSTERS ACCUSED OF EXTORTION
A dramatic scene was enacted at the conclusion of a minor case in
Part I of the General Sessions yesterday, when upon the motion of
Ephraim Tutt, of the firm of Tutt & Tutt, Judge Simeon Watkins,
sitting as a committing magistrate, held for the action of the grand
jury Raphael B. Hogan and Joseph P. Simpkins, his assistant, for the
crime of extortion, and directed that their case be referred to the
Grievance Committee of the County Lawyers' Association for the
necessary action for their disbarment.
Earlier in the trial a police officer named Delany, the supposed
chief witness for the prosecution, fainted and fell from the witness
chair. Upon his recovery he was then and there committed for
perjury, in default of ten thousand dollars bail. It is understood
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."
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.