“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.”