Arthur Train - By Advice of Counsel

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 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.