"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.