"Yes," nodded his partner. "Of course it would, naturally. What on earth do you mean?"
"I mean this," began Tutt, clearing his throat as if he were addressing twelve good and true men—"a camel is obviously an unusual—not to say peculiar—animal to be roosting over there in that attic. It is an exotic—if I may use that term. It is as exotic as a brass bed from Connecticut would be, or is, in Damascus or Lebanon. Now, therefore, a camel will as assuredly give cause for trouble in New York as a brass bed in Bagdad!"
"The right thing often makes trouble if put in the wrong place," pondered Mr. Tutt.
"Or the wrong thing in the right place!" assented Tutt. "Now all these unassimilated foreigners—"
"What have they got to do with brass beds in Lebanon?" challenged Miss Wiggin.
"Why," continued Tutt, "I am credibly informed that the American brass bed—particularly the double bed—owing to its importation into Asia Minor was the direct cause of the Armenian massacres."
"Tosh!" said Miss Wiggin.
"For a fact!" asserted Tutt. "It's this way—an ambassador told me so himself—the Turks, you know, are nuts on beds—and they think a great big brass family bed such as—you know—they're in all the department-store windows. Well, every Turk in every village throughout Asia Minor saves up his money to buy a brass bed—like a nigger buys a cathedral clock. Sign of superiority. You get me? And it becomes his most cherished household possession. If he meets a friend on the street he says to him naturally and easily, without too much conscious egotism, just as an American might say, 'By the way, have you seen my new limousine?'—he says to the other Turk, 'Oh, I say, old chap, do you happen to have noticed my new brass bed from Connecticut? They just put it off the steamer last week at Aleppo. Fatima's taking a nap in it now, but when she wakes up—'"
"What nonsense!" sniffed Miss Wiggin.
"It's not nonsense!" protested the junior partner. "Now listen to what happens. Some Armenian—the Armenians are the pawnbrokers of Asia Minor—moves into that village and in three months he has a mortgage on everything in it, including that brass bed. Then the Turkish Government, which regards him as an undesirable citizen, tells him to move along; and Mister Armenian piles all the stuff the inhabitants have mortgaged to him into an oxcart and starts on his way, escorted by the Sultan's troops. On top of the load is Yusuf Bulbul Ameer's brass bed. Yusuf looks out of his doorway and sees the bed moving off and rushes after it to protect his property.