e Tombs,
with all the Syrian newspapers hollering like mad for a trial. He killed
him all right, but you know what these foreign-language murder cases
are, boss! They're lemons, every one of 'em!"

"What's the matter with it?" inquired the D.A. "It's a regular
knock-down-and-drag-out case, isn't it? Killed him right in a
restaurant, didn't he?"

"Sure! That part of it's all right," assented the chief clerk. "He
killed him--yes! But how are you going to get an American jury to choose
between witnesses who are quite capable of swearing that the corpse
killed the defendant. How in hell can you tell what they're talking
about, anyway?"

"You can't!" said the D.A. "Send the papers in to Pepperill and tell him
on the side it'll make him famous. He'll believe you."

"But it'll take ten weeks to try it!" wailed the chief clerk.

"Well, send it down to old Wetherell, in Part Thirteen. He's got the
sleeping sickness and it will be sort of soothing for him to listen to."

"Might wake him up?" suggested the other.

"You couldn't!" retorted the D.A. "What's the case about, anyhow?"

"It's about a camel," explained the subordinate hesitatingly.

The D.A. grinned. Said he: "It is easier for a camel to go through the
eye of a needle than for a just prosecutor to convict a Syrian of
murder. Well, old top, send for a couple of dozen Korans and hire rooms
for the jury over Kaydoub, Salone & Dabut's and turn 'em loose on
_kibbah arnabeiah, kashtah_ and _halawee_."

Mr. William Montague Pepperill was a very intense young person,
twenty-six years old, out of Boston by Harvard College. He had been born
beneath the golden dome of the State House on Beacon Street, and from
the windows of the Pepperill mansion his infant eyes had gazed smugly
down upon the Mall and Frog Pond of the historic Common. There had been
an aloof serenity about his life within the bulging front of the
paternal residence with its ancient glass window panes--faintly tinged
with blue, just as the blood in the Pepperill veins was also faintly
tinged with the same color--his unimpeachable social position at Hoppy's
and later on at Harvard--which he pronounced Haavaad--and the profound
respect in which he was held at the law school in Cambridge, that gave
Mr. W. Montague Pepperill a certain confidence in the impeccability of
himself, his family, his relatives, his friends, his college, his
habiliments and haberdashery, his deportment, and his opinions,
political,