you think."

"'Tain't neither!" declared Willie. "I know how far it is! What can we
shoot?"

Scraggs' eye wandered aimlessly round the room.

"Oh, I don't know."

"Got to be something with heft to it," said Willie. "'S got to overcome
the resistance of the atmosphere."

"How about that paperweight?"

"'S too heavy."

"Well--"

"I know!" exclaimed William suddenly. "Gimme that little bottle of red
ink. 'S just about right. And when it strikes it'll make a mark so's we
can tell where we hit--like a regular target."

Scraggs hesitated.

"Ink costs money," he protested.

"But it's just the thing!" insisted Willie. "Besides, you can charge me
for it in the cash account. Give it here!"

Conscience being thus satisfied the two eagerly placed the ink bottle in
the proper receptacle, which Willie had fashioned out of a stogy box,
twisted back the bow and aimed the apparatus at the slanting scuttle,
which projected from a sort of penthouse upon the roof of the tenement
house across the street.

"Now!" he exclaimed ecstatically. "Stand from under, Scraggs!"

He pressed a lever. There was a whang, a whistle--and the ink bottle
hurtled in a beautiful parabola over Greenwich Street.

"Gee! look at her go!" cried Willie in triumph. "Straight's a string."

At exactly that instant--and just as the bottle was about to descend
upon the penthouse--the scuttle opened and there was thrust forth a huge
yellow face with enormous sooty lips wreathed in an unmistakable smile.
On the long undulating neck the head resembled one of the grotesque
manikins carried in circus parades. Eset el Gazzar in a search for air
had discovered that the attic scuttle was slightly ajar.

"Gosh! A camel!" gasped Willie.

"Lord of love!" ejaculated Scraggs. "It sure is a camel!"

There was a faint crash and a tinkle of glass as the bottle of red ink
struck the penthouse roof just over the beast's head and deluged it with
its vermilion contents. Eset reared, shook her neck, gave a defiant
grunt and swiftly withdrew her head into the attic.

Sophie Hassoun, the wife of Kasheed, seeing the violent change in Eset's
complexion, wrung her hands.

"What hast thou done, O daughter of devils? Thou art bleeding! Thou hast
cut thyself! Alack, mayhap thou wilt die, and then we shall be ruined!
Improvident! Careless one! Cursed be thy folly! Hast thou no regard? And
I dare not send for Doctor Koury, the veterinary, for then thy presence
would be disc