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!"