and turn old Hassoun loose for an Egyptian holiday that will make old
Rome look like thirty piasters! You pinheaded, pretentious, pompous,
egotistical, niminy-piminy--"

"Well, well, Mr. Tutt, what's the matter?" inquired Peckham, laying his
hand on the old lawyer's shoulder. "What's Peppy been doing to you?"

"It isn't what he's been doing to me; it's what I'm going to do to him!"
returned Mr. Tutt grimly. "Just wait and see!"

"Go to it!" laughed the D.A. "Eat him alive! We're throwing him to the
lions!"

"No decent lion would want him!" retorted Mr. Tutt. "He might maul him a
little, but I won't. I'm just going to give him a full opportunity to
test his little proposition that the institutions of these jolly old
United States are perfectly adapted to settle quarrels among all the
polyglot prevaricators of the world and administer justice among people
who are still in a barbarous or at least in a patriarchal state. He's
young, and he don't understand that a New York merchant is entirely too
conscientious to find a man guilty on testimony that he would discount
heavily in his own business."

"Go as far as you like," laughed Peckham.

"Oh, I'm only going as far as Bagdad," answered Mr. Tutt.

Deputy Assistant District Attorney Pepperill complacently set about the
preparation of his case, utterly unconscious of the dangers with which
his legal path was beset. As he sat at his shiny oaken desk and pressed