had in every pocket rolling around drunk in the street. He's been
systematically frisked. Sabe frisked? Get on the job and look into it."

For the Lieutenant was one of those scarce and enviable beings who can
live with his subordinates as man to man, yet never find an ounce of
his authority missing when authority is needed.

Now and then a Z. P. story whiled away the time. There was the sad case
of Corporal ---- in charge of ---- station. Early one Sunday afternoon
the Corporal saw a Spaniard leading a goat along the railroad.
Naturally the day was hot. The Corporal sent a policeman to arrest the
inhuman wretch for cruelty to animals. When he had left the culprit
weeping behind padlocks he went to inspect the goat, tied in the shade
under the police station.

"Poor little beast," said the sympathetic Corporal, as he set before it
a generous pan of ice-water fresh from the police station tank. The
goat took one long, eager, grateful draught, turned over on its back,
curled up like the sensitive-plants of Panama jungles when a finger
touches them, and departed this vale of tears. But Corporal ---- was an
artist of the first rank. Not only did he "get away with it" under the
very frowning battlements of the judge, but sent the Spaniard up for
ten days on the charge against him. Z. P.'s who tell the story assert
that the Spaniard did not so much mind the sentence as the fact that
the Corporal got his goat.

Then there was "the Mystery of the Knocked-out Niggers." Day after day
there came reports from a spot out along the line that some negro
laborer strolling along in a perfectly reasonable manner suddenly lay
down, threw a fit, and went into a comatose state from which he
recovered only after a day or two in Ancon or Colon hospitals. The
doctors gave it up in despair. As a last resort the case was turned
over to a Z. P. sleuth. He chose him a hiding-place as near as possible
to the locality of the strange manifestation. For half the morning he
sweltered and swore without having seen or heard the slightest thing of
interest to an old "Zoner." A dirt-train rumbled by now and then. He
strove to amuse himself by watching the innocent games of two little
Spanish switch-boys not far away. They were enjoying themselves, as
guileless childhood will, between their duties of letting a train in
and out of the switch. Well on in the second half of the morning
another diminutive Iberian, a water-boy, brought his compatriots a pail