e and well-built in their proportion as
the old Roman highways, with such an industrious throng going and
coming upon them as one could find nowhere equaled, unless it be on the
Grand Trunk Road of India.

Then suddenly there appeared the hut that had been described to me. I
surrounded it and, hand upon the butt of my No. 38, closed in upon the
place, then rushed it with all forces.

There was not a sign of human life in the vicinity. The door was tied
shut with a single strand of old rope, but there was no question that
the fugitive might be hiding inside, for the reed walls had holes in
them large enough to drive a sheep through, and there was nothing
within to hide behind. I thrust an arm through an opening and dragged
the large and heavy earthenware water-jar to me for a drink, and pushed
on.

Squatter's cabins were now appearing, as contrasted with the native
bushman's peaked hut; sleeping-places thrown together of tin cans,
boxes and jungle rubbish, many negro shanties built of I. C. C.
scraps--all of which announced the vicinity of the canal. Any hut might
be a hiding-place. I made ostensibly casual inquiries, interlarded
between stories, at several of them, and at length established that the
Greek had been there not long before, but was elsewhere now. Then about
four of the afternoon I burst out suddenly in sight of a broad modern
highway, and leaving the ancient route as it headed away toward Old
Panama, I turned aside to the modern city.

Then I was "called off the Greek chase"; and a couple of evenings
later, along with the evening train and the evening fog, the Inspector
"blew in" from his forty-two days' vacation in the States, like a
breath from far-off Broadway. Buffalo Bill had been duly opened and
started on his season's way, the absent returned, and Corporal Castillo
suddenly dwindled again to a mere corporal.

As everything must have its flaws, perhaps the chief one that might be
charged against the Z. P. is "red tape." Strictly speaking it is no Z.
P. fault at all, but a weakness of all government. One example will
suffice.

During the month of May I was assigned the investigation of certain
alleged conditions in Panama's restricted district. The then head of
the plain-clothes division gave me carte blanche, but suggested that I
need not spare my expense account in libating the various
establishments until I "got acquainted" sufficiently with the inmates
to pick up indirectly the information