for Ned's company, the boys had put up
all sorts of jobs on the fellow, and some of their pranks had kept him
watching Ned's odd moves all night. It was a new and strange experience to
Ned, this being spied upon so openly, and he was at a loss to account for
the mental processes which inspired the strange surveillance.

"Well," said Ned presently, "let him watch outside if he wants to. We came
in here to talk about something else. I have just been talking with
Lieutenant Gordon, and he says we are to go into camp in the jungle not
far from the Gatun dam. He will stop at the Tivoli, at Ancon, adjoining
Panama. When we have anything to communicate to him, one of us can go down
to Panama after supplies and leave word at an office where one of the
lieutenant's associates in the case will always be in waiting. We are not
to know the lieutenant if we meet him in our soup."

"We'll be eaten alive out there in the jungle," protested Jimmie.

"Besides, it would be more natural for us to go to Gatun for our
supplies," Peter Fenton said.

"There are reasons why he wants us to remain in the jungle near Gatun for
a time," Ned replied, and the boys separated, Jimmie strolling off in the
wake of "His Nobbs," "just to see if he couldn't make him cough up
something," as he expressed it.

The mystery of the theft of the emerald necklace was still unsolved, the
man whose picture Ned carried in his brain had not been found, Pedro had
been among the missing ever since he had walked out of the Shaw residence
on the morning after the robbery. When the boys landed at Colon the next
morning the case upon which they were engaged was still new ground before
them.

Frank Shaw continued to take the loss of his emeralds very seriously, and
at no time during the trip to Colon had he failed to keep an eye out for
Pedro, whom he suspected of having admitted the thief to the house.

"His name isn't Pedro at all," he said, as the train sped out of the
network of tracks behind Colon, "but Pedrarias. That was the name of the
robber who succeeded Balboa as governor of New Granada, the pirate who
stood Balboa up against a wall and shot him. Pedro, as I call him for
short, declares that he is a direct descendant of that old stiff. He says
the Spanish blood in his veins is pure. Great Scott! if I had such a
pirate for an ancestor, I'd keep mighty still about it."

Peter Fenton was in his element now. As the train moved away from Colon he
pointed out v