Then suddenly the excitement exploded.  It was only a near-murder.  Two Colombians had been shot, but would in all probability recover.  The news reached me as I stood at the second-class gate scanning the faces of the great multicolored river of passengers that poured out into the city.  For two hours, one by one with crestfallen mien, the manhunters leaked back into Ancon station and, the case having dwindled to one of regular daily routine, by eleven we were all abed.

In the morning the “Greek chase” fell to me.  More detailed description of the culprit had come in during the night, including the bit of information that he was a bad man from the Isle of Crete.  The belt-straining No. 38 oiled and loaded, I set off on an assignment that was at least a relief after pursuing stolen necklaces for negro women, or crowbars lost by the I. C. C.

By nine I was climbing to Pedro Miguel police station on its knoll with the young Greek who had exchanged hats with the assassin after the crime.  That afternoon a volunteer joined me.  He was a friend of the wounded men, a Peruvian black as jade, but without a suggestion of the negro in anything but his outward appearance.  He was of the size and build of a Sampson in his prime, spoke a Spanish so clear-cut it seemed to belie his African blood, and had the restless vigor acquired in a youth of tramping over the Andine ranges.

I piled him into a cab and we rolled away to East Balboa, to climb upon an empty dirt-train and drop off as it raced through Miraflores, the sturdy legs of the Peruvian saving him where his practice would not have.  Up in the bush between Pedro Miguel and Paraiso we found a hut where the Greek had stopped for water and gone on up a gully.  We set out to follow, mounting partly on hands and knees, partly dragging ourselves by grass and bushes up what had been and would soon be again a torrential mountain stream.  For hours we tore through the jungle, up hills steeper than the path of righteousness, following now a few faint foot-prints or trampled bushes, now a hint from some native bush dweller.  The rain outside vied with the sweat within as to which would first soak us through.  To make things merrier I had not only to wear an arsenal but a coat atop to conceal it from the general public.

To mention the holes I crawled into and the clues I followed during the next few days would be more tiresome than a Puritan prayer.  By day I was dashing back and forth through all Ancon district, by night prowling about the grimier sections of Panama city.  Almost daily I got near enough to sniff the prey.  Now it was a Greek confectioner on Avenida Central who admitted that the fugitive had called on him during the night, now a Panamanian pesquisa whose stool-pigeon had seen him out in the bush, then the information that he had stopped to shave and otherwise alter his appearance in some shack half-way across the Zone and afterward struck off for Panama by an