Overhead were tall spreading trees laden with blossomless orchids.  Under some of them was broad grassy shade; but the surrounding wall of vegetation cut off all breeze.  The way was intersected by many roads of leaf-cutting ants, as level, wide 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 desired.

Which general line I followed and, the information having been gathered and the report made up, I proceed to make out my expenditures of $45 for the month to forward to Empire for reimbursement.  Now it needs no deep detective experience to know that in such cases you naturally begin with, “Well, what you going to drink, girls?” and end by paying the bill in a lump sum—­a large lump sum—­and go your way in peace.  What more then could I do than set down such items as: