You'll find Lieutenant Long on board. Here are the people
to look out for."
He thrust into my hands a slip of paper, from another direction
there was tossed at me a new brass-check and "First-Class Private"
police badge No. 88, and I was racing down through Ancon. In the
meadow below the Tivoli I risked time to glance at the slip of
paper. On it were the names of an ex-president and two ministers
of a frowsy little South American republic during whose rule a
former president and his henchmen had been brutally murdered by a
popular uprising in the very capital itself.
In the first-class coach I found Lieutenant Long, towering so far
above all his surroundings as to have been easily recognized even
had he not been in uniform. Beside him sat Corporal Castillo of
the "plain-clothes" squad, a young man of forty, with a high
forehead, a stubby black mustache, and a chin that was decisive
without being aggressive.
"Now here's the Captain's idea," explained the Lieutenant, as the
train swung away around Ancon hill, "We'll have to take turns
mounting guard over them, of course. I'll have to talk Spanish,
and nobody'd have to look at Castillo more than once to know he
was born up in some crack in the Andes."--Which was one of the
Lieutenant's jokes, for the Corporal, though a Colombian, was as
white, sharp-witted, and energetic as any American on the Zone.
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