"
The result of all this sweating and sight-seeing was that some
days later there was gathered in a young Barbadian who had been
living for months in and about Gatun without any visible source of
income whatever--not even a wife. The Turk and the camp janitor
identified him as the culprit. But the primer lesson the police
recruit learns is that it is one thing to believe a man guilty and
quite another to convince a judge--the most skeptical being known
to zoology--of that perfectly apparent fact. With the suspect
behind bars, therefore, I continued my underground activities,
with the result that when at length I took the train at New Gatun
one morning for the court-room in Cristobal I loaded into a
second-class coach six witnesses aggregating five nationalities,
ready to testify among other things to the interesting little
point that the defendant had a long prison record in Barbados.
When the echo of the black policeman's "Oye! Oye!" had died away
and the little white-haired judge had taken his "bench," I made
the discovery that I was present not in one, but in four
capacities,--as arresting officer, complainant, interpreter, and
to a large extent prosecuting attorney. To swear a Turk who spoke
only Turkish through another Turk, who mangled a little Spanish,
for a judge who would not recognize a non-American word from the
voice of a steam-shovel, with a solemn "So Help Me God!" to clinch
and strengthen it when the witness was a follower of the prophet
of Medina--or nobody--was not without its possibilities of humor.
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