Panamanian girls gaudily dressed and suggesting to the nostrils
perambulating drug-stores shuttle back and forth with their
perfumed dandies. Above the throng pass the heads and shoulders of
unemotional, self-possessed Americans, erect and soldierly.
Sergeant Jack of Ancon station was sure to be there in his
faultless civilian garb, a figure neat but not gaudy; and even
busy Lieutenant Long was known to break away from his stacked-up
duties and his black stenographer and come to overtop all else in
the square save the palm-trees whispering together in the evening
breeze between the numbers.
There is no favoritism in Zone police work. Every crime reported
receives full investigation, be it only a Greek laborer losing a
pair of trousers or--
There was the case that fell to me early in May, for instance. A
box billed from New York to Peru had been broken open on Balboa
dock and--one bottle of cognac stolen. Unfortunately the matter
was turned over to me so long after the perpetration of the
dastardly crime that the possible culprits among the dock hands
had wholly recovered from the probable consumption of the
evidence. But I succeeded in gathering material for a splendid
typewritten report of all I had not been able to unearth, to file
away among other priceless headquarters' archives.
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