Not that the Z. P. has not its big jobs. The force to a man
distinctly remembers that absorbing two months between the escape
of wild black Felix Paul and the day they dragged him back into
the penitentiary. No less fresh in memory are the expeditions
against Maurice Pelote, or Francois Barduc, the murderer of
Miraflores. All Martinique negroes, be it noted; and of all things
on this earth, including greased pigs, the hardest to catch is a
Martinique criminal. After all, four or five murders on the Zone
in three years is no startling record in such a swarm of
nationalities.
Cases large and small which it would be neither of interest nor
politic to detail poured in during the following weeks. Among them
was the counterfeit case unearthed by some Shylock Holmes on the
Panamanian force, that called for a long perspiring hunt for the
"plant" in odd corners of the Zone. Then there was--, an ex-Z. P.
who lost his three years' savings on the train, for which reason I
shadowed a well-known American--for it is a Z. P. rule that no one
is above suspicion--about Panama afoot and in carriages nearly all
night, in true dime-novel fashion. There was the day that I was
given a dangerous convict to deliver at Culebra Penitentiary. The
criminal was about three feet long, jet black, his worldly
possessions comprising two more or less garments, one reaching as
far down as his knees and the other as far up as the base of his
neck.
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