To make things merrier I had not only to wear an
arsenal but a coat atop to conceal it from the general public.
To mention the holes I crawled into and the clues I followed
during the next few days would be more tiresome than a Puritan
prayer. By day I was dashing back and forth through all Ancon
district, by night prowling about the grimier sections of Panama
city. Almost daily I got near enough to sniff the prey. Now it was
a Greek confectioner on Avenida Central who admitted that the
fugitive had called on him during the night, now a Panamanian
pesquisa whose stool-pigeon had seen him out in the bush, then the
information that he had stopped to shave and otherwise alter his
appearance in some shack half-way across the Zone and afterward
struck off for Panama by an unused route. The clues were pendulum-
like. They took me a half-dozen times at least out the winding
highway to Corozal, on to Miraflores and even further. The rainy
season and the reign of umbrellas had come. It had been formally
opened on that memorable Sunday afternoon. There was still
sunshine at times, but always a wet season heaviness to the
atmosphere; and the rains were already giving the rolling jungle
hills a tinge of new green. There was nothing to be gained by
hurrying. The fugitive was as likely to crawl forth from one place
as another along the rambling road.
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