Police headquarters presented an unusual air of preoccupation next
morning. In the corner office the telephone rang often and
imperatively, several times erect figures in khaki and broad "Texas"
hats flashed by the doorway, the drone of earnest conference sounded a
few minutes, and the figures flashed as suddenly out again into the
world. In the inner office I glanced once more in review through the
"Rules and Regulations." The Zone, too, was now familiar ground, and as
for the third requirement for a policeman--to know the Zone residents
by sight--a strange face brought me a start of surprise, unless it
beamed above the garb that shouted "tourist." Now all I needed was a
few hours of conference and explanation on the duties, rights, and
privileges of policemen; and that of course would come as soon as
leisure again settled down over headquarters.
Musing which I was suddenly startled to my feet by "the Captain"
appearing in the doorway.
"Catch the next train to Balboa;" he said. "You've got four minutes.
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.--"But no one to look at him would suspect that
Fr--French, is it?"
"Franck."
"Oh, yes, that Franck could speak Spanish. We 'll do our best to
inflate that impression, and when it comes your turn at guard-mount you
can probably let several little things of interest drift in at your
ears."
"I left headquarters before the Captain had time to explain," I
suggested.
"Oh!" said the Lieutenant. "Well, here it is in a spectacle-case, as
our friend Kipling would put it. We're on our way to Culebra Island.
There are now in quarantine there three men who arrived yesterday from
South America. They are members of the party of the murdered president.
To-day there will arrive and also be put in hock the three gents whose
names you have there. Now we have a private inside hunch that the three
already here have come up particularly and specifically to prepare for
the funeral of the three who are arriving. Which is no hair off our
brows, except it's up to us to see they don't pull off any little
stunts of that kind on Zone territory."
At least this police business was starting well; if this was a sample
it would be a real job.
The train had stopped and we were climbing the steps of Balboa police
station; for without the co-operation of the "Admiral of the Pacific
Fleet" we could not reach Culebra Island.
"By the way, I suppose you're well armed?" asked the Lieutenant in his
high querulous voice, as we drank a last round of ice-water preparatory
to setting out again.
"Em--I've got a fountain pen," I replied. "I haven't been a policeman
twenty minutes yet, and I was appointed in a hurry."
"Fine!" cried "the Admiral" sarcastically, snatching open the door of a
closet beside the desk. "With a warm job like this on hand! You know
what these South Americans are--" with a wink at the Lieutenant that
was meant also for Castillo, who stood with his felt hat on the back of
his head and a far-away look in his eyes.
"Yah, mighty dangerous--around meal time," said the Corporal; though at
the same time he drew from a hip pocket a worn leather holster
containing a revolver, and examined it intently.
Meanwhile "the Admiral" had handed me a massive No. 88 "Colt" with
holster, a box of cartridges, and a belt that might easily have served
as a horse's saddle-girth. When I had buckled it on under my coat the
armament felt like a small boy clinging about my waist.
We trooped on down a sort of railroad junction with a score of
abandoned wooden houses. It was here I had first landed on the Zone one
blazing Sunday nearly two months before and tramped away for some miles
on a rusty sandy track along a canal already filled with water till a
short jungle path led me into my first Zone town. Already that seemed
ancient history.
The police launch, manned by negro prisoners, with "the Admiral" in a
cushioned arm-chair at the wheel, was soon scudding away across the
sunlit harbor, the breakwater building of the spoil of Culebra "cut" on
our left, ahead the cluster of small islands being torn to pieces for
Uncle Sam's fortifications. The steamer being not yet sighted, we put
in at Naos Island, where the bulky policeman in charge led us to dinner
at the I. C. C. hotel, during which the noonday blasting on the Zone
came dully across to us. Soon after we were landing at the cement
sidewalk of the island--where I had been a prisoner for a day in
January as my welcome to U. S. territory--and were being greeted by the
pocket edition doctor and the bay-windowed German who had been my
wardens on that occasion.
We found the conspirators at a table in a corridor of the first-class
quarantine station. In the words of Lieutenant Long "they fully looked
the part," being of distinctly merciless cut of jib. They were roughly
dressed and without collars, convincing proof of some nefarious design,
for when the Latin-American entitled to wear them leaves off his white
collar and his cane he must be desperate indeed.
We "braced" them at once, marching down upon them as they were
murmuring with heads together over a mass of typewritten sheets. The
Corporal was delegated to inform them in his most urbane and
hidalguezco Castilian that we were well acquainted with their errand
and that we were come to frustrate by any legitimate means in our power
the consummation of any such project on American territory. When the
first paralyzed stare of astonishment that plans they had fancied
locked in their own breasts were known to others had somewhat subsided,
one of them assumed the spokesmanship. In just as courtly and
superabundant language he replied that they were only too well aware of
the inadvisability of carrying out any act against its sovereignty on
U. S. soil; that so long as they were on American territory they would
conduct themselves in a most circumspect and caballeroso manner--"but,"
he concluded, "in the most public street of Panama city the first time
we meet those three dogs--we shall spit in their faces--that's all,
nada mas," and the blazing eyes announced all too plainly what he meant
by that figure of speech.
That was all very well, was our smiling and urbane reply, but to be on
the safe side and merely as a matter of custom we were under the
unfortunate necessity of requesting them to submit to the annoyance of
having their baggage and persons examined with a view to discovering
what weapons--
"Como no senores? All the examination you desire." Which was
exceedingly kind of them. Whereupon, when the Lieutenant had
interpreted to me their permission, we fell upon them and amid
countless expressions of mutual esteem gave them and their baggage such
a "frisking" as befalls a Kaffir leaving a South African diamond mine,
and found them armed with--a receipt from the quarantine doctor for
"one pearl-handled Smill and Wilson No. 32." Either they really
intended to postpone their little affair until they reached Panama, or
they had succeeded in concealing their weapons elsewhere.
The doctor and his assistant were already being rowed out to the
steamer that was to bring the victims. They were to be lodged in a room
across the corridor from the conspirators, which corridor it would be
our simple duty to patrol with a view to intercepting any exchange of
stray lead. We fell to planning such division of the twenty-four hours
as should give me the most talkative period. The Lieutenant took the
trouble further to convince the trio of my total ignorance of Spanish
by a distinct and elaborate explanation, in English, of the difference
between the words "muchacho" and "muchacha." Then we wandered down past
the grimy steerage station to the shore end of the little wharf to
await the doctor and our proteges.
The ocean breeze swept unhampered across the island; on its rocky shore
sounded the dull rumble of waves, for the sea was rolling a bit now.
The swelling tide covered inch by inch a sandy ridge that connected us
with another island, gradually drowning beneath its waters several
rusty old hulls. A little rocky wooded isle to the left cut off the
future entrance to the canal. Some miles away across the bay on the
lower slope of a long hill drowsed the city of Panama in brilliant
sunshine; and beyond, the hazy mountainous country stretched
southwestward to be lost in the molten horizon. On a distant hill some
Indian was burning off a patch of jungle to plant his corn.
Meanwhile the Lieutenant and the Corporal had settled some Lombroso
proposition and fallen to reciting poetry. The former, who was
evidently a lover of melancholy, mouth-filling verse, was declaiming
"The Raven" to the open sea. I listened in wonder. Was this then police
talk? I had expected rough, untaught fellows whose conversation at best
would be pornographic rather than poetic. My astonishment swelled to
the bursting point when the Colombian not only caught up the poem where
the Lieutenant left off but topped it off with that peerless
translation by Bonalde the Venezuelan, beginning:
Una fosca media noche, cuando en tristes reflexiones
Sobre mas de un raro infolio de olvidados cronicones--
And just then the quarantine launch swung around the neighboring
island. I tightened my horse belt and dragged the "Colt" around within
easy reach; and a moment later the doctor and his bulking understudy
stepped ashore--alone.
"They didn't come," said the former; "they were not allowed to leave
their own country."
"Hell and damnation," said the Lieutenant at length in a calm,
conversational tone of voice, with the air of a small boy who has been
wantonly robbed of a long-promised holiday but who is determined not to
make a scene over it. The Corporal seemed indifferent, and stood with
the far-away look in his eyes as if he were already busy with some
other plans or worries. But then, the Corporal was married. As for
myself, I had somehow felt from the first that it was too good to be
true. Adventure has steadily dodged me all my days.
A half-hour later we were pitching across the bay toward Ancon hill,
scaled bare on one end by the work of fortification like a Hindu
hair-cut. The water came spitting inboard now and then, and dejected
silence reigned within the craft. But spirits gradually revived and
before we could make out the details of the wharf the Corporal's hearty
genuine laughter and the Lieutenant's rousing carcajada were again
drifting across the water. At Balboa I unburdened myself of my shooting
hardware and, catching the labor-train, was soon mounting the graveled
walk to Ancon police station. In the second-story squad-room of the
bungalow were eight beds. But there were more than enough policemen to
go round, and the legal occupant of the bunk I fell asleep in returned
from duty at midnight and I transferred to the still warm nest of a man
on the "grave-yard" shift.
"It's customary to put a man in uniform for a while first before
assigning him to plain-clothes duty," the Inspector was saying next
morning when I finished the oath of office that had been omitted in the
haste of my appointment, "but we have waived that in your case because
of the knowledge of the Zone the census must have given you."
Thus casually was I robbed of the opportunity to display my manly form
in uniform to tourists of trains and the Tivoli--tourists, I say,
because the "Zoners" would never have noticed it. But we must all
accept the decrees of fate.
That was the full extent of the Inspector's remarks; no mention
whatever of the sundry little points the recruit is anxious to be
enlightened upon. In government jobs one learns those details by
experience. For the time being there was nothing for me to do but to
descend to the "gum-shoe" desk in Ancon station and sit in the
swivel-chair opposite Lieutenant Long "waiting for orders."
Toward noon a thought struck me. I swung the telephone around and "got"
the Inspector.
"All my junk is up in Empire yet," I remarked.
"All right, tell the desk-man down there to make you out a pass.
Or--hold the wire! As long as you're going out, there's a prisoner over
in Panama that belongs up in Empire. Go over and tell the Chief you
want Tal Fulano."
I wormed my way through the fawning, neck-craning, many-shaded mob of
political henchmen and obsequious petitioners into the sacred hushed
precincts of Panama police headquarters. A paunched "Spigoty" with a
shifty eye behind large bowed glasses, vainly striving to exude dignity
and wisdom, received me with the oily smirk of the Panamanian
office-holder who feels the painful necessity of keeping on outwardly
good terms with all Americans. I flashed my badge and mentioned a name.
A few moments later there was presented to me a sturdy, if somewhat
flabby, young Spaniard carefully dressed and perfumed. We bowed like
life-long acquaintances and, stepping down to the street, entered a
cab. The prisoner, which he was now only in name, was a muscular fellow
with whom I should have fared badly in personal combat. I was wholly
unarmed, and in a foreign land. All those sundry little unexplained
points of a policeman's duty were bubbling up within me. When the
prisoner turned to remark it was a warm day should I warn him that
anything he said would be used against him? When he ordered the driver
to halt before the "Panazone" that he might speak to some friends
should I fiercely countermand the order? What was my duty when the
friends handed him some money and a package of cigars? Suppose he
should start to follow his friends inside to have a drink--but he
didn't. We drove languidly on down the avenue and up into Ancon, where
I heaved a genuine sigh of relief as we crossed the unmarked street
that made my badge good again. The prisoner was soon behind padlocks
and the money and cigars in the station safe. These and him and the
transfer card I took again with me into the foreign Republic in time
for the evening train. But he seemed even more anxious than I to
attract no attention, and once in Empire requested that we take the
shortest and most inconspicuous route to the police station; and my
responsibility was soon over.
Many were the Z.P. facts I picked up during the next few days in the
swivel-chair. The Zone Police force of 1912 consisted of a Chief of
Police, an Assistant Chief, two Inspectors, four Lieutenants, eight
sergeants, twenty corporals, one hundred and seventeen "first-class
policemen," and one hundred and sixteen "policemen" (West Indian
negroes without exception, though none but an American citizen could
aspire to any white position); not to mention five clerks at
headquarters, who are quite worth the mentioning. "Policemen" wore the
same uniform as "first-class" officers, with khaki-covered helmet
instead of "Texas" hat and canvas instead of leather leggings, drew
one-half the pay of a white private, were not eligible for advancement,
and with some few notable exceptions were noted for what they did know
and the facility with which they could not learn. One Inspector was in
charge of detective work and the other an overseer of the uniformed
force. Each of the Lieutenants was in charge of one-fourth of the Zone
with headquarters respectively at Ancon, Empire, Gorgona, and
Cristobal, and the sub-stations within these districts in charge of
sergeants, corporals, or experienced privates, according to importance.
Years ago when things were yet in primeval chaos and the memorable
sixth of February of 1904 was still well above the western horizon
there was gathered together for the protection of the newly-born Canal
Strip a band of "bad men" from our ferocious Southwest, warranted to
feed on criminals each breakfast time, and in command of a man-eating
rough-rider. But somehow the bad men seemed unable to transplant to
this new and richer soil the banefulness that had thrived so
successfully in the land of sage-brush and cactus. The gourmandizing
promised to be chiefly at the criminal tables; and before long it was
noted that the noxious gentlemen were gradually drifting back to their
native sand dunes, and the rough-riding gave way to a more orderly
style of horsemanship. Then bit by bit some men--just men without any
qualifying adjective whatever--began to get mixed up in the matter; one
after another army lieutenants were detailed to help the thing along,
until by and by they got the right army lieutenant and the right men
and the Z. P. grew to what it is to-day,--not the love, perhaps, but
the pride of every "Zoner" whose name cannot be found on some old
"blotter."
There are a number of ways of getting on the force. There is the broad
and general high-way of being appointed in Washington and shipped down
like a nice fresh vegetable in the original package and delivered just
as it left the garden without the pollution of alien hands. Then
there's the big, impressive, broad-shouldered fellow with some life and
military service behind him, and the papers to prove it, who turns up
on the Zone and can't help getting on if he takes the trouble to climb
to headquarters. Or there are the special cases, like Marley for
instance. Marley blew in one summer day from some uncharted point of
the compass with nothing but his hat and a winning smile on his brassy
features, and naturally soon drifted up the "Thousand Stairs." But
Marley wasn't exactly of that manly build that takes "the Chief" and
"the Captain" by storm; and there were suggestions on his young-old
face that he had seen perhaps a trifle too much of life. So he wiped
the sweat from his brow several times at the third-story landing only
to find as often that the expected vacancy was not yet. Meanwhile the
tropical days slipped idly by and Marley's "standin" with the owners of
I. C. C. hotel-books began to strain and threaten to break away, and
everything sort of gave up the ghost and died. Everything, that is,
except the winning smile. 'Til one afternoon with only that asset left
Marley met the department head on the grass-bordered path in front of
the Episcopal chapel, just where the long descent ends and a man begins
to regain his tractable mood, and said Marley:
"Say, looka here, Chief. It's a question of eats with me. We can't put
this thing off much longer or--"
Which is why that evening's train carried Marley, with a police badge
and the little flat volume bound in imitation leather in his pocket,
out to some substation commander along the line for the corporal in
charge to break in and hammer down into that finished product, a Zone
Policeman.
Incidentally Marley also illustrated some months later one of the
special ways of getting off the force. It was still simpler. Going "on
pass" to Colon to spend a little evening, Marley neglected to leave his
No. 38 behind in the squad-room, according to Z. P. rules. Which was
careless of him. For when his spirits reached that stage where he
recognized what sport it would be to see the "Spigoty" policemen of
Bottle Alley dance a western cancan he bethought him of the No. 38.
Which accounts for the fact that the name of Marley can no longer be
found on the rolls of the Z. P. But all this is sadly anticipating.
Obviously, you will say, a force recruited from such dissimilar sources
must be a thing of wide and sundry experience. And obviously you are
right. Could a man catch up the Z. P. by the slack of the khaki riding
breeches and shake out their stories as a giant in need of carfare
might shake out their loose change, then might he retire to some sunny
hillside of his own and build him a sound-proof house with a swimming
pool and a revolving bookcase and a stable of riding horses, and cause
to be erected on the front lawn a kneeling-place where publishers might
come and bow down and beat their foreheads on the pavement.
There are men in the Z. P. who in former years have played horse with
the startled markets of great American cities; men whose voices will
boom forth in the pulpit and whisper sage councils in the professional
in years to come; men whom doting parents have sent to Harvard--on whom
it failed to take, except on their clothes--men who have gone down into
the Valley of the Shadow of Death and crawled on hands and knees
through the brackish red brook that runs at the bottom and come out
again smiling on the brink above. Careers more varied than Mexican
sombreros one might hear in any Z. P. squad-room--were not the Z. P. so
much more given to action than to autobiography.
They bore little resemblance to what I had expected. My mental picture
of an American policeman was that conglomerate average one
unconsciously imbibes from a distant view of our city forces, and by
comparison with foreign,--a heavy-footed, discourteous, half-fanatical,
half-irreligious clubber whose wits are as slow as his judgment is
honest. Instead of which I found the Z. P. composed almost without
exception of good-hearted, well set up young Americans almost all of
military training. I had anticipated, from other experiences, a
constant bickering and a general striving to make life unendurable for
a new-comer. Instead I was constantly surprised at the good fellowship
that existed throughout the force. There were of course some healthy
rivalries; there were no angels among them--or I should have fled the
Isthmus much earlier; but for the most part the Z. P. resembled nothing
so much as a big happy family. Above all I had expected early to make
the acquaintance of "graft," that shifty-eyed monster which we who have
lived in large American cities think of as sitting down to dinner with
the force in every mess-hall. Graft? Why a Zone Policeman could not
ride on a P. R. R. train in full uniform when off duty without paying
his fare, though he was expected to make arrests if necessary and stop
behind with his prisoner. Compared indeed with almost any other spot on
the broad earth's surface "graft" eats slim meals on the Canal Zone.
The average Zone Policeman would arrest his own brother--which is after
all about the supreme test of good policehood. He is not a man who
likes to keep "blotters," make out accident reports and such things,
that can be of interest only to those with clerks' and bookkeepers'
souls.
He would far rather be battling with sun, man, and vegetation in the
jungle. He is of those who genuinely and frankly have no desire to
become rich, and "successful," a lack of ambition that formal society
cannot understand and fancies a weakness.
I had still another police surprise during these swivel-chair days. I
discovered there was on the Zone a yellow tailor who made Beau Brummel
uniforms at $7.50, compared with which the $5 ready-made ones were mere
clothes. All my life long I had been laboring under the delusion that a
uniform is merely a uniform. But one lives and learns.
There are few left, I suppose, who have not heard that gray-bearded
story of the American in the Philippines who called his native servant
and commanded:
"Juan, va fetch the caballo from the prado and--and--oh, saddle and
bridle him. Damn such a language anyway! I'm sorry I ever learned it."
This is capped on the Zone by another that is not only true but
strikingly typical. An American boss who had been much annoyed by
unforeseen absences of his workmen pounced upon one of his Spaniards
one morning crying:
"When you know por la noche that you're not going to trabaja por la
manana why in--don't you habla?"
"Si, senor," replied the Spaniard.
By which it may be gathered that linguistic ability on the Zone is on a
par with that in other U. S. possessions. Of the seven of us assigned
to plain-clothes duty on this strip of seventy-two nationalities there
was a Colombian, a gentleman of Swedish birth, a Chinaman from
Martinique, and a Greek, all of whom spoke English, Spanish, and at
least one other language. Of the three native Americans two spoke only
their mother tongue. In the entire white uniformed force I met only
Lieutenant Long and the Corporal in charge of Miraflores who could
seriously be said to speak Spanish, though I am informed there were one
or two others.
This was not for a moment any fault of the Z. P. It comes back to our
government and beyond that to the American people. With all our
expanding over the surface of the earth in the past fourteen years
there still hangs over us that old provincial back-woods bogie,
"English is good enough for me." We have only to recall what England
does for those of her colonial servants who want seriously to study the
language of some portion of her subjects to have something very like
the blush of shame creep up the back of our necks. Child's task as is
the learning of a foreign language, provincial old Uncle Sam just
flat-foots along in the same old way, expecting to govern and judge and
lead along the path of civilization his foreign colonies by bellowing
at them in his own nasal drawl and treating their tongue as if it were
some purely animal sound. He is well personified by Corporal ----, late
of the Z. P. The Corporal had served three years in the Philippines and
five on the Zone, and could not ask for bread in the Spanish tongue.
"Why don't you learn it?" some one asked one day.
"Awe," drawled the Corporal, "what's the use o' goin' t' all that
trouble? If you have t' have any interpretin' done all you got t' do is
t' call in a nigger."
Uncle Sam not merely lends his servants no assistance to learn the
tongues of his colonies, but should one of his subjects appear bearing
that extraordinary accomplishment he gives him no preference whatever,
no better position, not a copper cent more salary; and if things get to
a pass where a linguist must be hired he gives the job to the first
citizen that comes along who can make a noise that is evidently not
English, or more likely still to some foreigner who talks English like
a mouthful of Hungarian goulash. It is not the least of the reasons why
foreign nations do not take us as seriously as they ought, why our
colonials do not love us and, what is of far greater importance, do not
advance under our rule as they should.
Meanwhile there had gradually been reaching me "through the proper
channels," as everything does on the Zone even to our ice-water, the
various coupon-books and the like indispensable to Zone life and the
proper pursuit of plain-clothes duty. Distressing as are statistics the
full comprehension of what might follow requires the enumeration of the
odds and ends I was soon carrying about with me.
A brass-check; police badge; I. C. C. hotel coupon-book; Commissary
coupon-book; "120-Trip Ticket" (a booklet containing blank passes
between any stations on the P. R. R., to be filled out by holder)
Mileage book (purchased by employees at half rates of 2 1/2 cents a
mile for use when traveling on personal business) "24-Trip Ticket" (a
free courtesy pass to all "gold" employees allowing one monthly round
trip excursion over any portion of the line) Freight-train pass for the
P. R. R.; Dirt-train and locomotive pass for the Pacific division;
ditto for the Central division; likewise for the Atlantic division; (in
short about everything on wheels was free to the "gum-shoe" except the
"yellow car") Passes admitting to docks and steamers at either end of
the Zone; note-book; pencil or pen; report cards and envelopes (one of
which the plain-clothes man must fill out and forward to headquarters
"via train-guard" wherever night may overtake him--"the gum-shoe's
day's work," as the idle uniformed man facetiously dubs it).
Furthermore the man out of uniform is popularly supposed never to
venture forth among the populace without:
Belt, holster, cartridges, and the No. 38 "Colt" that reminds you of a
drowning man trying to drag you down; handcuffs; police whistle;
blackjack (officially he never carries this; theoretically there is not
one on the Isthmus. But the "gum-shoe" naturally cannot twirl a police
club, and it is not always policy to shoot every refractory prisoner).
Then if he chances to be addicted to the weed there is the
cigarette-case and matches; a watch is frequently convenient; and
incidentally a few articles of clothing are more or less indispensable
even in the dry season. Now and again, too, a bit of money does not
come amiss. For though the Canal Zone is a Utopia where man lives by
work-coupons alone, the detective can never know at what moment his
all-embracing duties may carry him away into the foreign land of
Panama; and even were that possibility not always staring him in the
face, in the words of "Gorgona Red," "You've got t' have money fer yer
booze, ain't ye?"
Which seems also to be Uncle Sam's view of the matter. Far and away
more important than any of the plain-clothes equipment thus far
mentioned is the "expense account." It is unlike the others in that it
is not visible and tangible but a mere condition, a pleasant sensation
like the consciousness of a good appetite or a youthful fullness of
life. The only reality is a form signed by the czar of the Zone himself
tucked away among I. C. C. financial archives. That authorizes the man
assigned to special duty in plain clothes to be reimbursed money
expended in the pursuance of duty up to the sum of $60 per month;
though it is said that the interpretation of this privilege to the full
limit is not unlikely to cause flames of light, thunderous rumblings,
and other natural phenomena in the vicinity of Empire and Culebra. But
please note further; these expenditures may be only "for cab or boat
hire, meals away from home, and LIQUOR and CIGARS!" Plainly the
"gum-shoe" should be a bachelor.
Fortunately, however, the proprietor of the expense account is not
required personally to consume it each month. It is designed rather to
win the esteem of bar-tenders, loosen the tongues of suspects, libate
the thirsty stool-pigeon, and prime other accepted sources of
information. But beware! Exceeding care in filling out the account of
such expenditures at the month's end. Carelessness leads a hunted life
on the Canal Zone. Take, for instance, the slight error of my
friend--who, having made such expenditure in Colon, by a slip of the
pen, or to be nice, of the typewriter, sent in among three score and
ten items the following:
Feb. 4/ 2 bots beer; Cristobal........50c
and in the course of time found said voucher again on his desk with a
marginal note of mild-eyed wonder and more than idle curiosity, in the
handwriting of a man very high up indeed;
WHERE can you buy beer in Cristobal?
All this and more I learned in the swivel-chair waiting for orders,
reading the latest novel that had found its way to Ancon station, and
receiving frequent assurances that I should be quite busy enough once I
got started. Opposite sat Lieutenant Long pouring choice bits of
sub-station orders into the 'phone:
"Don't you believe it. That was no accident. He didn't lose everything
he had in every pocket rolling around drunk in the street. He's been
systematically frisked. Sabe frisked? Get on the job and look into it."
For the Lieutenant was one of those scarce and enviable beings who can
live with his subordinates as man to man, yet never find an ounce of
his authority missing when authority is needed.
Now and then a Z. P. story whiled away the time. There was the sad case
of Corporal ---- in charge of ---- station. Early one Sunday afternoon
the Corporal saw a Spaniard leading a goat along the railroad.
Naturally the day was hot. The Corporal sent a policeman to arrest the
inhuman wretch for cruelty to animals. When he had left the culprit
weeping behind padlocks he went to inspect the goat, tied in the shade
under the police station.
"Poor little beast," said the sympathetic Corporal, as he set before it
a generous pan of ice-water fresh from the police station tank. The
goat took one long, eager, grateful draught, turned over on its back,
curled up like the sensitive-plants of Panama jungles when a finger
touches them, and departed this vale of tears. But Corporal ---- was an
artist of the first rank. Not only did he "get away with it" under the
very frowning battlements of the judge, but sent the Spaniard up for
ten days on the charge against him. Z. P.'s who tell the story assert
that the Spaniard did not so much mind the sentence as the fact that
the Corporal got his goat.
Then there was "the Mystery of the Knocked-out Niggers." Day after day
there came reports from a spot out along the line that some negro
laborer strolling along in a perfectly reasonable manner suddenly lay
down, threw a fit, and went into a comatose state from which he
recovered only after a day or two in Ancon or Colon hospitals. The
doctors gave it up in despair. As a last resort the case was turned
over to a Z. P. sleuth. He chose him a hiding-place as near as possible
to the locality of the strange manifestation. For half the morning he
sweltered and swore without having seen or heard the slightest thing of
interest to an old "Zoner." A dirt-train rumbled by now and then. He
strove to amuse himself by watching the innocent games of two little
Spanish switch-boys not far away. They were enjoying themselves, as
guileless childhood will, between their duties of letting a train in
and out of the switch. Well on in the second half of the morning
another diminutive Iberian, a water-boy, brought his compatriots a pail
of water and carried off the empty bucket. The boys hung over the edge
of the pail a sort of wire hook, the handle of their home-made
drinking-can, no doubt, and went on playing.
By and by a burly black Jamaican in shirt-sleeves loomed up in the
distance. Now and then as he advanced he sang a snatch of West Indian
ballad. As he espied the "switcheros" a smile broke out on his features
and he hastened forward his eyes fixed on the water-pail. In a working
species of Spanish he made some request of the boys, the while wiping
his ebony brow with his sleeve. The boys protested. Evidently they had
lived on the Zone so long they had developed a color line. The negro
pleaded. The boys, sitting in the shade of their wigwam, still shook
their heads. One of them was idly tapping the ground with a
broom-handle that had lain beside him. The negro glanced up and down
the track, snatched up the boys' drinking vessel, of which the wire
hooked over the pail was not after all the handle, and stooped to dip
up a can of water. The little fellow with the broom-stick, ceasing a
useless protest, reached a bit forward and tapped dreamily the rail in
front of him. The Jamaican suddenly sent the can of water some rods
down the track, danced an artistic buck-and-wing shuffle on the thin
air above his head, sat down on the back of his neck, and after trying
a moment in vain to kick the railroad out by the roots, lay still.
By this time the sleuth was examining the broom-handle. From its split
end protruded an inch of telegraph wire, which chanced also to be the
same wire that hung over the edge of the galvanized bucket. Close in
front of the innocent little fellows ran a "third rail!"
Then suddenly this life of anecdote and leisure ended. There was thrust
into my hands a typewritten-sheet and I caught the next thing on wheels
out to Corozal for my first investigation. It was one of the most
commonplace cases on the Zone. Two residents of my first dwelling-place
on the Isthmus had reported the loss of $150 in U. S. gold.
Easier burglary than this the world does not offer. Every bachelor
quarters on the Isthmus, completely screened in, is entered by two or
three screen-doors, none of which is or can be locked. In the building
are from twelve to twenty-four wide-open rooms of two or three
occupants each, no three of whom know one another's full names or
anything else, except that they are white Americans and ipso facto (so
runs Zone philosophy) above dishonesty. The quarters are virtually
abandoned during the day. Two negro janitors dawdle about the building,
but they, too, leave it for two hours at mid-day. Moreover each of the
forty-eight or more occupants probably has several friends or
acquaintances or enemies who may drift in looking for him at any hour
of the day or night. No negro janitor would venture to question a white
American's errand in a house; Panama is below the Mason and Dixon line.
In practice any white American is welcome in any bachelor quarters and
even to a bed, if there is one unoccupied, though he be a total
stranger to all the community. Add to this that the negro tailor's
runner often has permission to come while the owner is away for suits
in need of pressing, that John Chinaman must come and claw the week's
washing out from under the bed where the "rough-neck" kicked it on
Saturday night, that there are a dozen other legitimate errands that
bring persons of varying shades into the building, and above all that
the bachelors themselves, after the open-hearted old American fashion,
have the all but universal habit of tossing gold and silver, railroad
watches and real-estate bonds, or anything else of whatever value,
indifferently on the first clear corner that presents itself.
Precaution is troublesome and un-American. It seems a fling at the
character of your fellow bachelors--and in the vast majority of Zone
cases it would be. But it is in no sense surprising that among the many
thousands that swarm upon the Isthmus there should be some not averse
to increasing their income by taking advantage of these guileless
habits and bucolic conditions. There are suggestions that a few--not
necessarily whites--make a profession of it. No wonder "our chief
trouble is burglary" and has been ever since the Z. P. can remember.
Summed up, the pay-day gold that has thus faded away is perhaps no
small amount; compared with what it might have been under prevailing
conditions it is little.
As for detecting such felonies, police officers the world around know
that theft of coin of the realm in not too great quantities is
virtually as safe a profession as the ministry. The Z. P. plain-clothes
man, like his fellows elsewhere, must usually be content in such cases
with impressing on the victim his Sherlockian astuteness, gathering the
available facts of the case, and return to typewrite his report thereof
to be carefully filed away among headquarters archives. Which is
exactly what I had to do in the case in question, diving out the door,
notebook in hand, to catch the evening train to Panama.
I was growing accustomed to Ancon and even to Ancon police-mess when I
strolled into headquarters on Saturday, the sixteenth, and the
Inspector flung a casual remark over his shoulder:
"Better get your stuff together. You're transferred to Gatun."
I was already stepping into a cab en route for the evening train when
the Inspector chanced down the hill.
"New Gatun is pretty bad on Saturday nights," he remarked. (All too
well I remembered it.) "The first time a nigger starts anything run him
in, and take all the witnesses in sight along."
"That reminds me; I haven't been issued a gun or handcuffs yet," I
hinted.
"Hell's fire, no?" queried the Inspector. "Tell the station commander
at Gatun to fix you up."