to Miraflores, there to dash through
the locks for a five-minute interview. I walked to Pedro Miguel and,
descending from the embankment of the main line, "nailed" a dirt-train
returning empty and stood up for a breezy ride down through the "cut."
It was the same old smoky, toilsome place, a perceptible bit lower. As
in the case of a small boy only those can see its growth who have been
away for a time. The train stopped with a jerk at the foot of Culebra.
I walked a half-mile and caught a loaded dirt-train to Cascadas. The
matter there to be investigated required ten minutes. That over, I "got
in touch" at the nearest telephone, and the Corporal's voice called for
my immediate presence at headquarters. There chanced to be passing
through Cascadas at that moment a Panama-bound freight, the caboose of
which caught me up on the fly; and forty minutes later I was racing up
the long stairs.

There I learned among other things that a man I was anxious to have a
word with was coming in on the noon train, but would be unavailable
after arrival. I sprang into a cab and was soon rolling away again,
past the Chinese cemetery. At the commissary crossing in East Balboa we
were held up by an empty dirt-train returning from the dump. I tossed a
coin at the cabman and scrambled aboard. The train raced through
Corozal, down the grade and around the curve at unslacking speed. I
dropped off in front of Miraflores police station, keeping my feet,
thanks to practice and good luck, and dashing up through the village,
dragged myself breathlessly aboard the passenger train as its head and
shoulders had already disappeared in the tunnel.

The ticket-collector pointed out my man to me in the first passenger
coach, the "ladies' car"--he is a school-teacher and tobacco smoke
distresses him--and by the time we pulled into Panama I had the desired
information. Dinner was not to be thought of; I had barely time to dash
through the second-class gate and back along the track to Balboa
labor-train. From the docks a sand-train carried me to Pedro Miguel.

There was a craneman in Bas Obispo "cut" whose testimony was wanted. I
reached him by two short walks and a ride. His statements suggested the
advisability of questioning his room-mate, a towerman in Miraflores
freight-yards. Luck would have it that my chauffeur friend ---- was
just then passing with an I. C. C. motor-car and only a photographer
for a New York weekly aboard. I found room to squeeze i