Illustrations

"Perhaps I could dress the hurt." suggested Miss Wallace a little shyly. Frontispiece.[109]
"Crikey! I didn't know that was there," Jimmie cried.[240]

The Pirate of Panama

CHAPTER I

A SCRAP OF PAPER

It was a dismal, sodden morning, with heavy clouds banked in the western sky. Rain had sloshed down since midnight so that the gutter in front of me was a turbid little river.

A chill wind swept across the city and penetrated to the marrow. From the summit of the hill, three blocks above me, my car was sliding down, but I clung to the curb to postpone until the last moment a plunge into the flowing street.