accident is that it was because Schnitzel disbelieved that fact, and
to drag the hideous facts from me followed me back to New York. Through
that circumstance I came to know him, and am able to tell his story.

The simple truth was that I had been sent by the State Department to
Panama to "go, look, see," and straighten out a certain conflict of
authority among the officials of the canal zone. While I was there
the yellow-fever broke out, and every self-respecting power clapped a
quarantine on the Isthmus, with the result that when I tried to return
to New York no steamer would take me to any place to which any white man
would care to go. But I knew that at Valencia there was a direct line to
New York, so I took a tramp steamer down the coast to Valencia. I went
to Valencia only because to me every other port in the world was closed.
My position was that of the man who explained to his wife that he came
home because the other places were shut.

But, because, formerly in Valencia I had held a minor post in our
legation, and because the State Department so constantly consults our
firm on questions of international law, it was believed I revisited
Valencia on some mysterious and secret mission.

As a matter of fact, had I gone there to sell phonographs or to start a
steam laundry, I should have been as greatly suspected. For in Valencia
even every commercial salesman, from the moment he gives up his passport
on the steamer until the police permit him to depart, is suspected,
shadowed, and begirt with spies.

I believe that during my brief visit I enjoyed the distinction
of occupying the undivided attention of three: a common or garden
Government spy, from whom no guilty man escapes, a Walker-Keefe spy,