and quite another to carry out that resolution. Nero was a meek,
unassertive, submissive, tractable little chap, keenly sensible to
the sufferings of his fellows, compared with a Zone quartermaster.
So the first time I ventured to push open the screen door next to
the post office I was grateful to escape unmaimed. But at last,
when I had done a whole month's penance in 47, I resorted to
strategy. On March first I entered the dreaded precinct shielded
behind "the boss" with his contagious smile, and the musical
quartermaster of Empire was overthrown and defeated, and I marched
forth clutching in one hand a new "assignment to quarters."

That night I moved. The new, or more properly the older, room was
in House 35, a one-story building of the old French type, many of
which the Americans revamped upon taking possession of the
Isthmian junk-heap, across and a bit down the graveled street. It
was a single room, with no roommate to question, which I might
decorate and otherwise embellish according to my own personal
idiosyncrasies. At the back, with a door between, dwelt the
superintendent of the Zone telephone system, with a convenient
instrument on his table. In short, fortune seemed at last to be
grinning broadly upon me.

But--the sequel. I hate to mention it. I won't. It's absurdly
commonplace. Commonplace? Not a bit of it. He was a champion, an
artist in his specialty. How can I have used that word in
connection with his incomparable performance? Or attempt to give a
hint of life on the Canal Zone without mentioning the most
conspicuous factor in it?

He lived in the next room south, a half-inch wooden partition