File:Panama and the canal in picture and prose (1913) (14596742989).jpg

Identifier: panamacanalinpic01abbo (find matches)
Title: Panama and the canal in picture and prose ..
Year: 1913 (1910s)
Authors: Abbot, Willis John, 1863-1934. (from old catalog)
Subjects:
Publisher: New York (etc.) Pub. in English and Spanish by Syndicate publishing company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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banks. They laid theirplans with deliberation and con-ducted their operations with dueregard for their personal comfort.Their plan was to tunnel into thebank from an adjoining building,in vv^hich they set up a bogus con-tracting business to account forthe odds and ends of machineryand implements they had about.The tunnel being dark they strungelectric lights in it. Being hot, under that tropicair, they installed electric fans. All the comfortsof a burglars home were there. From a strictly professional standpoint they madenot a single blunder. Their one error—almost afatal one—was in not being good churchmen. Forthey had planned to enter the bank late on a Satur-day night. Tuesday was to be pay day and onMonday the full amount of the pay roll would bedrawn out. But Saturday night it would all be there—several himdred thousand dollars—and they wouldhave all day Sunday to pack it securely and maketheir getaway. Midnight, then, saw them creeping THE MANY CHURCHES OF PANAMA 249 *v
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run-away child Panama, and no extradition treatycould have been appealed to by the Panamaniansagainst their despoilers. As it was they quarreledover the booty. One of the three was killed; theother two were arrested for the murder, but soonwent free. Their complete immunity from prose-cution calls attention to the fact that a few hourstrip in a motor boat will take any one guilty ofcrime in Panama to a land where he will be whollyfree from punishment. Churches in Panama, or the ruins of them, are THE CATHEDRAL AND PLAZA into the bank. The safe yielded readily to theirassaults, but it disgorged only a beggarly $30,000or so. What could be the trouble? Just then theknowledge dawned on the disappointed banditsthat Monday was a Saints day, the bank would beclosed, therefore the prudent Zone paymaster haddrawn his funds on Saturday. The joke was on thecracksmen. With the comparatively few thousands they hadaccumulated the disappointed outlaws took a motorboat and made for Colombia. Had they

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