for a stamp.  One was found, the Corporal stuck it on the letter, fell suddenly motionless and stared for a long time at vacancy.  Then a new thought struck him.  He jerked open a drawer of the “gum-shoe” desk, flung the letter inside—­where I found it accidentally one day some weeks afterward—­and dropping into the swivel-chair laid his feet on the “gum-shoe” blotter and a moment later seemed to have fallen asleep.

By all of which signs those of us who knew him began to suspect that the Corporal had something on his mind.  Not a few considered him the best detective on the force; at least he was different enough from a printer’s ink detective to be a real one.  But naturally the strain of heading a detective bureau for weeks was beginning to wear upon him.

“Damn it!” said the Corporal suddenly, opening his eyes, “I can’t be in six places at once.  You’ll have to handle these cases,” and he drew from a pocket and handed me three typewritten sheets, then drifted away into the dusk.  I looked them over and returned to the porch rocker and the last chapters of the novel.

A meek touch on the leg awoke me at four next morning.  I looked up to see dimly a black face under a khaki helmet bent over me whispering, “It de time, sah,” and fade noiselessly away.  It was the frontier policeman carrying out his orders of the night before.  For once there was not a carriage in sight.  I stumbled sleepily down into Panama and for some distance along Avenida Central before I was able to hail an all night hawk chasing a worn little wreck of a horse along the macadam.  I spread my lanky form over the worn cushions and we spavined along the graveled boundary line, past the Chinese cemetery where John can preserve and burn joss to his ancestors to the end of time, out through East Balboa just awakening to life, and reached Balboa docks as day was breaking.  I was not long there, and the equine caricature ambled the three miles back to town in what seemed reasonable time, considering.  As we turned again into Avenida Central my watch told me there was time and to spare to catch the morning passenger.  I was not a little surprised therefore to hear just then two sharp rings on the station gong.  I dived headlong into the station and brought up against a locked gate, caught a glimpse of two or three ladies weeping and the tail of the passenger disappearing under the bridge.  Americans have introduced the untropical idea of starting their trains on time, to the disgust of the “Spig” in general and the occasional discomfiture of Americans.  I dashed wildly out through the station, across Panama’s main street, down a rugged lane to the first steps descending to the track, and tumbled joyously onto a slowly moving train—­to discover that it was the Balboa labor-train and that the Colon passenger was already half-way to Diablo Hill.

A Panama policeman of dusky hue, leaning against a gate-post, eyed me drowsily as I slowly climbed the steps, mopping my brow and staring at my watch.