hickly built. Wherefore, stowing away this private bit of information
under his hat, he told himself with a yawn, "Oh, I'll drag him in later
in the day," and drifted down to a wide-open door on Railroad Avenue to
spend a bit of the $25 reward in off-setting the heat. Meanwhile "Mac,"
feeling somewhat recovered from his financial extravagance, came
sauntering out of the dispensary and, seeing his curly-headed friend
strolling a beat not far away, naturally cried out, "Hello, Eck!" And
what could Eck say, being a reputable Zone policeman, but:

"Why, hello, Mac! How they framin' up? Consider yourself pinched."

Which was lucky for "Mac." For Eck had once worn a marine hat over his
own right eye and, he knew from melancholy experience that the $25 was
no government generosity, but "Mac's" own involuntary contribution to
his finding and delivery; so managed to slip most of it back into
"Mac's" hands.

Long, long after, more than six weeks after in fact, I chanced to be in
Bas Obispo with a half-hour to spare, and climbed to the flowered and
many-roaded camp on its far-viewing hilltop that falls sheer away on
the east into the canal. In one of the airy barracks I found Renson,
cards in hand, clear-skinned and "fit" now, thanks to the regular life
of this adult nursery, though his lost youth was gone for good. And
"Mac"? Yes, I saw "Mac" too--or at least the back of his head and
shoulders through the screen of the guard-house where Renson pointed
him out to me as he was being locked up again after a day of shoveling
sand.

The first days in Gatun called for little else than patrol duty,
without fixed hours, interspersed with an occasional loaf on the
second-story veranda of the police-station overlooking the giant locks;
close at hand was the entrance to the canal, up which came slowly
barges loaded with crushed stone from Porto Bello quarry twenty miles
east along the coast or sand from Nombre de Dios, twice as distant,
while further still, spread Limon Bay from which swept a never-ending
breeze one could wipe dry on as on a towel. So long as he has in his
pocket no typewritten report with the Inspector's scrawl across it,
"For investigation and report," the plain-clothes man is virtually his
own commander, with few duties beside trying to be in as many parts of
his district at once as possible and the ubiquitous duty of "keeping in
touch with headquarters." So I wandered and mingled with all the life
of the vicinity, e