their way to the barb-wire
enclosure on the outskirts of the Zone capital tells another story.
There are members of the Z. P. who sleep with a gun under their pillow
because of that look or a muttered word. But even were I nervous I
should have been little disturbed at the glare in this case, for it
will probably be a long walk from Culebra penitentiary to where I am
thirty-two months from that morning.

A holiday air brooded over all Gatun and the country-side. Workmen in
freshly washed clothing lolled in the shade of labor-camps, black
Britishers were gathering in flat meadows fitted for the national game
of cricket, far and wide sounded the care-free laughter and chattering
of negroes, while even within Gatun police station leisure and peace
seemed almost in full possession.

The morning "touch" with headquarters over, therefore, I scrambled away
across the silent yawning locks and the trainless and workless dam to
the Spillway, over which already some overflow from the lake was
escaping to the Caribbean. My friends "Dusty" and H---- had carried
their canoe to the Chagres below, and before nine we were off down the
river. It was a day that all the world north of the Tropic of Cancer
could not equal; just the weather for a perfect "day off." A
plain-clothes man, it is true, is not supposed to have days off. Some
one might run away with the Administration Building on the edge of the
Pacific and the telephone wires be buzzing for me--with the sad result
that a few days later there would be posted in Zone police stations
where all who turned the leaves might read:

Special Order No. ....
Having been found Guilty of charges of
Neglect of Duty
preferred against him by his commanding officer
First-class Policeman No. 88
is hereby fined $2.

Chief of Division.

But shades of John Aspinwall! Should even a detective work on such a
Sunday? Surely no criminal would--least of all a black one. Moreover
these forest-walled banks were also part of my beat.

The sun was hot, yet the air of that ozone-rich quality for which
Panama is famous. For headgear we had caps; and did not wear those,
though barely a few puffy, snow-white clouds ventured out into the vast
chartless sky all the brilliant day through. Then the river; who could
describe this lower reach of the Chagres as it curves its sev