t 7:30 at
Gatun.

I wandered and inquired for some time in a black night--for the moon
was on the graveyard shift that week--before I found Gatun police
station on the nose of a breezy knoll. But for "Davie," the desk-man,
who it turned out was also to be my room-mate, and a few wistful-eyed
negroes in the steel-barred room in the center of the building, the
station was deserted. "Circus," said the desk-man briefly. When I
mentioned the matter of weapons he merely repeated the word with the
further information that only the station commander could issue them.

There was nothing to do therefore but to ramble out armed with a lead
pencil into a virtually unknown town riotous with liquor and negroes
and the combination of Saturday night, circus time, and the aftermath
of pay-day, and to strut back and forth in a way to suggest that I was
a perambulating arsenal. But though I wandered a long two hours into
every hole and corner where trouble might have its breeding-place,
nothing but noise took place in my sight and hearing. I turned
disgustedly away toward the tents pitched in a grassy valley between
the two Gatuns. At least there was a faint hope that the equestrienne
might assault the ring-master.

I approached the tent flap with a slightly quickening pulse. World-wide
and centuries old as is the experience, personally I was about to
"spring my badge" for the first time. Suppose the doortender should
refuse to honor it and force me to impress upon him the importance of
the Z. P.--without a gun? Outwardly nonchalant I strolled in between
the two ropes. Proprietor Shipp looked up from counting his winnings
and opened his mouth to shout "ticket!" I flung back my coat, and with
a nod and a half-wink of wisdom he fell back again to computing his
lawful gains.

By the way, are not you who read curious to know, even as I for long
years wondered, where a detective wears his badge? Know then that long
and profound investigation among the Z. P. seems to prove conclusively
that as a general and all but invariable rule he wears it pinned to the
lining of his coat, or under his lapel, or on the band of his trousers,
or on the breast of his shirt, or in his hip pocket, or up his sleeve,
or at home on the piano, or riding around at the end of a string in the
baby's nursery; though as in the case of all rules this one too has its
exceptions.

Entertainments come rarely to Gatun. The one-ringed circus was packed
with every grade o