gnize a man from a loup-garou
by the time the fracas started. Much ardent water had flowed that
night. I took the suspects down to Ancon station and let them cool off
in porch rocking-chairs. Then I gave them passes back to Pedro Miguel
for the evening train. The doll-eyed boy smiled girlishly upon me as he
descended the steps, but the correspondent strode slowly away with the
downcast, cheerless countenance of a man who has been hurt beyond
recovery.

There were strangely contrasted days in the "gum-shoe's" calendar. Two
examples taken almost at random will give the idea. On May twentieth I
lolled all day in a porch rocker at Ancon station, reading a novel.
Along in the afternoon Corporal Castillo drifted in. For a time he
stood leaning against the desk-rail, his felt hat pushed far back on
his head, his eyes fixed on some point in the interior of China. Then
suddenly he snatched up a sheet of I. C. C. stationery, dropped down at
a typewriter, and wrote at express speed a letter in Spanish. Next he
grasped a telephone and, in the words of the deskman, "spit Spig into
the 'phone" for several minutes. That over he caught up an envelope,
sealed the letter and addressed it. An instant later the station was in
an uproar looking 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 whisper