"But I speak Spanish and--"
"Ah!" cried "the Captain," with the rising inflection of awakened
interest, "That puts another face on the matter."
Slowly his eyes wandered, with the far-away look of inner
reflection, to the vacant chair of "the Chief" on the opposite
side of the broad flat desk, then out the wide-open window and
across the shimmering roofs of Ancon to the far green ridges of
the youthful Republic, ablaze with the unbroken tropical sunshine.
The whirr of a telephone bell broke in upon his meditation. In
sharp, clear-cut phrases he answered the questions that came to
him over the wire, hung up the receiver, and pushed the apparatus
away from him with a forceful gesture.
"Inspector:" he called suddenly; but a moment having passed
without response, he went on in his sharp-cut tones, "How do you
think you would like police work?"
"I believe I should."
"The Captain" shuffled for a moment one of several stacks of
unfolded letters on his desk.
"Well, it's the most thankless damned job in Creation," he went
on, almost dreamily, "but it certainly gives a man much touch with
human nature from all angles, and--well, I suppose we do some
good. Somebody's got to do it, anyway."
"Of course I suppose it would depend on what class of police work
I got," I put in, recalling the warning of the writer of my letter
of introduction that, "You may get assigned to some dinky little
station and never see anything of the Zone,"--"I'm better at
moving around than sitting still.
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