perhaps no small amount; compared with what it might have been
under prevailing conditions it is little.

As for detecting such felonies, police officers the world around
know that theft of coin of the realm in not too great quantities
is virtually as safe a profession as the ministry. The Z. P.
plain-clothes man, like his fellows elsewhere, must usually be
content in such cases with impressing on the victim his
Sherlockian astuteness, gathering the available facts of the case,
and return to typewrite his report thereof to be carefully filed
away among headquarters archives. Which is exactly what I had to
do in the case in question, diving out the door, notebook in hand,
to catch the evening train to Panama.

I was growing accustomed to Ancon and even to Ancon police-mess
when I strolled into headquarters on Saturday, the sixteenth, and
the Inspector flung a casual remark over his shoulder:

"Better get your stuff together. You're transferred to Gatun."

I was already stepping into a cab en route for the evening train
when the Inspector chanced down the hill.

"New Gatun is pretty bad on Saturday nights," he remarked. (All
too well I remembered it.) "The first time a nigger starts
anything run him in, and take all the witnesses in sight along."

"That reminds me; I haven't been issued a gun or handcuffs yet," I
hinted.