Zone Policeman 88; a close range study of the Panama canal and its workers

Strip by strip there opened out before me, as I climbed the Thousand Stairs to the red-roofed Administration Building, the broad panorama of Panama and her bay; below, the city of closely packed roofs and three-topped plazas compressed in a scallop of the sun-gleaming Pacific, with its peaked and wooded islands to far Taboga tilting motionless away to the curve of the earth; behind, the low, irregular jungled hills stretching hazily off into South America. On the third-story landing I paused to wipe the light sweat from forehead and hatband, then pushed open the screen door of the passageway that leads to police headquarters.
Emm—What military service have you had? asked the Captain, looking up from the letter I had presented and swinging half round in his swivel-chair to fix his clear eyes upon me.
None.
No? he said slowly, in a wondering voice; and so long grew the silence, and so plainly did there spread across the Captain's face the unspoken question, Well, then what the devil are you applying here for? that I felt all at once the stern necessity of putting in a word for myself or lose the day entirely.
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?