There was an old fat Irish sergeant of about fifty or fifty-five, James King by name, who used to amuse me greatly. He ruled here like a potentate under the captain, whom I rarely saw. The latter had an office to himself in the front of the station and rarely came out, seeming always to be busy with bigwigs of one type and another. With the sergeant, however, I became great friends. His place was behind the central desk, in the front of which were two light standards and on the surface of which were his blotter and reports of different kinds. Behind the desk was his big tilted swivel chair, with himself in it, stout, perspiring, coatless, vestless, collarless, his round head and fat neck beady with sweat, his fat arms and hands moist and laid heavily over his protuberant stomach. According to him, he had been at this work exactly eight years, and before that he had “beat the sidewalk,” as he said, or traveled a beat. “Yes, yes, ‘tis a waarm avenin’,” he would begin whenever I arrived and he was not busy, which usually he was not, “an’ there’s naathin’ for ye, me lad. But ye might just as well take a chair an’ make yerself comfortable. It may be that something will happen, an’ again maybe it won’t. Ye must hope fer the best, as the sayin’ is. ’Tis a bad time fer any trouble to be breakin’ out though, in all this hot weather,” and then he would elevate a large palmleaf fan which he kept near and begin to fan himself, or swig copiously from a pitcher of ice-water. Here then he would sit, answering telephone calls from headquarters or marking down reports from the men on their beats or answering the complaints of people who came in hour after hour to announce that they had been robbed or their homes had been broken into or that some neighbor was making a nuisance of himself or their wives or husbands or sons or daughters wouldn’t obey them or stay in at night. “Yes, an’ what’s the matter now?” he would begin when one of these would put in an appearance. Perhaps it was a man who would be complaining that his wife or daughter would not stay in at night, or a woman complaining so of her husband, son or daughter. “Well, me good woman, I can’t be helpin’ ye with that. This is no court av laaw. If yer husband don’t support ye, er yer son don’t come in av nights an’ he’s a minor, ye can get an order from the judge at the Four Courts compellin’ him. Then if he don’t mind ye and ye waant him arrested er locked up, I can help ye that way, but not otherwise. Go to the Four Courts.” Sometimes, in the case of a parent complaining of a daughter’s or son’s disobedience, he would relent a little and say: “See if ye can bring him around here. Tell him that the captain waants to see him. Then if he comes I’ll see what I can do fer ye. Maybe I can scare him a bit.”