+By Lieutenant-Colonel Donald Mackenzie.+ For many years the author was Chief of Police in one of the native States of the Malay Peninsula, and here relates three queer little adventures which befell him in his official capacity. "Do you mean to say you can't get any evidence whatever to go on?" "No, Tuan." [Illustration: LIEUTENANT-COLONEL DONALD MACKENZIE, THE AUTHOR. _From a Photograph._] "Then you and your detectives must be a lot of fools! In England a burglar or a murderer might be clever enough to hide all traces of his crime, but out here they are all coolies, and must leave no end of evidence which any officer who knows his work could easily follow up. If you can't do the simplest detective work, you and your men had better return to duty and leave your work to me. The next crime I will investigate myself. You can go." I was Chief of Police of the native State of Sungei Ujong,[4] in the Malay Peninsula, and Detective-Sergeant Cassim stood rigidly at attention before me in my office. As I finished he saluted and left. [4] Now combined with Jelebu and Negri Sembilan. I was a fool--doubly a fool, for I had not only made a statement which I knew was wrong, but I had lost my temper. The Malay is dignified, if he is nothing else, and to lose one's temper with him is to lower one's own dignity, and that means lowering his respect. When a man is worried, however, he is apt to forget the little niceties. Two gang robberies and a murder within ten days, and not a particle of evidence to go on, would fret most policemen's tempers, to say nothing of receiving one's reports back from the Resident minuted, "The police appear to be doing their duty in a somewhat perfunctory manner." I had to trust to my detectives, and they had failed to help me. The following morning Barton, the Collector of Land Revenue, came to my office. "Morning, old chap," he said. "You might send a detective to my house to see if he can find out anything. A burglary was committed last night, but the beggar must have been disturbed, for he only took away a Bee clock." "I'll go myself," I said. I would show Sergeant Cassim how easily a crime could be detected, I told myself. Like most of the houses in the place, Barton's was a bungalow. The upper halves of all the outer doors were venetianed, the doors themselves being merely fastened by bolts top and bottom. We did not go in for locks. The burglary seemed quite simple of explanation. The "boy" must have forgotten to bolt one of the doors, and a midnight thief had simply walked in. Of course, the "boy" denied having failed in his duty--a Chinaman naturally would do so. But why the thief was contented with a clock, value two dollars, when he could have taken twenty times that amount beat me entirely. As we left the compound to return to the office the doctor met us on his pony.