Eight o’clock the next morning found me a block below the house in which the Kid had gone, waiting for him to appear. A steady, soaking rain was falling, but I didn’t mind that. I was closed up inside a black coupe, a type of car whose tamely respectable appearance makes it the ideal one for city work. This part of Golden Gate Avenue is lined with automobile repair shops, secondhand automobile dealers, and the like. There are always dozens of cars standing idle to the block. Although I stayed there all day, I didn’t have to worry over my being too noticeable.
That was just as well. For nine solid, end-to-end hours I sat there and listened to the rain on the roof, and waited for the Whosis Kid, with not a glimpse of him, and nothing to eat except Fatimas. I wasn’t any too sure he hadn’t slipped me. I didn’t know that he lived in this place I was watching. He could have gone to his home after I had gone to mine. However, in this detective business pessimistic guesses of that sort are always bothering you, if you let them. I stayed parked, with my eye on the dingy door into which my meat had gone the night before.
At a little after five that evening, Tommy Howd, our pug-nosed office boy, found me and gave me a memorandum from the Old Man:
Whosis Kid known to Boston branch as robbery-suspect, but have nothing definite on him. Real name believed to be Arthur Cory or Carey. May have been implicated in Tunnicliffe jewelry robbery in Boston last month. Employee killed, $60,000 unset stones taken. No description of two bandits. Boston branch thinks this angle worth running out. They authorize surveillance.
After I had read this memorandum, I gave it back to the boy—there’s no wisdom in carrying around a pocketful of stuff relating to your job—and