I went back into the operatives’ room, where Jack Counihan was slumped down in a chair reading a magazine.
“I hope you’ve thought up something for me to do,” he greeted me. “I’m getting bedsores from sitting around.”
“Patience, son, patience—that’s what you’ve got to learn if you’re ever going to be a detective. Why when I was a child of your age, just starting in with the agency, I was lucky—”
“Don’t start that,” he begged. Then his good-looking young face got earnest. “I don’t see why you keep me cooped up here. I’m the only one besides you who really got a good look at Nancy Regan. I should think you would have me out hunting for her.”
“I told the Old Man the same thing,” I sympathized. “But he is afraid to risk something happening to you. He says in all his fifty years of gumshoeing he’s never seen such a handsome op, besides being a fashion plate and a social butterfly and the heir to millions. His idea is we ought to keep you as a sort of show piece, and not let you—”
“Go to hell!” Jack said, all red in the face.
“But I persuaded him to let me take the cotton packing off you tonight,” I continued. “So meet me at Van Ness and Geary before eleven o’clock.”
“Action?” He was all eagerness.
“Maybe.”
“What are we going to do?”