Murder Comes First by Frances and Richard Lockridge Page A

dozen without monograms, was unable to find her charge-a-plate, although she was certain it was in her purse, and noticed a youngish man, well-dressed enough, looking at colored handkerchiefs at the other end of the counter.
    â€œWell,” Pamela North said to herself. “Of all things! Now it’s me! ”
    It was unexpectedly unnerving. It was also somehow infuriating. Why, Pam North thought, the nerve of them—the very nerve of them! Then, impulsively, she started toward the front entrance of Saks, moving at a brisk canter. She’d show them, Pam decided, and emerged into Fifth Avenue, bumped into two people, said “Sorry!” and waved at a taxicab. Miraculously, it swerved in.
    As easy as that, Pam thought, and gave the address of her apartment. There’s—
    The cab stopped at a light. Another cab drew alongside it. In the other cab a youngish man, well-dressed enough, was sitting comfortably, smoking a cigarette. He did not look in her direction. As a matter of fact, he looked away, so that she could not see his face.
    â€œThat man,” Pam said, to her own driver. “That man’s following me.”
    â€œYeah?” the driver said, without turning. Then, dramatizing it, he did an over-elaborate double-take. He turned around. He looked at Pam North.
    â€œWell,” he said, after his examination. “Could be. I’ll give him that, lady.”
    Unexpectedly, Pam North blushed.
    â€œI don’t mean that kind of following,” she said. “I mean following .”
    The driver said, “Oh!”
    â€œIn the other cab,” Pam said, gesturing toward it. But at that moment the lights changed and Pam’s cab started forward with a lurch, so that the other cab was for the moment left behind.
    â€œWhat I want to know,” Pam’s driver said, turning half around, apparently finding his way by supersensory perception, “is he going to shoot, lady? That’s what I want to know. On account of, shooting I don’t like.”
    â€œOf course not,” Pam said, and then realized that she had no real ground for this optimism. For all she knew, shotting was precisely what the medium young man in the other cab—probably behind them now—had in mind. “Why should he?”
    â€œNow lady,” the hacker said, in a tone of weary reason, “you ought to know that. I’m just telling you, I don’t like it. You got to figure he might miss. You give a guy a revolver, or maybe an automatic, and nine times out of ten he hits the wrong guy.” He paused, went deftly around a bus, grazing it only slightly. “Like me, for instance,” he said. “Especially if it’s a big gun,” he said. “A forty-five, maybe.”
    Pam was not frightened by this; she shivered, but she was not really frightened. Only, maybe a cab was a bad idea; maybe she should have—
    â€œOf course,” Pam said. “Take me back.”
    â€œBack, lady?” the driver said.
    â€œWhere you got me,” Pam told him. “Saks.”
    The driver said, “O.K.” and turned emphatically right in Fifty-fourth Street. He turned in front of a bus which was just starting up, and abruptly decided not to. The bus driver leaned out of his window and made remarks. He was still making them when another cab turned in front of him.
    (It was the last of many straws for Timothy O’Mahoney, who had driven Fifth Avenue buses for years and never liked any part of it. “All right,” Timothy said, “that does it.” He opened the doors of his bus, picked up his change holder, and stepped out. Then he leaned back in. “We’re not going no further,” he told a busload. “You can sit or walk.” As for Timothy himself, he walked. Timothy subsequently became something of a hero to the newspapers, if not to the Fifth Avenue Coach Company.)
    By the time of Timothy’s revolt, Pam’s taxicab was half