Murder Comes First by Frances and Richard Lockridge Page B

way to Madison, stopped in traffic. Pam looked back through the rear window. Another cab was immediately behind. It appeared to have a medium man in it.
    â€œHere,” Pam said, thrust a dollar at her driver, and departed his cab. She went across the street between two trucks, doubled back toward Fifth. While she was crossing the street, she heard a car door slam. She looked quickly; the medium man was out, on the left. He was waiting for a truck to pass.
    Pam North, taking advantage of this momentary curtain, doubled back again, this time toward Madison. She went east at a brisk trot, which interested other pedestrians. “You’ll catch him, lady,” a truck driver advised her cordially. “Just keep tryin’.”
    This isn’t the way, Pam thought. This isn’t at all the way. This way just attracts him. She slowed abruptly from a trot to a saunter, and was bumped into from behind. She turned to face her pursuer, and faced a very short, very fat man, very red in the face.
    â€œWhyn’t you watch where you’re stopping?” the fat man enquired, puffily.
    Pam said she was sorry, and started up again, finding an average between her two previous gaits. The thing, she decided, was to be nonchalant. She stopped to look into a window. She gazed with rapt interest at two bolts of tweed material, neither of which—she thought under her mind—would be good on Jerry. She looked, as casually as she could, back the way she had come. The medium man would be looking in a window. He was. He was looking with intensity at a display of one, no doubt perfect, hat. Pam, who had been faintly conscious of the hat as she flitted past it, thought of suggesting they change windows. She thought also of confronting her pursuer. Then she thought of her lack of any positive knowledge that he did not, indeed, have shooting in mind. Pam went quickly toward Madison.
    She turned right there and did not look back. She walked to Fiftieth, west again, again into Saks Fifth Avenue. But this time she headed directly for the elevators as, she now realized, she should have done before. She wedged into one and, at the fifth floor—Women’s and Misses’ Dresses—wedged out again. She trotted briskly forward, then to her left, into the salon.
    â€œCan I help madame?” a salesgirl in black enquired. She could; she had better.
    â€œSomething in wool, I think,” Pam said. “And—could you just put me in a dressing room and bring things in? I’m—” she paused. “Rather in a hurry,” she added.
    Into the dressing room no man, medium or otherwise—except, of course, a husband—could follow Pam. She took off her dress, lighted a cigarette, and sat down. She would show him; she had, indeed, already shown him. She sat in bra and nylon petticoat, relaxed. The salesgirl arrived with woolen dresses. Well, Pam thought, as long as I’m here. Anyway, it wouldn’t be right not to. She began to try on dresses. There was a lovely one in a kind of rust color which, it was apparent to the salesgirl, particularly did things for Pamela North. As soon as she had seen Pamela North, the salesgirl had thought instantly of the lovely one in a kind of rust color.
    It was wonderful. It was a hundred forty-five fifty. It was absurd. Pam tried on five other dresses, one of which was only eighty-nine ninety-five.
    â€œBut it doesn’t really do anything for madame,” the salesgirl told her. “A lovely dress, of course, but for madame—” She clucked slightly.
    Pam tried on the rust-colored dress again. It really did do things for her.
    â€œWell,” Pam said, “I hadn’t actually planned—”
    â€œMadame will never regret it,” madame was assured.
    â€œWell,” Pam said, “all right, I guess. Charge and—” Then she paused, remembering she had forgotten why she was there. “I wonder if you’d do me a