4

Monday, 12:05 P.M. to 3:15 P.M.

Monday was warm again, and bright, but at a few minutes after noon Pamela North had thought of nothing to do about it. Mondays were unimportant days, and might as well be rainy. Jerry was always early at his office on Mondays, starting a new week with a new rush and a brisker than normal determination. It always interested Pam North to notice that by Fridays, and sometimes even by Thursdays, the need for prompt arrival, for going at things with a will, apparently had lessened. Possibly, she sometimes thought, authors boiled up on Mondays; just as possibly, only publishers did—or perhaps only Gerald North, who on Mondays was almost entirely North Books, Inc.

Pam sat in her living room, listening to the faint sound of Martha’s progression through the rest of the apartment, and tried to read the Herald Tribune. She had read first the account of the murder of Mrs. Grace Logan, which seemed accurate except that the name Whitsett was spelled with two “t’s” in the second paragraph and, compensatorily, with four “t’s” in the fifth. From this, Pam had gone on to what seemed like the murder of the world and then, in the hope of consolation, to Walter Lippmann. This was one of the days, she noticed, on which he wrote as if he ought to be President. (He had his vice-presidential days and even, sometimes, his merely senatorial ones.)

“He ought to be President,” Pam told Martini, who was stretched up Pamela, a furry paw soft against Pamela’s neck. “Either he or, come down to it, Jerry. Would you like to be a presidential cat? Live in the White House?”

Martini shook the end of her dark brown tail from side to side, and Pam said she probably was right. “Of course,” she added, “before they fixed it up, it ought to have been a good place for mice.” To this, Martini made no comment, beyond faintly purring. She was an introverted purrer, merely vibrating within. Gin purred for the world to hear. Pam, with the arm allowed her by the one they called Cat Major, tried to turn the Herald Tribune inside out to reach the editorial page, upon which she often read the letters to the editor, although rarely the editorial articles. But this caused Martini to move uneasily, and to quit purring and to open reproachful blue eyes, so Pam abandoned it. One should, Pam felt, try to preserve a sense of proportion. She managed, without moving too much, to reach a cigarette and get it lighted. She blew the smoke carefully over the top of Martini’s head. She thought of murder.

There seemed, in connection with this one, either too little to go on or too much. A missing niece, who probably had nothing to do with it; a grief-stricken young man loosed tragically, almost surgically, from a safe dependence; a biochemist with wide-spaced eyes and open face and a tendency to flush readily; a man who was, for reasons not apparent, following the biochemist from place to place; a slim, decisive, pretty girl named Lynn and her mother, no longer slim and perhaps never decisive, yet in appearance oddly like her daughter. And, of course, Pamela’s three aunts.

She wondered briefly whether to try to reach the aunts on the telephone, and decided not yet to disturb Martini.

“After all,” she told the cat, who now was asleep again, “after all, they’ve gone to Wanamaker’s. It always takes ages.”

Then she smiled, remembering Aunt Thelma’s remark when, at a few minutes after nine, just after Jerry’s resolute departure, they had talked together on the telephone. Pam had suggested lunch.

“We’re going to Wanamaker’s,” Aunt Thelma had told her, firmly. “If we can’t go to Florida until tomorrow, we can at least go to Wanamaker’s.” She had then suggested that Pam might like to go along.

Pam had felt duty closing in a little inexorably, and wriggled free.

“It’s because it’s twins, I guess,” Pam said. “But I always get lost and never find anything.”

To this Aunt Thelma had said merely “Oh?” at first and then, in a puzzled tone, “I’m sorry, Pamela. The connection—”

“Twin buildings,” Pam said. “Siamese, really, because of the bridge. Anyway, I have to wait for the maid.”

Pam then suggested dinner and duty, having got her unexpectedly by the throat, chuckled evilly. Aunt Thelma had said that that would be nice, unless they were too tired. She had asked Pam to call later. Now, Pam decided, was not enough later.

She wondered what Bill was doing, and what he had made of Lynn Hickey and her mother, except for the obvious—that Lynn and Paul Logan were in love, the girl, under the strain of what had happened, rather irritable in her love. Probably, Pam thought, Lynn was often irritated with the boy—with his gentleness, with what was perhaps uncertainty and perhaps an inner lack of decision, with what clearly was, at least in obvious matters, a lack of self-confidence. Well, Pam thought, the girl is young; she’ll have to learn about men, if she’s going to marry one of them.

“Dear Jerry,” Pam said aloud to Martini. “All the same, I’m glad he’s not, or not very, anyway. No more than the right amount.”

Martini, as far as Pam could determine, understood this aside perfectly. At least, she flicked the end of her tail in sleepy comradeship.

You had only to see Lynn and Paul Logan together to know how it was with them, Pam thought. They had been together in the room when Bill and the Norths returned and so conscious of each other that the most casual enterer of the room became conscious of their consciousness. But they had been apart, apparently because Mrs. Hickey was there—a plump woman, no taller than her five-foot daughter, gray-haired, obviously worried. And, in the end, adamant.

It was true, she had admitted, that she and Grace Logan had had a disagreement, as a result of which she had decided to leave the Logan house and move in with her daughter. But the disagreement had been, for all that, a trivial thing.

“It didn’t basically change the way I felt about Grace,” Rose Hickey said. “Or, I think, the way she felt about me. And it was entirely personal, Lieutenant.”

And there she had stuck. It had had nothing to do with anything which concerned the police; nothing, remotely, to do with what had happened. Bill Weigand was patient with her; patient, afterward, with her daughter.

“I don’t know what it was,” Lynn Hickey had said, her voice crisp. “If I knew, I’d tell you. She won’t tell me.”

“Nothing,” Rose Hickey said. “A trivial thing. It would all—all have been straightened out if—if—” She stopped and her eyes filled with tears.

Beyond that there had been nothing. Rose Hickey had not known of anyone who had had, with Grace Logan, a disagreement not trivial—a disagreement vital enough to lead to cyanide. She, like any number of others, could have placed the poison in the medicine bottle. She had not. Lynn had been at the Logan house, to see her mother—and Mrs. Logan too—several times during the two previous weeks. For all she could remember, she might have been in the bathroom. She recorded denial of murder in a clear, quick voice.

Mrs. Hickey, when Bill shifted from the impasse, had known that Grace Logan was worried about her niece, Sally. But the worry had never been lengthily discussed; Rose Hickey denied knowing why Grace, although the girl wrote her regularly, still was worried about her.

“Of course,” she said, “she may merely have wanted to straighten things out. Not actually been worried. She—Grace hated misunderstandings, and she was fond of Barton too.”

Rose Hickey had not known that Mrs. Logan had sent her son to St. Louis. She had accepted the story that he was with friends in Maryland.

“You?” Bill had asked Lynn.

“I knew where he was,” Lynn had said, and then her mother had said, “Why Lynn!” in a tone which had seemed that of surprise.

And with that, unexpectedly, Bill had ended it for the evening—ended the part, at least, about which Pam knew. The Norths had gone out of the Logan house with Bill, leaving the Hickeys there with Paul, and the Norths had gone home. Bill, probably, had not. Pam wondered what he had done.

The telephone rang then and Pam jumped. So, indignantly, did Martini. The cat landed four feet away and her tail magically enlarged. Then she spoke nastily to Pam and went out of the room.

But Gin, who had been out of the room, now dashed into it, rushing to the telephone, talking with the quick emphasis of an aroused Siamese cat. Sherry loped after her sister, moving slightly sidewise; doing what Pam always thought of as overtaking herself. She sat down to observe Gin, who stood by the telephone and spoke to it angrily; turned to Pamela and spoke sharply.

“I don’t think it’s for you, Gin,” Pam told the animated little cat, and Gin said “Yow-AH!” in a tone apparently of disagreement. “Unless you were expecting a call,” Pam told the junior seal point, and herself picked up the receiver. Gin leaped to the table to help, rubbing against the receiver in Pam’s hand, speaking into it. Over this, Pam North said “Hello?”

“Mrs. North?” a man’s unknown voice said, and Pam admitted it. “This is Barton Sandford,” the voice said. “Mrs. Logan’s nephew.”

Pam said, “Oh” and then, after a second, “Yes, Mr. Sandford?”

Sandford said that this was an imposition and Pam said, conventionally, “Not at all,” not knowing whether it was or not.

“It’s about that man you saw following me,” Sandford said. “It’s got me worried. I thought—I wondered if I could talk to you about it?”

“Well,” Pam said, “I don’t know anything, Mr. Sandford. Nothing more than that a man was.”

“I know,” Sandford said. “I realize that. But—sometimes things come back to people. You know what I mean? I thought if we talked about it there might—well, there might be something that would help you remember more than you realize you do.” He paused. “Frankly,” he said, “it’s got me worried.” He sounded worried.

Pam thought it would do no good. She said so.

“Maybe not,” Sandford said. “Still, I’d appreciate it. Could you possibly have lunch with me somewhere?” He paused. “I realize it’s a good deal to ask,” he said.

“Oh, as for that,” Pam said. “Not at all. Only—”

“You will?”

Pam hesitated a moment, thought “Why not?”, her interest aroused. After all, she told herself, they are my aunts and realized she had spoken aloud only when Sandford said, “Sorry?”

“All right,” Pam said.

“Fine,” he said. “I know a little place in the East Fifties I think you’ll like. Unless you’ve got—?”

“Of course,” Pam said. “Wherever you like, Mr. Sandford.”

He named the little place, and Pam had not heard the name; he gave the address and they agreed on one o’clock.

“Or a little after,” Pam said.

“Yah-OW!” Gin said, this time directly into the receiver.

“One of the cats,” Pam said. “Please, Gin!”

She was told it was good of her, and was appreciated; said “Oh, not at all,” which seemed the only thing to say. As a matter of fact, she added, replacing the receiver, absently scratching Gin behind the ears, it is good of me. Damn good of me. Then she called the aunts again. Wanamaker’s apparently had engulfed them. Pam showered and dressed and called Jerry, who apparently had been engulfed by an author and was probably in the Little Bar at the Ritz. “Engulfing,” Pam thought, had her customary struggle at the apartment door with three cats, all of whom wanted to go too, reopened the door to tell Martha to be sure not to let them out when she went, herself lost Martini in the process, cornered her at the far end of the corridor, put her back in—almost losing Gin—and finally went down and found herself a cab.

“We certainly seem to have lots of cats,” Pam said, absently, and the hacker said, “Huh, lady? Whatcha say?”

“Nothing,” Pam said, and gave him the address.

“I said,” Pam said, feeling she had been rude, “that we have lots of cats.”

“Yeah?” the hacker said. “Well, s’long as you like ’em.” It appeared he did not.

“Probably,” Pam said, “you like dogs.”

“Nope,” the hacker said. “Can’t stand dogs.” He said nothing further until they had stopped at the restaurant in the East Fifties and Pam had paid and tipped him. “Don’t like horses, either,” he said then, and turned contentedly out in front of a truck, which swore at him. He swore back.

Barton Sandford was standing just inside the door, by the hat-checking counter on the left. He was even taller than Pam expected; he was hatless and in tweeds. It was not easy to think of him bent, in a laboratory, over—whatever was bent over in a laboratory. Pam was told that this was good of her, and said “Not at all.” She was asked if she would like a drink, and said “By all means” in a tone unintentionally surprised.

“A martini, please,” Pam North said. “Very dry, if they can, and with lemon peel. But just squeezed, not in.”

There was a miniature cocktail lounge, a dining room beyond it and, from the dining room, stairs leading upward to a second floor. A maître d’, who seemed to know Sandford, pulled chairs for them at a corner table in the cocktail lounge, delivered their drinks there. The drinks were not too dry and the lemon peel was in them. Pam was resigned and thirsty, thought that one can only dream of perfection, and drank. Sandford drank. He repeated that this was damn good of her. Pam repeated that she was afraid she could be of no help.

“Just a man,” she said. “A—oh, a kind of medium man, very quick. On the other side of the street, where you wouldn’t have noticed him, probably. I wouldn’t have, except that when you went into the house, he first stopped and then—well, disappeared. Into an areaway, apparently.”

Barton Sandford listened very carefully, as if he were hearing this for the first time; as if, from these bare details, he could make a picture, and an explanation. He nodded, as Pam finished, and said it was the damnedest thing. His pleasant face was troubled.

He shook his head, his eyes earnestly meeting Pam North’s. He said that was the hell of it.

“I’m trying to find some sort of explanation,” he said. “Any sort. Grasping at—anything. Bothering people. You, for example.”

Pam avoided saying “Not at all.”

“You see,” he said, “after I left last night, I remembered about you and Mr. North. You—work with the police sometimes? I’ve read in the papers—”

Pam had given up trying to explain their status, which seemed to her at all times anomalous. “Working with the police” sounded as if they were informers of some sort. Yet, they did work—at least, they did much associate—with a policeman. It was—

“I suppose we do,” Pam said. “In a way.”

They sipped, while Sandford apparently considered.

“You see,” he said then, “things like this don’t surprise you, don’t seem—well, so damned impossible. You probably have gotten so you expect strange things to happen.”

“Got not gotten” Pam automatically corrected in her mind, and then said that she supposed in a way they had. For some years, anyway, things had happened.

That, Sandford told her, was precisely it. To him, nothing had, so that now it was all unreal.

“You jog along for years,” he said, “and nothing happens. Nobody pays any attention to you; you do an ordinary sort of job. Any day might be any day. You see what I mean?”

Pam nodded, raised her glass, found it empty, put it down again. Sandford, without looking at him, motioned to the maître d’ and then to the empty glasses.

“I work in this laboratory,” Sandford said. “Nothing important. Research, but not important. Not big stuff. I go home at night and Sally’s there. Maybe we go to a movie, maybe we go to the theater. We’ve got a little more money than most. That is, Sally has. But it’s all—ordinary. You never stop to think about it much. You see?”

Pam nodded that she saw.

“Then it goes smash,” he said. “Sally goes away somewhere and I’m damned if I know why. To ‘think things out.’ What the hell do you suppose she meant?”

He seemed to expect an answer. Pam could say only that women got that way, sometimes.

“Sally?” he said, as if Pam knew her and could tell. But now he did not wait for an answer. “Then Grace gets killed,” he said. “Then you say somebody is following me. Me, for God’s sake?”

The drinks came. Sandford drank most of his, seeming not to know what he did.

“It drives you nuts,” he said. “I’ve got to find out what’s going on.”

There seemed to Pam North to be a kind of desperate anxiety in his voice; she felt he was trying to drag something out of her. But she felt there was nothing further in her to be dragged out.

“Apparently,” she said, “this man waited in the areaway for—oh, ten minutes. Fifteen. Smoked a couple of cigarettes. Then went. Anyway, that’s what Mullins thought.”

He said it didn’t make any sense.

“It wasn’t the police,” Pam said. “I’m sure of that. Actually, Mr. Sandford—” She paused and after a moment he said, “Yes?”

“I suppose the most likely thing,” Pam said, and spoke slowly, “is that your wife actually wants a divorce and has somebody following you to—well, to try to get evidence.”

Sandford finished his drink. Then he spoke decisively.

“I don’t believe that,” he said. “She couldn’t do a thing like that. Anyway, she—” he paused. “She knows better,” he finished.

He had, Pam thought, at least convinced himself, probably because he wanted it that way. She finished her drink, thinking that all the same, the man probably had been hired by Mrs. Barton Sandford. She declined another drink, and they went up the stairs to the second floor dining room. She felt that Sandford continued to expect something more from her, some assuagement of his uneasiness, some explanation of what had happened. She hadn’t any.

“The FBI isn’t after you?” she said, after they had ordered.

He laughed at that, said, “Not me” and then sobered quickly, urged another drink. Pam resisted temptation by a narrow margin.

They talked, then, inevitably, about the murder of Grace Logan. Sandford wanted to know if Pam’s aunts were really worried, or had cause to worry.

“I was around to see Paul this morning,” he said. “Rallying round. The kid’s broken up, of course. The cook, Hilda, told both of us about the Misses Whitsett at breakfast. The cops must be nuts.”

Pam didn’t think the aunts were worried, or had cause to be, and Sandford reinforced this, heartily, with a “Hell no!” All the same, the cops were not necessarily nuts, Pam told him. The aunts had been there. Aunt Thelma could have put the poison in the capsule bottle. There was even a motive of sorts. Pam found herself sketching it. Sandford told her it was the silliest damn thing he’d ever heard, as the waiter brought vichyssoise. Pam agreed to this.

“What do the police think?” Sandford asked her, and Pam briefly raised her shoulders.

“Probably nothing yet,” she said. “I’d think Mrs. Hickey might interest them. She won’t tell what she and your aunt—aunt-in-law?—quarreled about.”

“Oh,” Sandford said. “That. Probably about Paul and Lynn Hickey. They want to get married. Lynn’s mother was on their side. Lynn wants to make a man of Paul, probably. He could stand having it done, don’t you think?”

“Heavens!” Pam said. “I only met him for a minute. Isn’t he made?”

“What?” Sandford said. “Oh—not entirely. Grace coddled him. And, I guess, wanted to keep on doing it. She thought Lynn was ‘hard,’ and wouldn’t be good for Paul. So—she thought, or pretended to think, Lynn wanted to marry Paul because he’ll inherit what Grace had. She probably got around to telling Rose Hickey that and—well, there’d be your quarrel.”

“Is Lynn?” Pam asked.

Sandford looked puzzled for a moment. “Hard?” he said, then. “No, I shouldn’t think so. She can take care of herself.”

“And Paul Logan too?”

“Probably,” Sandford said. “But I can’t see either Lynn or her mother doing—well, what was done. I told the lieutenant that, incidentally. But of course, I don’t know. Maybe I don’t know much about people.”

They were at coffee, by then. He wanted to know what the police would do next.

“Ask questions, probably,” Pam told him. “Try to trace the poison. Dig into things.”

He nodded, abstractedly. He paid the check. He said it was good of her to have come.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t help,” Pam North told him. “But I told you I couldn’t.”

He said he knew. He said he had hoped there might be something, anything; that he had hoped she would remember.

“You see,” he said, “I keep wondering if the two things aren’t hooked up, somehow—Grace’s murder and this man’s trailing me, I mean. Because I’m certain Sally has nothing to do with it.” He paused. “With any of it,” he said, his eyes insistent on Pam’s. Pam could not answer that, not being sure of anything about it. She thought she ought to call the aunts.

“Just what you call a ‘medium man,’” Sandford said. “Following me, waiting for me to come out, going away before I did. It doesn’t make sense.”

Abstractedly, she said again she was sorry she couldn’t be more help. It had been just a medium man. She thanked Sandford for the lunch, wondering a little why he had asked her and why she had accepted. On the sidewalk she declined to be dropped anywhere, saying she was walking down to Saks to shop. She walked with Sandford west to Madison, where he was catching an uptown bus; she walked down Madison, looking in windows casually. She stopped at one to look at sports clothes, and was conscious that someone had stopped beside her. She walked on, found a store which promised telephones, and called the Welby from a booth. The aunts were still engulfed.

She left the booth and was vaguely conscious of a youngish man, well-dressed enough, looking at magazines in a rack by the door. Momentarily, she was puzzled that she had noticed him at all and, if at all, why with a faint consciousness of familiarity.

She walked on to Fiftieth and turned west in it to Saks and there walked through broad aisles to the stocking counter. She bought stockings and walked back across the store to men’s handkerchiefs. She bought Jerry 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.

“Well,” 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.

“That man,” Pam said, to her own driver. “That man’s following me.”

“Yeah?” the driver said, without turning. Then, dramatizing it, he did an over-elaborate double-take. He turned around. He looked at Pam North.

“Well,” he said, after his examination. “Could be. I’ll give him that, lady.”

Unexpectedly, Pam North blushed.

“I don’t mean that kind of following,” she said. “I mean following.”

The driver said, “Oh!”

“In 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.

“What 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.”

“Of 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?”

“Now 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—

“Of course,” Pam said. “Take me back.”

“Back, lady?” the driver said.

“Where 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 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.

“Here,” 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.

“Whyn’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.

“Can I help madame?” a salesgirl in black enquired. She could; she had better.

“Something 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.

“But 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.

“Well,” Pam said, “I hadn’t actually planned—”

“Madame will never regret it,” madame was assured.

“Well,” 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 favor?” Pam said. “See if there’s a man outside?”

“A man?” the salesgirl repeated. “Oh—your husband, miss?” The salesgirl’s voice lilted a little; it was, by and large, better to get them with husbands along. A man who could be brought along could be brought to almost anything—up to two or three hundred, often.

“What does he look like, miss?” the salesgirl asked, and Pam hesitated.

“Well,” she said, “youngish.”

“Of course,” the salesgirl said.

“Sort of—well, sort of medium,” Pam said. “Sort of not very tall, you know, but not not tall.” She paused. Thinking of it, she had never seen—or partly seen—a man less easy to describe. “He looks like almost anybody,” she told the salesgirl.

The salesgirl said, “Well,” doubtfully, her hopes a little dashed. He didn’t, she thought, sound like the two or three hundred dollar kind of husband. Some women are certainly casual about husbands, the salesgirl thought, and went. She returned.

“I guess he’s the one,” she said. “There are two of them, actually, but one’s about sixty and with somebody. I guess the other’s the one.”

(Mr. Ralph Hopkins, the other one, an auditor living in Rutherford, New Jersey, sighed at this moment. He wished his wife would come out and show him another. Whatever it looked like, he’d say it was fine.)

“I guess,” Pam North said, “I’d better look at something for afternoon.”