Contents
COPYRIGHT INFO
A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER
MURDER IN THE WORST DEGREE
MORGUE SHEET MUSIC
WHERE THERE’S A WILLIE THERE’S A WAY
AN ACE AND A PEAR
HUBBA HUBBA HOMICIDE
FIT TO BE TRIED
THE MOURNING AFTER
WHEN A BODY MEETS A BODY
PHOTO FINISH FOR A DAME
KLUMP A LA CARTE
STUCK WITH THE EVIDENCE
WHAT A SHAMUS!
STATE PENMANSHIP
DYING TO SEE WILLIE
THE GAT AND THE MOUSE
A LAM TO THE SLAUGHTER
OF DICE AND MEN!
CHEESECAKE AND WILLIE
The MEGAPACK® Ebook Series
COPYRIGHT INFO
The Willie Klump MEGAPACK® is copyright © 2017 by Wildside Press, LLC. All rights reserved.
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The MEGAPACK® ebook series name is a trademark of Wildside Press, LLC. All rights reserved.
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A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER
The character of William J. “Willie” Klump had quite a career in the pulps. He first appeared in Popular Detective magazine in 1938 and went on to appear in more than 60 stories over the next 21 years. Willie is something of a loser, but as a private detective he somehow always manages to get the job done (often with the help of friends, including his girlfriend and secretary, Gertie Mudgett, who often saves the day).
Willie was the creation of Joe Archibald (1898-1986), a prolific writer who published more than 900 stories in the pulps, digest, and “slick” magazines like Collier’s and The Saturday Evening Post. He also illustrated prolifically for pulp magazines.
Enjoy!
—John Betancourt
Publisher, Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidepress.com
ABOUT THE SERIES
Over the last few years, our MEGAPACK® ebook series has grown to be our most popular endeavor. (Maybe it helps that we sometimes offer them as premiums to our mailing list!) One question we keep getting asked is, “Who’s the editor?”
The MEGAPACK® ebook series (except where specifically credited) are a group effort. Everyone at Wildside works on them. This includes John Betancourt (me), Carla Coupe, Steve Coupe, Shawn Garrett, Helen McGee, Bonner Menking, Sam Cooper, Helen McGee and many of Wildside’s authors…who often suggest stories to include (and not just their own!)
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TYPOS
Unfortunately, as hard as we try, a few typos do slip through. We update our ebooks periodically, so make sure you have the current version (or download a fresh copy if it’s been sitting in your ebook reader for months.) It may have already been updated.
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MURDER IN THE WORST DEGREE
Originally published in Popular Detective, Feb. 1946.
William J. Klump, president of The Hawkeye Detective Agency, sat at his desk in his abbreviated office and busied himself with some plain and fancy doodling. Crime that required the services of a private gumshoe was not exactly rampant and had not been for several weeks and Willie was as far down in the mouth as was Jonah that time in relation to the whale.
Willie was not the detective the scenario writers dote on portraying. His feet were large enough, but not flat, and one side of his mouth was not pulled out of shape by talking out of it exclusively or stuffing it continually with fat stogies. Willie’s face was such as to spur criminal characters to lift bigger things.
There was a sound at the door and Willie was about to rush for the closet and hide in same, having been threatened by bill collectors for three days, when he noticed that two letters had been slid under his door.
“It is maybe clients at last,” Willie exclaimed and snatched at the mail eagerly, He made himself comfortable and tore open the first epistle. It said:
ARE YOU A DOODLER?
Have You Run Out of Ideas?
50 New Curly cues and Designs for $1.00.
Send For Them Immediately. Our Supply is Limited.
Willie sighed and opened his other letter. It was another circular asking him if he wanted to be a detective. Humiliated, disgusted and indignant, Willie balled the sheet of paper up and threw it in the waste basket. The telephone rang and he snatched it.
“Hello, hello. Just a minute, as I have three clients on the tel—huh, stop kiddin’ as it is you, Gert?”
“Maybe you was expectin’ a call from Grable? Look, it is about time you took me out to dinner, Willie Klump, as I am not goin’ to sit and twiddle my thumbs waitin’ for the likes of you, not when I could have the pick of a dozen guys if I was so inclined. Shut up! You will meet me in front of Svensen’s Hungarian Restaurant at seven sharp, you know that?”
“Awright,” Willie sighed. “But look, business has been awful so you’d better bring some scratch as if you don’t want dishpan hands—what do I do with my money? It is not Morgenthau who meets me out in front here every time I get a fee, is it?”
“He quit awhile ago, Willie. You should know that. Oh, incineratin’ I put the slug on you, huh? I’m a chis’ler, am I? A golddigger. Well, let me tell you—”
“Look, gimme a chancet, Gertie. I only said—”
“We’ll talk that over when we eat, Willie Klump!” Gertrude Mudgett said and banged up the receiver and nearly broke Willie’s eardrum.
“For two bucks I would stand that dame up,” Willie snapped, “if it didn’t mean it would cost me five to get my right arm set. Oh, well, there is nothin’ I can do but be there.”
Willie met Gertie on time and escorted her into the restaurant and Gertie grabbed one of Willie’s hands and took a swift and critical gander at it.
“William Klump, that paw is a disgrace. When did you last git a manicure?”
“Me? I ain’t no sissy,” Willie said, amazed.
“You got a nerve appearin’ with me in public with such mitts,” Gertie said loud enough for the kitchen crew to hear. “You must of been minin’ for coal somewheres with your bare hands. You could open a can of salmon with each of them thumbnails.”
“I hate salmon,” Willie sniffed: “Anyway, you know I never liked fancy trimmin’s.”
“Oh, no?” Gertie rejoindered. “I have heard they never could make no silk purse out of a souse’s ear, but I will do it if it kills me.”
“I think it is worth tryin’, then,” Willie said and quickly wished he hadn’t. Gertie Mudgett dropped a forkful of mashed and peas back into her plate. “I did not like that crack, William Klump! So you would as soon I would kick off, huh? Let me tell you somethin’, you fugitive from a psycopatrick ward. As far as 1 am concerned, you can—er—what you shakin’ a finger at me for?” Gertie howled at the waiter standing near the cashier’s desk. “I’ll come over there and bite it offen you an’ hand it to you on a plate!”
“Here we go ag’in,” Willie said. “Look, if I promise to go to a barber shop tomorrer an’ git my nails filed, will you leave us finis
h our chow, Gert?”
“Okay, Willie,” Gertie said. “You never saw me when I wouldn’t listen t’ reason. It is a deal.”
* * * *
Gertrude Mudgett even paid the check and Willie was sure an era of good feeling was sweeping over the world. So the next forenoon Willie hied himself to a barber shop and sat down in the chair at the little table behind which was one of the cutest cupcakes he had ever see.
Her coiffure was as black as Goering’s future and her eyes made little gremlins do folk dances inside Willie’s stomach. Willie planked both hands down on the table and the manicurist picked one up.
“Didn’t you want a blacksmith shop, Bub?” she asked. “Not that I know of one in New York. Since they built subways an’ had autos—”
“I did not come here to git insulted,” Willie sniffed. “I will take my business elsewhere—” He got up to go but the gorgeous one still held to one of his big lunchhooks. “Oh, I was only kiddin’, big boy. Park the physique and let me start paring the pinky first.”
Willie grinned. His pulse went crazy and a barber paused at his task and asked a customer who was beating the bass drum somewhere nearby. Fifteen minutes later, William Klump left the tonsorial parlors with sore fingers and a date the next night with Carmen Viranda.
He was in a sort of trance when he crossed Madison Avenue near Forty-ninth and so did not entirely miss contact with a very fast moving sedan. He was picked up fifteen feet away, along with a headlight.
“Better get him to the hospital,” a strange voice said and then a much more familiar one yelped, “Don’t waste your time, Mike. Who is it but Willie Klump! An’ he lit on his head. Leave him be here as he will walk away in a minute.”
“Oh, an’ become a hit and run driver, huh, Satchelfoot?” Willie yipped. “I wouldn’t put nothin’ past you. You pick me up an’—”
“There is a corpse waitin’ uptown,” Kelly roared. “If I dropped into the ocean from an airplane I would git swallowed by a shark and find you inside it. Put him in and let’s keep goin’, Mike. This flathead can get in on murders the d—est ways. This time he nearly gets half-killed to do it.”
“Wha-a-a-a-t?” Willie yelled. “Boy, is this my lucky day?” and he got up and brushed headlight glass off his blue serge, put a knee back in its socket, and asked what everybody was waiting for.
“You ain’t human,” Kelly said.
“Who got killed?” Willie asked when the police car got under way again.
“You might as well tell him, Satchelfoot,” Mike said. “It is a character uptown, Willie. Brandish Sneff is the name. But you keep out of our way, see? Or else—”
“If anybody tells Willie off, it’ll be me, Mike!” Satchelfoot snapped. “I have had lots of practise. Yeah, Willie, if you as much as feel how cold the stiff is, I will finish up what this jalopy failed to do.”
“I know my place,” Willie said in a huff. “Will it hurt you if I watch?”
In due time, the cops were looking at the remains of a citizen who lived in a little house sandwiched between two big apartment pueblos on East Ninety-Sixth. He had just about passed his fortieth year and he wore spectacles with glass as thick as the piece of headlight Willie Klump kept trying to pry loose from his ear.
Brandish Sneff wore his hair long and all indications pointed to the fact that he had eked out a living of a sort by inventing things. There were all sorts of crazy looking gadgets on his work bench and old letters from patent offices were stuffed into a pigeonhole of his old desk.
“Here is a diagram of a—it is writ down, Satchelfoot. It is a cigarette lighter that makes its own fuel. Hah, only an elephant could carry it in a pocket. The guy was balmy, Satchel—”
“I said not to touch nothin’, you clamhead!” Kelly yelped. “Oh, where is that stiff appraiser? We can’t do no work until that M.E. says how long he was dead and why. I don’t see why they need him anyways as—”
A little man carrying a black bag came into the room. His eyebrows twitched and he sneered at Satchelfoot Kelly.
“Look, you poor man’s Sherlock Holmes, I have been here a half hour and have already took an inventory of the corpse. I have been out makin’ a cup of coffee. This character has been defunct about eleven hours. He was shot in two places by—”
“Somebody should go and check at the other place, Kelly,” Willie grinned. “Maybe that is where the clue was left.”
“Just keep that up, Willie!” Kelly ripped out. “What I will do to you, people will fergit Nazi murder camps.”
“You won’t do nothin’, Satchelfoot. I have witnesses you hit me with a car. Let’s try and see who done this and see our lawyers after.”
* * * *
Satchelfoot Kelly groaned deeply and then went to work on the case the best he knew how, which was none too good if you asked William Klump. However, the assassin must have been a very careless one as she left a very dainty handkerchief at the scene of the crime, even if it did not bear any initials.
“A dame!” Kelly yelped. “Now why would a dame come to see, much less rub out a gee like Brandish Sneff?”
“He was an inventor,” Willie offered. “It could be he was workin’ on a girdle that would stretch even without elastics and dames would commit murder to get the first one. Or else—”
Satchelfoot Kelly sat down and mopped his brow with the clue. Willie apprised him of the fact that exhibit A was no longer of much use the way he had destroyed whatever perfume or print that might have been on the dainty square of nose cloth.
“You are worse than usual today, Satchelfoot.”
“I’ve stood enough!” Kelly howled. “I am goin’ to pick this cluck up and heave him out in the street, Mike. Give me room here-”
“A friend of mine knows a big lawyer,” Willie hinted. “I could sue for a grand as how do I know I did not git internal injuries as one time I knew a guy who walked around three months with a ruptured spleen.”
“Let’s git busy on the joint,” Satchelfoot said, after a long groan. He and his boys rummaged through Sneff’s roll-top desk and Kelly finally hopped onto a bill that had recently been sent to the inventor.
“For a cossage!” Kelly yelped. “Cost six cabbage leaves and he sent it on the twenty- eighth of the month whicht is only yesterday. We have got the name of the flowerist and they will know the doll who got it and I guess that is pretty good deduction for me, Willie Klump.”
“It is about time you hit on a crime you couldn’t help but solve,” Willie sniffed. “It is just my luck you picked me up on the way to a crime like this one.”
“And here is a small white rose, a little faded, right here by this chair,” Satchelfoot yelped. “She wore that cossage I bet when she eased her heartbeat off. Dames are cold- blooded awright. They can keep cossages in the icebox fer a week.”
Willie began brushing his newly manicured nails on his sleeve and Satchelfoot jumped at him and grabbed both of Willie’s hands.
“Why, dearie, you have a manicure!” he mimicked. “It is like puttin’ a gold dome on a glue factory. If you could only cook an’ sew—here, Willie; lemme pin a rose on you. We don’t need it, we got so much evidence!”
“Awright, go ahead and have your fun,” Willie snorted as Satchelfoot pinned the rose to Willie’s lapel. “Is it a crime I should want some refinery? I am just trying to rise above the likes of you.”
“Only when you git in an elevator that I just miss, Willie,” Kelly laughed. “Now I will call the flowerist.” He got the posie expert on the public utility gadget and Willie plunked down in a chair and wondered why he couldn’t trip over such a simple case of homicide.
“Hello,” Kelly said. “Mr. Emsbok? I am Detective Kelly from headquarters and I am callin’ to see who it was Brandish Sneff sent a cossage to. Cossage-cossage—can’t you understand English? A what? A coresarge. Okay, have it your way. Who? You’ll loo
k it up, okay. . . . Yeah? It was delivered to a Miss Hermone Oglamack, Apartment C Four, Bilk Apartments? Oh, boys, she’s cooked. G’bye Mr. Emsbok.”
“Well, so long, Satchelfoot,” Willie muttered. “I must go and buck that cigaret line on Lexington. I imagine the tail of it is in Passaic, N. J., about now. This smokes situation is gittin’ awful an’ I wish Gert would let me go back to chawing tobacco.”
“Sorry you couldn’t steal this one from me, Willie,” Kelly said. “Read the papers t’night.”
“I never miss Dick Tracy,” Willie said. He made his way over to his office and found no mail and took some cold toast from a desk drawer and spread peanut butter over it. While he ate, he wondered if he shouldn’t take down some notes to see why the rubout of Sneff was so easy. No murderer should be quite so dumb, he mused, to cause him to wonder about it.
“A rose,” Willie wrote down. “By any other name is—no, I mean it was silly of Kelly to hand over even evidence that he might not have to use. Well, he pinned it on me. I’ll save the petals when it is close to being defunct and put them in a bowl.
“She leaves a hanky too. She deserves to git caught quick and I guess Hermone Oglamack is quite an amateur at murder. That means it was done in the heat of an argument and not planned so she beat the braising room up the river. Why am I botherin’ with it anyways as Satchelfoot is already making an arrest.
“That is what puzzles me though. Satchelfoot making an arrest. It is like a foul ball goin’ in the stands somehow. I guess I have not much faith in the big baboon. Maybe I should keep on the beam just in case.”
Willie Klump had no sooner closed up his memo pad when a petal dropped off his rose and fluttered to the desk.
“Huh, it is wiltin’ already so I better pick it apart and put it in the sponge dish here. I wisht it had kept until my date with Gertie tomorrow night—er—what am I sayin’? Why, I made one with that cuticle cutter, that Carmen Viranda.
“Why, I wouldn’t dare—but I’m goin’ to. Oh, boys, she has more curves than the whole Yank pitchin’ staff—I got to think up a swell alibi for Gertie or by this time next week they’ll be diggin’ some dirt back in the family plot on the farm. What’s got into me?”
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