The Willie Klump

by Joe Archibald

  Willie began peeling the rose apart. It was still damp and when he got close to the core of the posy, he began to wonder at certain particles that were stuck to the petals. “That is darned funny,” Willie said and examined them closer. “It is not pollen as roses don’t have it that comes off and it is brownish yeller. Huh!”

  He took a toothpick from his pocket and fished out one of the little particles. He tasted it. He bit it with his teeth.

  “Cigaret tobacco,” Willie said. “The doll got some in the rose somehow. Oh, I thought I had somethin’ but it got in the damp petals when she banged a cig down on the back of her hand before she touched it off. It is a swell smellin’ rose and it is a pity one so fair—but was she? I will wait to see her pitcher. Carmen Viranda, m-m-m! I will wear my new yeller and purple tie.”

  * * * *

  A man came in.

  “You William J. Klump?” he asked.

  “I am,” Willie said.

  ‘Have you thought of more life insurance, pal? You never know how close you might come to gettin’ killed tomorrer. So—”

  “How did you know about me an’ Gertie Mudgett? You git out of here this instant!”

  “Huh? Oh, awright. You look like a bad risk anyway, Buster.” And the insurance salesman gave Willie a very uncomplimentary leave taking.

  “The guy must be psychick,” Willie bit out.

  Now the very next evening, Willie shined his brown shoes, took his extra pair of blue serge pants from under the mattress on his bed and trimmed some cuffs of a Parrish blue shirt.

  Two hours later he was sitting in a small bistro on East Forty-Eighth with Carmen Viranda, as slick a dish as was ever cooked up by Ma Pulchritude. Willie wondered if she had painted her wine-colored frock on and she had an upsweep hair-do and a shade of lipstick that turned his knees to cornstarch pudding.

  “You are ravenous tonight,” Willie gulped.

  “You’re not just kiddin’, Sugar. I could eat a steak the size of a barrel-head and I will.”

  “A steak? Why—there ain’t no steak to be had—is there?” Willie asked.

  “Sure. They ain’t on the menu. They got ‘em here if you know ‘em. Five fifty—with onions.”

  “Couldn’t we have ‘em without the five- fifty? I mean—I only got—one yesterday an’—” Willie perspired freely. His assets came to just two bucks, sixty. He wondered how he was going to beat this rap. “I got to make a phone call home,” Willie said.

  “You fergit somethin’, Sugar?”

  “I fergot to stay there. Well, I’ll be back in a jiff. I—”

  Carmen Viranda hooked an arm through Willie’s and hung on until a waiter took an order for two steaks. Willie knew his ruse had failed. He said a prayer under his breath. “Oh, git me out of here somehow, somebody. It is a busy place an’ the dishes must be stacked ten foot high in the sink. Oh, Lord, if Willie needs succor now—he sung in the choir for four years—Amen.”

  “You look a little sick, Sugar,” Carmen said and pulled at his ear. “Ain’t you havin’ fun?”

  “I could scream laughin’,” Willie forced out.

  “Go right ahead,” said a voice that Willie had heard many times before. He winced, swung his head around. Gertie Mudgett stood eyeing him, arms akimbo, jaw thrust out, and primed for combat.

  “Who is the character?” Carmen Viranda wanted to know, and then Gertie pulled Carmen out of her chair by the ears, lifted her off the floor and then bounced her on her veranda. Carmen arose and swung on Gertie and Gertie ducked and threw a hook of her own that landed on the digit decorator’s chops and Carmen’s eyeballs would have clicked together like pool balls if it had not been that the bridge of her nose separated them.

  Willie Klump watched all this from under the table. The waiters converged on the battling females and finally ejected them. Willie crawled across the floor to the kitchen and made his hurried exit in that manner.

  “Well, my prayer was answered,” he gulped. “The hard way.”

  Willie was in court the next day watching Gertie pay some lettuce for disturbing the peace and he also read a paper where it said Hermone Oglamack was cleared of a murder charge, she having proved where she was every hour of the night of the rubout.

  There was a picture of Hermone in the journal and she was a ringer for Bacall and Willie knew she was innocent right then and there, as why should a cute wren like her want to have a date with a very insignificant homely citizen like the late Brandish Sneff anyway.

  “That means the murder case is open still,” Willie told himself. “It is a free-for-all. I think I will mooch down to where that Sneff lived and see if I can git in an’ look around.”

  * * * *

  The president of The Hawkeye Detective Agency met Gertrude Mudgett outside a few minutes later.

  “Don’t you hit me!” Willie yipped. “You already paid through the nose an’ anyway it was your fault you sicked me onto designin’ dame. You pushed me right at her.

  “But I never was so glad to see anybody like when you arrived an’ saved me from K.P. Steaks, she ordered, Gertie. Oh, I was I in an awful spot an’—”

  “It is only because I can’t afford another assault with intents to kill, Willie Klump,” Gertie snapped, “that saves you, you two- timin’ bum! Well that lunchhook trimmer won’t be in no shape to steal no other guys for awhile. The next one I catch you with I will ruin for life.”

  “You are sure devoted to me,” Willie said. “If you don’t mind, I have some business to look into, Gert. I guess you saw where Satchelfoot Kelly missed the bus again. If he ever has a conviction it will only be the courage of his.”

  “I don’t see you solving no cases, Willie Klump,” Gertie retorted. “How do you expect to support me I want to know.”

  “Why, I never expected, I mean—that is—I we are still young. We—” Willie backed away. “Let’s talk things over sometime, huh?” He got to a kiosk and ducked out of sight.

  “I wisht she wouldn’t rush me like that. Only two years we been goin’ together. You look at a dame an’ they think it is a promise. Well, where was I goin’ now? Oh, yeah, Brandish Sneff’s.”

  * * * *

  When Willie got to where Sneff once lived, he found the door open and he walked in and made his way to the ex- inventor’s workshop. Here he found a little male number with pink eyes and a cowlick looking over Sneff’s belongings. Willie nodded pleasantly.

  “Are you the feller executing his estate?” he asked.

  “I am Leander Sneff, poor Brandish’s brother. And who might you be?”

  “I am William Klump, Detective. Here is my card.”

  “Really? Well, I hope somebody can find out who did this awful thing,” Leander said. “This is quite a strange looking contraption I have here, isn’t it, Klunk?”

  “The name is—skip it. What is that?” Willie asked.

  “He had a label on it. It says Manicurself,” Leander replied. “Wonder what it means? Here’s another invention that could of made him rich, Krump. A door key and flashlight all in one. Oh, he was smart as they came, wa’n’t he?”

  “But not smart enough to stay,” Willie quipped. “A manicurself. It says just what it means. You don’t have to go to a barber shop to git a manicure and look at the dough a dame could save. Well, you find any clues saying a murderer might have been here and who it could of been?”

  “I ain’t a detective, Kump. What beats me, though, is what they said about Brandish havin’ a tate-a-tate with a member of the opposite sex. Why he was scairt of women. Brandish would pull his hat down over his eyes when he passed a show window of a store displayin’ lingery.”

  “It beats me,” Willie said. “Unlest he reformed. I am tryin’ to think of somethin’ I can’t very well. I should go over to my office and put down some notes. I feel for you durin’ your bereavement, Mr. Sneff.”
>
  “Don’t mention it,” the little citizen said, and busied himself with another gadget he found thrown into an old box. Willie looked about for several minutes but found nothing in the way of a lead.

  He left the place and meandered to his office and there he sat down and tried to reconstruct a crime although he had no idea how it had been built in the first place. The telephone set up a fuss and Willie answered it. It was Gertie.

  “Hello, Willie. You know what? That Carmen was reg’lar. She called me an’ said you never told her you had pledged a trough with me or elst she would have kept her hooks off. She wants that we should join her an’ some friends in a party Sat’ day night an’ make it a sixsome.”

  “Is that good?” Willie wanted to know. “The first thing I know, Hitler will be forgiven an’ git invited to dinner in’ Drowning Street. Awright, but somethin’ tells me it will end up in a night court some place.”

  “You be sure an’ behave, Willie Klump!”

  “Me? Who starts it every time, huh? I er—let’s drop it as we’ll—okay, I’ll meet you at six-thirty, Gert. A client just come in so I have to hang up.” Willie turned and saw a woebegone Satchelfoot Kelly take over the other chair.

  “Don’t look at me like that, Willie,” Kelly said. “You got to admit if you was in my place, you would have figured it just as easy.”

  “Tryin’ to make me admit I am as dumb as you, huh?” Willie sniffed. “I won’t. I bet the slayer was not a doll but left clues only a doll would leave so’s the cops would chase dames everywhere instead of males—what am I sayin’? That could be true!”

  “You got somethin’ there, maybe,” Satchelfoot admitted. “But there ain’t a clue, nor no motive. The little victim had no more enemies than Little Eva in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I wisht I had just a little start. Willie, you hidin’ anythin’ from the cops like always even though you never know you are unless I tell you?”

  “Stop braggin’,” Willie said. “You only got your dome to keep your ears from sticking together. An’ I am a very busy man as I keep office hours. So long, Buster.”

  “The next thing I pin on you won’t be a rose, flathead,” Kelly snapped.

  “By the way, Satchelfoot,” Willie grinned. “Don’t never give away souvenirs at the scene of a crime. There is no way of tellin’ who it once belonged to. Not that it means anythin’, but remember it was you give it away.

  “You would catch a fish an’ throw it back in and it would be caught the next day by somebody else who would cut it open and find a sparkler worth about sixty G’s in its stomach.

  “If you get what I mean. Satchelfoot, it is just you are glued to the eightball.”

  “I never knew I could hate you, Willie, more than I did yesterday,” Satchelfoot yelped. “If somebody hated Sneff like I do you, then I am glad I am unable to git on his trail. The next mushrooms you eat I hope ain’t them at all, just toadstools!” And Satchelfoot Kelly went out and slammed the door.

  “He is more fun,” Willie grinned. “Now what was it I said? Oh, what was it? About a guy plantin’ the clues so’s people would think—I must of forgot.”

  On Saturday night, William Klump met Gertrude Mudgett in front of the latter’s rooming house and they took a cab to Carmen Viranda’s apartment on West Fourteenth Street. Here a party was already in progress and the radio was on and Willie first looked at the handsome looking gee who was dancing with a red-headed dish.

  But for a slight mouse under one eye, Carmen seemed in the pink and Willie was sure she had been imbibing more than just celery tonic, or she would not have been sitting on the mantel with a candlestick balanced on her hair-do.

  “Park the bodies and name your liniment,” Carmen said. “We even emptied our lighters in them skull-busters.”

  “Well, you ast for it,” Willie said under his breath to Gertie.

  “Listen, we will be somebody after this,” Gertie replied. “So—”

  “If we can remember we are,” Willie countered. “Let’s get interduced.”

  * * * *

  Carmen’s date was an ordinary looking bar-fly. The redhead’s was something else again. He had all the good looks a dozen other men had been robbed of. He was the athletic type and fairly reeked of savoir faire. His locks were curly and the color of an old pair of well polished cordovans. Carmen Viranda came down off the mantel and introduced the redhead to Willie and Gert.

  “Carelesh of me, huh? Meet my ol’ pal, Claire Bonnay, who makes more lettuce in the manicure business than anybody in the big town, Willie. She can afford to support that big han’shome bum of a husband without him workin’, and who wouldn’t if they could an’ had a chance? At the same time, meet the great hunk of wasted man power. Byron, this is William Klump, a detective.”

  “A pleasure, Mr. Klump. I’m a dog, aren’t I? But I love it. I never did like to work and isn’t a person crazy who doesn’t have to and does?”

  “Ah—er—I would think a citizen would have some pride,” Willie sniffed and shook hands with Byron’s workhorse.

  Gertrude Mudgett said, “You be careful what you say to my frien’s or I’ll—”

  “Oh, forgit it, Gertie,” Claire Bonnay said. “Byron has been insulted by experts and does not take offense at all, as he knows what a louse he is. As long as he can live without working that is all he cares. If I didn’t love the no-good bum like I do, he’d be out on his ear tomorrer morning.

  “Let’s forget every thin’ an’ have fun, shall we? Come on, fill your glasses again. Anybody who ever claimed they was able to go out on one of these binges even on their hands and knees was liars.”

  “I think we should go, Gertie,” Willie said, shuddering as Carmen poured more panther perspiration in his glass. “If you knowed what just one is startin’ to do t’ me—”

  “They won’t never drink me under no table, Willie Klump. I’ll show ‘em! Come on, fill this up ag’in, or is a Scotchman tendin’ bar?”

  “Look, Gertie—”

  “Shut up, Willie. Nobody is goin’ to say I am no wet blanket.”

  “No good’ll come of this,” Willie groaned. “One swallow of this I got just snapped my head back. I—”

  “Byron,” the redhead yipped. “Roll me a cig too. Show these folks how we lick the shortage. We don’t stand in them long cig lines, not us. Another reason I am willin’ to support the han’some bum. He can make a cigaret as good as any machine. He’ll roll us all one, won’t you, darlin’? Or do you want me to bend a chair leg over your sculpture’s dream of a noggin?”

  “Why, I would be charmed, I’m sure,” the parasite said. Willie slyly poured his cocktail into a plantpot and the begonia began to wilt in hardly any time at all. Then he sat back and watched Mr. Byron Bonnay display his skill at fashioning a coffin-nail.

  And for the first time, Willie Klump became aware of the fact that the human leech was wearing a white rose in his buttonhole. An association of ideas had a conference in the back of Willie’s head. He began to take interest in the party.

  “Watch him,” the redhead said. “Hardly spills a smidge of tobacco. No cowboy could even tie this handsome jerk! Give that one to Gertie, Byron.”

  “He’s a lucky stiff,” Carmen’s boy friend piped up. “What a wallop he’d get if the manicure business took a dive and it was fashionable to bite your own fingernails off, huh?”

  “You bring up a point there,” Willie said, wondering if someone else had spoken. He saw a few particles of the makings spray the white rose and he uttered a little choking cry and nearly passed out. The redhead rushed to the bathroom and brought Willie some ammonia.

  “Imagine it,” Gertie Mudgett said. “What a weaklin’ I got. Two snorts and he is ready for the cleaners’. Oh, I’ll train him. Willie, stop actin’ silly. I am on my seventh and I can’t feel a thing. I could walk a chalkline right now. I—”

  Plunk!
/>   “Gertie!” Willie cried out. The redhead sighed.

  “That is how they generally go out, Willie. But you have fun just the same.”

  Willie Klump glared at the survivors, dared them to mention Gertie’s fadeout in a derogatory manner. Nobody made a crack.

  “Roll Willie a cigaret, Byron,” the redhead said. “Show him how you can.”

  “Amazin’,” Willie enthused as he watched the legalized gigolo roll a casket spike. He thought of an invention that had never hit a market and a lot of little needles began tatting up and down his spine. He took the cig and let Byron light it and he could smell the scent of the parasite’s posy. It reminded Willie there was a book he had yet to read— “A Tea Rose in Brooklyn.”

  “You know we should get home too, you pretty bum,” the redhead said, after a third nightcap. “Somebody’s liable to break in and lift the family jewelry. They have robbed a dozen apartments in the joint the last three weeks.”

  “Yeah,” Byron said. “An’ if I only catch any of the crooks in the act—I may not be a breadwinner but I got the stuff to protect the bread my baby brings home.”

  “Come on, this is getting to be a dead party,” Carmen said. “Fill ‘em up.”

  “Speakin’ of dead parties,” William Klump said, as unthinking and as blunt as always, “no doubt you read of one named Brandish Sneff. Somebody rubbed him out.”

  * * * *

  Byron’s glass shook and splashed giggle water on Carmen’s frock.

  “The assassin was careless an’ should of wore gloves,” Willie said. “There was fingerprints at the scene of the deed. We git them matched up right—”

  “What you lookin’ at my husban’ like that for, Willie?” the redhead screeched. “You’d think he done it! Ha—”

  “Did you?” Willie asked the parlor type. “Wha-a-a-a? Are you crazy, Klump?”

  “I’ve been called that,” Willie said. “All I know is Brandish Sneff invented a gadget that would of put bowcoop manicurists out of work if it had been made in big lots. Sneff called it The Manicurself and it was why he was liquidated, I’ll bet my clean shirt. The criminal lost a rose out of his lapel. Coincidents, huh? That is no geranium you got, Junior!” he tossed at Byron.