“This is silly,” the redhead gulped, shocked cold sober as she got a gander at Byron’s touch of ague. “He couldn’t hurt a flea.”
“Sneff wasn’t a flea,” Willie pointed out. “Alls he has to do, your han’some spouse, is offer to give his prints to show he is innercent. If I ever saw murder in the worst degree—how about it, pal? We can make an ink-pad an’—then we can forget it was you who spilled tobacker flakes in a rose while rolling—”
“Stand back!” Byron Bonnay cracked. “They won’t never take me! Everybody—”
“Why, he packs a Roscoe,” Willie said. “Would those bullets that are now on the D.A.’s desk and whicht was took out of Sneff’s cadaver match with the ones left in that rod? It is no use. The joint is surrounded an’—”
“You goin’ to stand there an’ let this flatfoot send Byron to the chair?” the redhead howled. “Fair weather frien’s, hah? All the hooch you drank on us. Now is the time for all close pals to come to the aid of a party I married—we fix this goof’s wagon an’ nobody can—”
The redhead’s friends rallied together and rushed Willie Klump. Byron Bonnay danced around and tried to get a shot at the president of the Hawkeye Agency and thought he saw a good chance. He fired and Carmen Viranda lost an earring.
Carmen’s male date had Willie around the knees and was sinking his bicuspids in Willie’s calf. The redhead had a babushka wrapped around Willie’s neck and was really getting plenty of leverage on the Klump windpipe. The idle husband took another shot at Willie and just missed.
Willie knew the citizen couldn’t keep missing and he tried to screech for cops. Everything got blacker and he knew he was due for the final curtain. Byron was leveling the Betsy right at his brisket when something flew across the room and knocked the redhead’s mate flat on his face.
A very familiar war cry cut through the buzzing in Willie’s ears. Pressure eased up on his gullet and his eyes cleared. Somebody grabbed at the redhead and tossed her right into the bathroom.
“It’s okay, Willie!” Gertrude Mudgett roared. “I can handle this riff-raff! Just take a seat an’ rest up as—”
Willie crawled to a divan and fell across it just as Carmen Viranda flew over it.
“No punch can keep me down for long,” Gertie yelped, “whether it comes out of a bottle or a bunch of knuckles, Willie!”
“I should of known,” Willie forced out. “I wouldn’t bend Carmen’s boy frien’ anymore, Gert, as he might snap like a ginger-cookie. Anyway, Byron—look ou-u- u-u-ut!”
The redhead’s torch was up on his hands and knees and trying to grab for the gun and Gertie Mudgett came down on the character’s fingers with both heels and Byron screamed like a hyena with an ulcerated tooth and Gertrude Mudgett sat on him and beat him over his handsome skull with both dukes.
“Gather up the gun, Willie,” she yelled. “I think we have occupied this atoll.”
“Yeah,” Willie muttered. “You’d think MacArthur or somebody would of sent the air corpse in first, though. Send a runner to the C.P. and ast for artillery support. These Japs ain’t pushovers—what brought you t’ Okinawa, Gertie? Why didn’ you tell me you joined the Marines? I—”
“Oh, snap out of it, Willie,” Gertie sniffed. “Git hold of yourself. We are in the U.S. and have caught the killer of Brandish Sneff. Remember?”
William Klump picked up his marbles, one by one. When he had his full set, he grinned at Gertie.
“I guess we make a good team, huh? Imagine it, Gert. That Satchelfoot Kelly pinnin’ a rose on me! Call the cops, will you?”
It was sometime later that Byron Bonnay, realizing that even a Philadelphia mouthpiece with connections in Washington could not get a nod from a jury of twelve good men and true, let his hair down to the floor. He dictated the old business he was to get in due time up the Hudson.
“Yeah, if that guy had put that on the market, I would of had to go t’ work. A friend of mine who was the patent attorney Sneff went to tipped me off the gee had a gold mine in that automatic fingernail trimmer and polisher. Anythin’ but goin’ to work is my motto.
“I sat up nights thinkin’ what it would be to have to hop out of the sack at six A.M. It was a fate worse than death. My babe would’ve had to look fer a job, too. I planted the female clues to keep the cops off the scent.
“Oh, I should’ve ditched that artillery, but they are hard to get an’ there was burglars in that apartment house an’—why wasn’t I born willin’ to work like anybody else? I’ll plead insanity—”
“I’ve never heard a worst motive,” Willie clipped. “You should be ashamed of yourself, you fiend. Roll me a cig, huh?”
“I’ll talk to the reporters anytime,” Gertie Mudgett said. “I bet Mrs. Thin Man will give out with a slow burn. Let’s git a radio program to write us up, Willie. Of courst we got to git married as while solving crimes we could easy git compermised.”
“That can wait,” Willie said quickly. “Why, if it ain’t Satchelfoot Kelly!”
“Don’t try to act friendly, you doublecrosser! The D.A. is goin’ to throw the book at you for interferin’ in boner-fried police business! Stole evidence that—”
“You pinned it on me, Satchelfoot, an’ I can prove it,” Willie said. “An’ a rose by any other name if given by you, smells. Read the guilty citizen’s confession, Kelly, an’ see what the motive was and how I tripped him up. The cigaret shortage helped. Show Satchelfoot how you can roll them better than the Lone Ranger, Byron.”
Satchelfoot Kelly walked to a door, opened it and left the room, slamming the door behind him. “It must be dark in there, Gert,” Willie grinned. “That is a closet.”
“As I was sayin’,” Gertie Mudgett said. “We should git married right away as like I said—”
“The place you get licenses is right across the street,” a cop suggested, winking at a newspaperman.
“Nobody ast you,” Willie yelped.
“He has got a right to talk,” Gertie howled. “An’ I’m askin’ right now, William Klump! What are your intentions?”
Willie got up and started running when Satchelfoot Kelly came out of the closet holding a fire extinguisher. It could also snuff out a life and that seemed to be Kelly’s intention. When Willie hid in a cellar six blocks away a half an hour later, he indulged in a wide grin.
“It is nice havin’ a pal to come to bat for you just when you need him. Like Satchelfoot,” he said.
MORGUE SHEET MUSIC
Originally published in Popular Detective, April. 1946.
“Satchelfoot” Kelly was frustrated. He was also discouraged. He sat in a bistro of a sort deep downtown, confiding in William J. Klump, president of the Hawkeye Detective Agency, which proved that he was even more than frustrated and discouraged. Willie, on the other hand, seemed very pleased about it all and even bought Kelly a beer or two.
“Yeah,” Satchelfoot said, “I guess you tumbled before this that I been workin’ on a case of great importance, huh? I been in corporation even with the boys of Scotland Yard who let the big criminals slip through their fingers. They was the boys Sherlock Holmes always beat to the punch. In this case we are lookin’ for some I.D.B.’s, Willie. You have no doubt heard of them?”
I never bothered much with lodges,” Willie replied. “The Odd Fellows was after me once. I had an uncle blackballed by the Red Men, and he run a cigar store at that.”
“No, no,” Kelly sighed. “I.D.B.’s are illicit diamond buyers, Willie, who operate in South Africa. They git natives to hide the sparklers in their nostrils or between their toes and such and give them a few bucks for dornicks that are worth ten thousand times as much.”
“I call that pretty dishonest,” Willie declared. “But go on, Satchelfoot, as I don’t understand how you got mixed up in something that took place in South Africa.”
“The three I.D.B.’s escaped to the
U.S. with half a million in the hot pebbles, Willie. Try and get it through your thick skull. There was supposed to be three of the gees, but we are sure a corpse we took out of the drink at the foot of East Fifty- second made the three. In short, the specifications of the stiff seemed to add up to the ones the Scotland Yards sent over on one of the I.D.B.’s, so now there should only be two. It should be quite difficult to hide a million dollars’ worth of such rocks in New York even.”
“Satchelfoot,” Willie said, “what would you git for Gertie Mudgett for her birthday if it was you had to buy it?”
“A toy atomic bomb if you can purchase one,” Kelly clipped. “Look, I was talkin’ about a big sensational case and you switch off to Gertie.”
“I got to git her somethin’ different,” Willie said, after biting off a hangnail. “I been tryin’ to think for days what I could get.”
“Look, Willie,” Satchelfoot said. “You couldn’t of been listenin’. If one of the I.D.B.’s was knocked off, it was because the other two wanted to split the half million two ways instead of three. What should stop either one of the others figurin’ on not even cutting two ways? You see what I mean?”
“It is too big for me to handle,” Willie admitted. “Once a teacher ast me if a man died an’ left five horses to two sons, how would each git their half, and I said make horse reddish whicht was wrong. Now I think Gertie would go for a bottle of perfume—say some of that Canal Number Nine? Or some shiny custom jewelry. Maybe a ring with a chip diamond—which reminds me for the first time about readin’ once about the I.D.B.’s, Kelly. That was three months back and if you even give a dishonest person a five minute start, you know you have to give up.”
“Awright, beetlehead!” Kelly snarled. “I was goin’ to give you a chance to cut in on a big reward they have out for the crooks if you helped to catch them by accident, which could happen.”
Willie grinned. “I didn’t know you was so big-hearted, Satchelfoot,” he sniffed. “You would ask me to help you find a licorice drop in a load of pea coal, wouldn’t you? Anyway, if I haven’t forgot by this time, two of the I.D.B.’s wore beards when they was chased out of England, huh? Once my old man shaved off his mustache and come home late and ma called the cops and said a strange man was in the house. He spent four hours in the lockup before she recognized him.”
* * * *
Satchelfoot Kelly pawed at his face, took a long deep breath and counted to ten. It was a short count and a waiter took the empty beer bottle from Kelly’s hand just in time, and immediately asked the flatfoot to leave.
“The next time I won’t count!” Satchelfoot yelled from the doorway.
“You never know who are your friends,” Willie said to the waiter, and got up and went into the phone booth.
He called Gertrude Mudgett. “How are you, Sugar?” he asked when he heard the sound of a very familiar voice in his ear. “Say, I got a niece I got to git somethin’ for. I was thinkin’ maybe she’d like a piece of custom jewelry. A big butterfly with a red stone for each eye maybe.”
“You dare give me somethin’ as crumby as that, Willie Klump, and I’ll make you eat it!” Gertie said. “You think you was foolin’ me? Why I can see right through you!”
“H-m-m,” Willie choked out. “I hope when I think I got to have gall stones removed from me,” he said, “you are handy. I hate X-rays and they scare me. Well, I’ll think of somethin’ you like better, like maybe a chindchilla coat lined with ermines.”
“Why, you . . . Ha! I catch on to you, Willie. You want I should start a fight so you could git mad at me and wouldn’t have to buy me nothin’. You are wastin’ your time, and I just can’t wait until I see the package. G’by, Willie.”
Willie hung up and mopped the salt squeezings from his brow.
“She is certainly the most unsuspectin’ person, but I better git somethin’ good or I will git my brains knocked out.”
He walked out of the bistro, ducked into a subway and hopped a rattler uptown. Once in his office he took a thin piece of cold toast from the file marked T and nibbled at it as he bemoaned the scarcity of clients. The door opened suddenly and a man came in. Willie spun around on his chair.
“I got a case for you,” the caller said. “Right here,” Willie said, all agog.
“You come to the right place. The Hawkeye never sleeps.”
“Hun’ert and eighty-eight bucks for the case. This stuff is hard to git, pal. Say, how did I git into a closet? It is the next office I want.”
The character slammed the door and shook Willie’s correspondence school diploma off the wall. Willie Klump sighed deeply and finished his toast. After which he put on his hat and decided to go for a walk. Eight blocks away from his office he went into a drug-store to buy a comic book and while deciding between Og the Ogre and The Purple Phantom, a citizen burst into the pharmacy. He had crossed eyes and little chin, and a derby that he seemed to be balancing on his egg-shaped noggin. He took time out to fill flattened bellows, then a yelped:
“I seen a corpse!”
Willie walked over. He flashed his badge.
“I am a detective,” he said. “You come to the right place, even if it was by accident.”
“You a real detective?” the citizen asked.
“I am not drivin’ a wagonload of cocoanuts if you look closer,” Willie sniffed. “What do I look like? Don’t answer that! Where did you trip over the corpse and are you sure he was one?”
“In an empty lot,” the native gulped. “And I look, pal, when a fella is lyin’ on his back and has his eyes open and don’t laugh when he looks up at me, then I write him off! Come with me.”
The discoverer of a cadaver walked uptown six blocks and then east for five more, and Willie was at his heels when he entered a small areaway a stone’s throw from the river for a four-year-old sprout. He pointed to something that was reclining next to some old auto parts and William Klump soon admitted it was not a canvas top from an old coupe. The victim of foul play, without a doubt, had complained about his last Congressman.
“He was very well dressed indeed,” Willie said. “He is no ordinary stiff. He did not walk up even a second flight for his suits and has quite an extinguished goatee. Now, we’ll look for clues.”
The plain citizen seemed worried. “Er—don’t you think we should notify some policeman?” he asked Willie. “I always thought one should inform Headquarters, when a stiff was found.”
“Yeah,” Willie said, “it is no good keepin’ this to ourselves as where would we dispose of the remains? Hurry and notify the detectives—my contemptuaries. Ask for Aloysius Kilgrimmick Kelly.”
“Ah—er—don’t you know a detective with an easier name to pronounce?”
“Oh, hurry up,” Willie said. “These things won’t keep.”
* * * *
WHILE the character was gone, Willie scootched down and took a the way and knelt beside the cadaver. He came up with a wallet and read the name stamped thereon.
“‘Herkimer V. Fluke.’ Two bullets went through him where only one would of did the trick. The killer had to be sure, huh?”
“Maybe Fluke had double identity with a insurance company,” Willie offered.
The diagnostician of deceased persons laughed with hearty appreciation.
“I don’t git it,” Kelly snapped.
“Well, let’s see if you can git some clues here,” Willie sniffed. “Do somethin’.”
Satchelfoot and the cops went through the old routine, of taking pictures and rifling the defunct character’s clothes and Willie sat on an old auto seat bored with it gander at the deceased, gingerly fingered some jewelry dangling from the loser’s all.
“You would think cops would git out watch-chain.
“Yeah, he went to college once and most likely was a magnum come larder. That is one of them fraternizin’ pins. Kappa Stigma or somethin�
��. But I must remember not to touch the corpse until the cops git here.”
Willie was sitting beside the remains, eating some licorice he had found in his pocket when Satchelfoot Kelly, the medical examiner and other types of John Laws moved into the areaway. Satchelfoot cuffed his derby hat back over his locks and gaped at Willie.
“My good glory!” he yipped. “You git to these murders almost quick enough to have committed the foul deed! You are uncanny!”
“The strangest things do happen to me, I’ll admit,” Willie said. “And I don’t even try, Kelly. Look, this taxpayer was given two shots and not for malaria or typhus fever. Find out who he is. He has not been speakin’ to me.”
Satchelfoot Kelly pushed Willie out of of this rut,” he complained. “This was an important victim and whoever done it would be very smart not to leave nothin’ behind him.”
“Wa’n’t robbery,” Satchelfoot said. “There is moola in his poke. Here is a letter addressed to him from somebody who puts down Fluke is an electric engineer. Fluke lives on West Hun’red and Eighty-Seven Street and we better go and call on the widow.”
“They generally like to be told these things,” Willie said. “So far, you are on the ball, Satchelfoot, but as usual I look for you to wind up right behind it.”
“I got a good mind to wrap one of them old truck bumpers around your dirty neck!” Kelly snarled. “Awright, you look for some clues and if you find somethin’ and try to cover up on it, I will tear off one of your legs and beat your brains out with it.”
“I have not been asleep,” Willie assured Kelly. “I see nothing to go by that would point to the assassin. We had better brief Mrs. Fluke, if Herkimer had one, to see who had a reason to snuff him out.”
Willie accompanied the cops to the Fluke apartment which proved to be a very fashionable layout and Satchelfoot Kelly tipped his hat when he saw the widow.
The Willie Klump Page 3
