“Madam,” he said, “your husband was a knocked off—er—he was murdered last night!”
Whereupon Mrs. Fluke, who was quite as frail as a hippo that had never exercised, uttered a plopping sound and swooned against Willie’s chest. Willie slumped down in a corner and made a squishing sound and he called for help. Then he got up and took an inventory of his ribs.
“You are every bit as tactful as a citizen who sells chances for a lottery in the same aisle of a church where the vestry is taking the collection,” he said to Satchelfoot.
“You git hardened to this business,” Kelly said as he held the ammonia under Mrs. Fluke’s nose.
After a while the obese doll became articulate and said Herkimer had never even spoken a cross word to anybody and that he must have been a victim of a case of mistaken identity.
Of late, she divulged, Herkimer Fluke had been working on things to do with electronics, but Herkimer never talked too much shop after a busy day’s work.
“You sure he was not workin’ on them automatic—automic bombs?” Kelly asked. “Did he seem secretive and mysterious- like as if he was on the threshold of a big invention?”
“Oh, gosh!” Willie said. “You have been readin’ one of those comic weeklies again, Satchelfoot.”
The upshot of it was that the law gleaned absolutely nothing from the briefing.
“You better forget it, Satchelfoot,” Willie said on the way down in the elevator. “Along with the I.D.B.’s, as you got no more to start out with than a pauper evicted by a poorhouse fire. I have more important things to do than git mixed up with it. I’ll see you around, Kelly.”
* * * *
NOW just three days later, William J. Klump was sitting in his office, still undecided about Gertie Mudgett’s birthday gift and more than a little worried about the slump in free-lance criminal investigation. He put gift hunting out of his mind and turned to the want ads. He scanned four columns of fine print and his eyes slid over to a bunch of type that intrigued him. It was as follows:
FOUND—Music Box. Plays the tune “Moon Over My Amy,” and must be for either jewels or cigarettes. Owner apply Lamprey Pingree, Room 76, Pulzer Building.
“Huh,” Willie said. “I expected to spend about ten bucks at least on Gertie. If whoever mislaid the music box left town I can claim it if I git there first and give a reward of two dollars. I can’t see why it ain’t ethical. Only thing is, I hate that song it plays.”
Willie consulted his conscience again a few moments later and he wasted little time in convincing it he had won the argument. He picked up his hat and set sail for the Pulzer Building.
Lamprey Pingree, to Willie’s delight, proved to be a naive and dumb citizen who wrote figures down in a big book all day long. Lamprey was getting quite round- shouldered and wore specks with lenses as thick as the armor plate on a Tiger tank.
“I come to pick up the music box I lost,” Willie announced.
“Are you ready to identify it?” Lamprey asked.
“Of course!” Willie countered. “It plays ‘Moon Over My Amy,’ don’t it? It is to put cigarettes in.”
“I am satisfied you are the owner,” the drone of the ledgers said, nodding his head.
He opened a desk drawer and handed the works to Willie. Willie thanked him very, very much and also gave him a two- dollar bill for his trouble. Willie lost no time getting out of the office and marveled that there was a character in the world with more gullibility than himself.
“Was that lug dumb!” Willie gulped. “This is quite a find and cost more than I dare to think. It weighs quite heavy. I will wrap it up nice for Gertie. Even she will admit it is different. I wish it played ‘One Meatball,’ though.”
William J. Klump purchased a newspaper and wrapped it around the present and hurried to his rooming house via the Lexington Avenue subway. Just one block from the old brownstone where he kept his old straw suitcase out of the weather, a cab’s brakes squealed. Tires wailed like a banshee and there were sounds that should have stood on Okinawa or along the Rhine.
A bullet tore the laces off Willie’s left Oxford. Another came in higher and went through the pocket of his blue serge and ruined a peanut bar.
Willie hit the concrete and rolled over the sidewalk and down some steps leading to a basement. He crashed into a pile of garbage cans that tumbled down on top of him and garnished him with old lemon rinds, old onion jackets and other assorted vegetable waste that had become quite offensive to the neighborhood.
Some kind people removed the cans and brushed Willie off.
“Somebody tried to kill me!” Willie choked out, with half a carrot. “Didn’t nobody git the number of the murder car? I was walkin’ along . . . Where is my present for Gert? . . . Oh, I got it under my arm still, ha! I wish people would correctly identify victims before they knock them off in this town. First it is Herkimer Fluke, and then me.”
Things around Willie started spinning again. A bystander put an arm around him and asked him questions, and Willie answered them all but only in the abstract. And so it was the next day when the president of the Hawkeye Detective Agency read about himself in the paper. There were two sticks about the to-do on the East Side and the headline said:
PRIVATE DETECTIVE NARROWLY ESCAPES DEATH!
“Huh!” Willie said and gobbled up the fine print. It read:
N. Y. City, Sept. 9-(VP) William J. Klump, President of the Hawkeye Detective Agency, was attacked by unknown assailants late this afternoon a block from his home. Mr. Klump, when questioned by a person who had witnessed the attempted murder, said with a shrug, “It is just another case of mistaken identity, is all. There is an epidemic on. It was nothing.” And the private detective walked away as if it was an everyday occurrence for him.
“I said that?” Willie gulped. “I did that? Why, I don’t remember a thing like—er—I am goin’ to wrap this up right away and mail it this aft and tell Gertie not to open it until her birthday before I am a victim of another misunderstandin’.”
Willie carefully wrapped up the music box, enclosed a note in same and addressed it to Gertrude Mudgett. After which he hurried out and dropped it in the big mail-box on the corner.
“I bet she’ll love that,” Willie said. Satchelfoot Kelly was leaning against the door when Willie returned to his office.
“Hello, Willie,” he said. “I have got a fella under surveyance. He was once an assistant to Herkimer Fluke and accused Herk once of stealin’ plans for an invention he made and then got fired. I ast him for his alibi about where he was durin’ the committin’ of the crime and he said he was home with his wife, but could only prove it by his wife. Wives can’t testify for their husbands, can they? What wife wouldn’t lie for her husban’?”
“Satchelfoot, you get worst every day,” Willie said. “If all dicks was like you, we wouldn’t have a single jail in the U. S. I haven’t time to talk to you.”
“Why was you attackted?” Kelly asked, one eye half-closed. “For publicity or what? Do you know anythin’?”
“Oh, I went to eight grades in school,” Willie said. “I have no idea who would want to kill me.”
“I could name three,” Kelly snapped. “Well, I am goin’ to watch you close.”
“You keep away from me, Satchelfoot. I will be ruined social!” Willie went into his office.
Now, an hour or so later, Willie was sitting at his desk trying to reconstruct the murderous intent to kill him and did not hear the door of his office open. Suddenly something blew up inside his head and everything went as dark as the inside of a raven. Willie felt as if he was sinking slowly down through many layers of black wool and then there was nothing anywhere.
After a while, he opened his eyes and his file cabinet was chasing his desk around the room and he was following both articles of furniture in his old swivel chair. His noggin felt large enough for two citize
ns to start housekeeping in and there was more ache inside of it than in a million old maids’ hearts.
Finally everything became stationary once more and Willie saw that his office had been ransacked. The contents of his file cabinet, the drawers of his desk, his little utility closet were piled up in the middle of the room.
“I am no mistaken identity,” Willie gulped. “Somebody wants me defunct or, wants somethin’ I got. I don’t see what it could be as I don’t own nothin’ more valuable at the minute than a pair of gol’- plated collar buttons. Who would of done it besides Satchelfoot Kelly? I’ll call him quick at Joe’s Tavern and if he is there, he didn’t do it, as he wouldn’t of had time to get there.”
Willie grabbed at the phone and dialed a number. Joe answered and Willie asked for Satchelfoot.
“The lug is here,” Joe said. “Want to talk with the flatfoot?”
Willie certainly did. When Satchelfoot answered, he yelped:
“Look, I changed my mind about not havin’ you watch me close, Kelly. I need a bodyguard as once more I am half murdered, and right in my office. What is it I ain’t got somebody wants? For heaven’s sake, find out who is attackin’ citizens for no reason, huh? Come over and talk it over, Satchelfoot!”
“Yeah, lightnin’ don’t never strike the same tree twice unlest it is aimin’ at it,” Kelly said. “Somehow, Willie, I am sure you are head over heels in a murder or robbery by some way nobody can figure out. Sit tight until I get there.”
“I wisht I was tight,” Willie sighed, then hung up and searched for the little box of aspirin in his pocket.
Finding none, he bathed a great igloo that had risen on his pate with cold water and then sat down to try and work things out with paper and pencil. Even when Willie’s head was not convalescing from a lusty clout, the thoughts inside it were as fleeting as a strawberry soda in the midst of four sprouts armed with as many straws.
Willie scribbled:
No. 1. I never got no clues at all where Fluke was liquidated and have not messed with the rubout in no way, shape or form so who is sore at me and tried to bump me off twice? There is no sense in that.
“No.2. I couldn’t of been mistook for anybody as even I know there is nobody else in the world looks like me. I wish Satchelfoot would get here. I better lock myself in.”
Willie, his door locked, the filing cabinet pushed up against it, sat at his desk facing the window, a window pole resting across his knees.
“Maybe they will make another attack from the rear whicht I have covered . . . Who is that?”
“It is Satchelfoot—I mean it is Kelly!” “I don’t believe it,” Willie said. “It is somebody imitatin’ you. You can’t fool me.”
“Look, let me in, you flathead, or I will murder you!”
“That is what they tried to do awright, but I warn you, if it ain’t you Kelly, I am goin’ to crock you one you will feel in your arches until your dyin’ day!”
* * * *
Klump removed the barricade, opened the door a crack and looked out. He breathed a heavy sigh of relief.
“Er—come in, Kelly. I am sorry I am not myself—er—maybe I am somebody else, huh? A gee who has doublecrossed somebody. Or maybe I am a split personality.”
“You sure must have been boffed pretty hard,” Kelly said, feeling of the knot on Willie’s skull. “It looks like somebody grafted a coconut on your dome. Look, come clean, Willie!”
“Satchelfoot, I am on the level worst than the top of a billiard table, I swear!” Willie stated. “I have no idea why I am so disliked or own somethin’ citizens would murder me to git.”
“Did you buy Gert an expensive present?”
“Huh? I forgot that. Huh, it only cost me two bucks, Satchelfoot. It is to hold cigarettes or slave bracelets or somethin’, and plays a tune when you open it. Anyway, nobody knows how I took that Pingree character for a sucker. I mean, what difference does it make?”
“None, if it was somebody else done it,” Kelly said. “Are you sure it was not made of pure uranium like was in the automic bombs? It could happen to you.”
“Most everythin’ else has,” Willie admitted. “I’ll get it, Satchelfoot; and we’ll examine . . . No, I mailed it to Gertie already.”
Kelly began to chew his nails. “We got to get it, Willie,” he said.
“Wha-a-a-a? Then I will git killed. You don’t know what you’re sayin’! Gertie would think if I ast for it I was goin’ to change my mind. No matter what she’d think, it would be bad for me.”
“On second thought, you ain’t kiddin’,” Kelly growled. “Well, maybe I should forget about it all as I am mixed up in two cases now I can’t git nowheres with. The I.D.B.’s and their swag an’ the Fluke erasure. I better be goin’ on my way, Willie.”
“No, Satchelfoot!” Willie gulped and grabbed at Kelly’s sleeve. “Ain’t we pals? Look, I got to have protection. For once I must have you at my side, in your spare time anyways. Durin’ other times, I will not leave the house.”
“Okay,” Kelly said. “I couldn’t see an Airdale knocked off for no reason. Let me know when you want to walk home, Willie.”
“Right now,” Willie said. “You got a Betsy?”
“What you think I carry, Willie? An orange stick? If you don’t believe . . . Huh, I ain’t got the gun, Willie. I remember now I was at Loew’s theatre and the Roscoe hurt me when I sat down and I laid it at my feet.”
“I’ll see you some time, Kelly,” Willie sniffed. “On second thought it is safer to be alone.”
“Yeah? Well, I’m keepin’ a eye on you, Willie Klump!”
“You better not,” Willie quipped. “You are blind enough as you are and could not spare one.”
Willie reached his rooming house without being molested and made sure the doors and windows of his hall room were securely fastened for the night. He went down to see the landlady.
“Don’t let nobody in to see me,” he told her. “It is a matter of life and death.”
“Sometimes you frighten me, Klump!” the old doll said. “I wish you’d give a week’s notice. I’d throw in the rent.”
Willie went upstairs and to bed. The landlady knocked on his door at six A.M.
“Telephone, Klump!” she yipped.
Willie groped to the telephone out in the hall and asked wearily of the gadget: “Who is there?”
“It is me again, Willie,” Satchelfoot Kelly said. “I just happened to think of somethin’. Them crooks couldn’t find that box in your office, and they are plenty smart and will check on you at gin mills and such to see if you got a dame. They’ll work on Gertie, too.”
Willie shivered. “You think they are that tough, Kelly? I’m beginning to git scairt. But they don’t know from nothin’, as she’ll wreck ‘em.”
“Look, Willie. Even that doll is not part of the Eighth Armored Division. A bullet in a vital spot and you are a widower ahead of schedule.”
“You have been readin’ them comics too much again,” Willie sniffed. “Buildin’ a mole out of an anthill. I don’t see no senst in crossin’ a bridge until they build it or when you git to the river. I am goin’ back to bed. By this time the rough boys must see they have made a mistake.”
Willie hung up. Ten minutes later he was snoring soundly.
* * * *
Just to make sure, William Klump did not go to his office the next day. He hived up in his hall room and peered out of the window at intervals. Gertie, he judged, had the package by now.
There was a knock on the door. The landlady handed Willie a circular letter and a little slip from the post-office branch. It said Willie had neglected to put any postage at all on the package and would he come down and correct the error?
“I wish I didn’t forget things like I do,” Willie griped, and grabbed for his blue serge pants that hung over the foot of the bed.
&n
bsp; He emerged from the rooming house, made his way warily to the post-office and bought stamps. He pasted them on the package and retraced his steps. At six A.M. the next morning, the landlady knocked on his door.
“Telephone, Klump!” she yelled.
Willie groped his way down two flights of stairs to the hall phone and cautiously lifted the receiver.
“Who is there?” he asked warily.
“You William J. Klump?” a very strange voice asked.
“I am. And who is callin’ in the middle of the night? My office hours are from nine to six.”
“Look, palsy-walsy, we ain’t kiddin’ around no more. We have a doll here named Mudgett and she says she is goin’ to marry you. Whicht is a slight exaggeration if you don’t fork over that box you got from a fella named Pingree, see? Catch on?”
“You leave her go at once!” Willie yowled. “That is kidnapin’! I’ll call the cops!”
“You do, and if you ever go middle- aislin’ with this babe, they’ll have to carry her by silver handles if you git what I mean! Come over to Apartment Seven C, Waveyer Arms, with the box, pal. We’ll know if you don’t come alone, and it is bye-bye to this female commando. Look, we ain’t in a good mood. She has practically ruined a good boy we thought a lot of, Klump’ I got a bad eye and Jabsy is walkin’ like he went through Ima Jima an’ Okinawa both. So we ain’t kiddin’ no more. We will give you twenty-four hours, or else!”
“Awright,” Willie gulped. “You got me over a barrel, you dirty crooks! I sure hope the mails—er—I’ll be there with the box. You’d think it was worth a million bucks.”
“Only half a million,” the thick unpleasant voice said, and Willie felt a little faint.
He left the receiver dangling and stumbled up to his room to get his blue serge on. When he was dressed, wearing one black shoe and one russet one, the phone called him again. This time the voice that rang in his ear was familiar.
“Kelly, it is you!” he yelped. “Oh, thank heavens! But it is no use as if I approach that place with somebody with me, Gertie will git the works. You keep out of this!”
The Willie Klump Page 4
