“Women,” Hymie said, and shrugged. “Who knows what they will do, Buddy? You should ask me to figure them out when guys like Julius Caesar an’ Mark Anthony. . .”
“Sooner or later she will show here, Hymie,” Willie said. “From now on I am livin’ with you in the back durin’ business hours.”
“Three dollars a week and maybe breakfast,” Hymie said.
“It’s a deal,” Willie said. “You got a phone? I must can Digges and Berriam, where DeMurrage is goin’ to be laid out in his lost-all-hope chest.”
“In the back,” Hymie said. “Next to the bronze elephant.”
Willie contacted the morticians. Mr. Digges answered and told Willie that a woman had called an hour before and had said she was the late DeMurrage’s sister and wanted his clothes, which she took.
“Have I done wrong?” Mr. Digges asked.
“Can’t you remember?” Willie quipped. “G’bye now.” He hung up and sat down on an old African war drum. “Now, we will just sit an’ wait,” Willie said.
“What else?” Hymie sighed.
William Klump lounged around in the little back room for hours, listening to the radio and bemoaning the fact that Hymie did not go in for comic books. It was about nine-thirty p.m. when Hymie pushed a little buzzer which told Willie that a dame had entered the store.
He got up and opened the door a crack, saw a representative of the distaff side that spun his eyeballs around in their sockets. The number was tall and willowy and had red hair. She wore a veil covered with what looked like currants to Willie, and a short mink coat with chapeau to match. Summing her up, she looked like a fugitive from a magazine cover.
“I am in a little difficulty,” the doll said to Hymie and her voice made Willie’s heart flutter. His kneecaps became butterscotch pudding. She lowered the voice until only the proprietor could hear and talked for ten minutes. Finally Hymie nodded.
“I understand, Ma’am. So you bring the money, you have it the bracelet.”
“You are a darling,” the doll said, and clicked out on heels as high as Willie’s temperature. Willie gave her time to get away and then emerged from the back room.
“You git her name an’ address?” he asked eagerly.
“What else? Ah, she called me darling, Klomp,” Hymie sighed. “From now on, I am dissatisfied with my home life.”
Willie got an address. It read: Mrs. H. K. Thripp, Shoder Arms Apartments. 800
East Eighty-Ninth Street.
“See you again, Hymie,” he said, and sprinted out.
It was nearly ten-thirty when William Klump took a gander at the mailboxes in the lobby of the swanky pueblo not far from the East River. A name plate caught his eye—Harcourt Thripp, Apt. D-9. Willie drew a deep breath, took in his belt another notch and went over to the elevator. A dusty attendant looked him over.
“Delivery entrance aroun’ back, Boss.” “Huh?” Willie grunted, and flashed a
badge, but quick. The flunkey’s eyes rolled. “Sorry, boss. Me an’ mah big mouf! Go-o-oin’ up!”
ILLIE pressed a button. The redhead came to the door, wrapped in a negligee that would have been of little use
in an eskimo igloo.
She ogled Willie for a moment, began to close the door.
“It is an outrage, the Fullam Brush people sending salesmen at this hour!”
But Willie’s foot was in the door. He held a pawn ticket in his hand and waved it under Mrs. Thripp’s retrousse nose.
“Now, can I come in?”
“You certainly can,” the redhead purred and swung the door wide. She slammed it shut and asked, “Who are you?”
“William Klump, private detective, is all. Why did DeMurrage have the ticket on the wrist bobble, huh? Who knocked him off, sister? Why does the bracelet say it is from Harcourt to . . .”
“I didn’t kill him!” the doll snapped. “It is none of your business, see?” She crossed the room with Willie dogging her steps and trying to keep his mind on his work. Mrs. Thripp took the lid off an ebony box, whirled and pointed a Roscoe at Willie.
“Hand over that pawn ticket, stupid!” she said. “Or this might go off. You forced your way in here and I had to kill you. There has been an epidemic of robberies here so the cops. . .”
“I bet you told Harcourt you was robbed of that trinket Hymie has in soak,” Willie clipped. “You was that way over Mervin an’ he got in a jam an’ needed ready scratch an’ you let him hock the . . .”
“I give you ten seconds to hand over that pawn ticket, pal!” the redhead bit out.
“I’d git the worst end of that swap,” Willie said, and his eyes widened as they stared at the window behind the glamorous Mrs. Thripp.
She fell for the moth-eaten ruse, turned her head slightly and Willie stepped in fast and got his arms around her, which was a pleasure in more ways than one. He pinned the redhead’s arms to her sides and was nearly swooning from the effects of the perfume she wore when the door opened and a beefy citizen barged in.
“Again, hah?” the arrival roared. “Another guy, hah? Com weez me to ze Casba-a-a-ah? So I’ve got to knock off another one, have I? All right, so . . .”
“Shut up, Harcourt!” the redhead shrieked. “He doesn’t know you—he—so it was you killed . . . what am I saying? Look, Harky, this is a big mist . . .”
Willie released the doll and stabbed a finger at Harcourt Thripp.
“The violently jealous hubby, yeah? She has been ogling other guys, huh? You give yourself away. Thripp, ha! Where is the Luger you rubbed out DeMurrage with? Want to see a pawn ticket for a bracelet, Harcourt?
“Well, I got it an’. . . . What am I sayin’? Now, don’t put up a fight as if I don’t catch you, somebody elst will. Drop that cannon, Mr. Thripp!”
“I am going to knock you off, whoever you are,” Thripp said. “Then I rub out a two-timing redhead. Then I might fix my own wagon, although I’ll have to think it over a lot. Pretty soon undertakers’ll have to give me a cut hah?”
“Huh-huh,” Willie forced out. “Look, you can maybe beat the rap as there is a law they haven’t writ yet about unfaithful dames. Let’s stop gettin’ excited an’ talk this over.”
“You first,” Harcourt Thripp said and shifted a fat cigar from one side of his mouth to the other.
He leveled a big Betsy at Willie and was about to turn it loose when Mrs. Thripp touched off her small persuader. A bullet whipped the cigar from Harcourt’s teeth and disconcerted the outraged husband long enough for Willie to eat up yardage across the lush carpet and drive the top of his hard head deep into Harcourt’s meridian.
“Woof!” Mr. Thripp grunted and left his feet and ended up in a corner, sitting in a very large jardinière. Harcourt wriggled like an eel on the end of a gaff but found himself fully wedged and resorted to cussing.
“I saved your life,” Mrs. Thripp yelled
at Willie. “How about a two-hour start for the border?”
“You got t’ testerfy,” Willie said, rubbing his head, wishing Thripp had not worn his big silver watch. “Sorry, Red. You just come along quietly an’ . . .”
“Oh, yeah? So you want to make it the hard way?” the redhead said and snatched up her Roscoe once more.
“Surprise!” Willie yelped. “Look, I got a Luger. Shall we shoot it out, babe? Draw, pardner!”
“Don’t be silly, Lucille,” Harcourt yowled. “This lemonhead has the drop on you. Anyway you’ve got to stay alive to admit in court you drove me temporarily insane by going about with and entertaining other men when I was away. They’ll let you go afterwards. I’ll do life at least and I’ll have a long beard when I come out and will be too old to hunt you down and finish you off. Git me out of here, copper!”
“He has somethin’ there,” the redhead said to Willie. “Here I almost put myself in’ the rotisserie. You will wai
t until I make myself presentable for the D.A.?”
“He would not mind the way you are,” Willie snickered. “But maybe you know best?”
Willie had to hit the big jardinière with a fire-axe he found out in the hall to get the corpulent Harcourt Thripp loose. Harcourt made one more try for Willie and Willie had to boff him with the Luger.
ATCHELFOOT KELLY walked into the D.A.’s office at eight-thirty in the
morning.
“I’ll have a confession out of that old goat by noon, D.A. I—what are you doin’ here, Willie? Who are these . . .”
“The male rubbed out Mervin, Satchelfoot. Don’t interrupt until the stenog has heard his sordid story. He is Harcourt Thripp. This gorgeous creature with the red
locks drove him to his fate, Kelly. Just sit down an’ listen to this. It is her turn next.”
Satchelfoot Kelly gaped like a goldfish at feeding time and groped for a chair. He kept staring at Willie, even though the best eyeful the D.A.’s office ever saw was sitting there, displaying twenty bucks worth of nylons.
“I got ‘em both out of hock, Kelly,” Willie said. “Redeemed ‘em with that ticket you thought was mine. Imagine my surprise when I got home an’ found there were two. But listen to the culprit, Satchelfoot, as he is tellin’ all.”
The newspapers of a certain type clowned around with the story. William Klump was found by the assassin of Mervin DeMurrage with his arms around the guilty party’s wife, who had been dressed in a wrapper absolutely unsuitable for the cocktail hour in a public bistro.
“Private Detective Klump, when questioned, admitted the arrest had been a pleasure,” a tabloid writer informed the public. “It is rumored that Klump spent the rest of the night in a hospital with a thermometer in his mouth and two trained nurses in attendance.”
Gertrude Mudgett called Willie at his office at nine-thirty.
“This is Gert. I was right about you, you cad! It was a redhead an’ it is too bad for you I am psychric, as I have some loot myself, William Klump. A Luger with two loaded clips, but I will have use for only one. I am givin’ you a fair start, Willie, like I’d even give a skunk that don’t wear blue serge!”
“Look, Gert,” Willie yelped. “I can explain what hap—oh, she has hung up!” Willie hung up himself and then clicked for the operator. Getting her, he asked for the nearest police station.
“Sergeant Grofogskowski speakin’,” a voice said.
“I am tippin’ you off,” Willie told the
law. “A dangerous character is around loose, a dame, packin’ a concealed weapon. A Kraut Luger. You should pick her up in the vicinity of Forty-Sixth an’ Lexin’ton, but approach her cautiously. She is a hefty doll with ginger-blonde locks, has a snub nose an’ a lot of chin. Got that?”
“Yeah. Who is this?”
Willie disclosed his identity. “Call me later huh?”
Willie got a call two hours later. It was
Gertrude Mudgett, much deflated and
calling from the hoosegow. She wanted Willie to come quickly and spring her. She assured Willie the cops had the Luger. She begged him to agree to bury the hatchet.
“You hand over the ax to the cops too, Gertie Mudgett!” Willie said harshly. “You don’t happen to have poisoned choklits on you also? Well, I’ll be over sometime t’ day.” Willie hung up, and signed deeply. “Ain’t we the romantic couple, though?”
AN ACE AND A PEAR
WILLIAM J. KLUMP, President of the Hawkeye Detective Agency, arrived at his office
one morning to find his phone disconnected, mice working on the cinnamon buns he’d saved for his breakfast, and a letter. On the outside of the fat envelope were the words:
DURKLE DETECTIVE SCHOOL.
Booster Course. Stop. Don’t Throw This in the Waste Basket or You’ll Throw Yourself Behind the Times!!!
“I certainly almost did,” Willie said, and ripped open the envelope.
This was what he read:
Dear Mr. Klump: You realize reconversion in this post-war world definitely applies to criminal investigators as well as everybody else? Well, it does! Will crooks work with the old methods when they rob safes in the future? Of course they won’t. Instead of using the nitro soup they’ll split part of an atom! They’ll open bank vaults by sound waves and electric eyes.
Think of the thousands who have been all over the world in this war and who have found out new ways of poisoning people in New Guinea, Borneo, Burma, and all those other savage places! And have you given a thought to all the new weapons that have come into this country with returning G.I’s? You should! Guns like Finnish Suomis, Italian Glisentis and Berettas, Nazi Walthers and P-38’s, Austrian Steyrs, and Jap Nambus, among hundreds of others.
Modern detectives must have a list of all the new poisons, must know electronics and Radar, the theory of the atom bomb and jet propulsion,
besides Judo and other things too numerous to mention.
Act Now! We’ll prepare YOU in all these new developments in TEN easy lessons for ONLY TWENTY-FIVE DOLLARS! Sit Down RIGHT NOW and ENROLL.
Willie groaned.
“If it’s goin’ to be this complicated, I better quit. I never paid much attention to the old ways. But to be on the safe side, I better sit right down an’ write.”
William Klump wrote to the Durkle Detective School and made the statement that he was enclosing twenty-five dollars before he realized he did not have that much scratch available. He quickly picked up the phone, waited five minutes before it occurred to him that he had been black- balled by the public utilities.
“This is incrimination!” Willie snorted. “What chancet has a small business man? I’ll go an’ picket the telephone exchange! Huh, I can’t even do that as
private investigators don’t have a union.” Willie crossed out a line in his letter,
replaced it with one that assured Mr. Durkle he would send the bite for the booster course as soon as his clients paid up their bills. He breakfasted on a piece of peanut bar he found in his pocket and wondered if it would be very difficult to learn how to grow mushrooms in a cellar. An hour later while he was reading some
old comic books, the phone rang and nearly shook him loose from his shorts.
“They connected me up to ast me to pay up, is all,” Willie snapped and grabbed the phone. “Yeah, this is the Klump Detective Agency, an’ go ahead an’ see your alley lawyers! An’ what’s more, I’ll write to my Congressman about your moloponists—why, Gertie!”
“Yeah, I was told you got disconnected,” Willie’s torch said, “so I went an’ paid your bill. I am losin’ my patience with you, Willie Klump, and do not intend to marry a man who won’t go to work. Wouldn’t it sound nice to my frien’s if soon I had to sue you for non-support?”
“Don’t cross the river before they build a bridge,” Willie sniffed. “What’s more, you got all my dough an’—”
“So I’m a gol’ digger, huh?”
“I didn’t say that. I only said—”
“That is gratitude for you, William Klump,” Gertie yelped at him. “In my noon hour I am goin’ back an’ git my money back from the telephone company an’ make them disconnect us permanently an’ for good. You ingrate!”
“Look!” Willie gulped. “We was to have dinner t’night, Gert. You said it was your treat an’—”
“Ha ha! Think of me t’night while I am eatin’ a filly minion with a new boy friend, Willie!”
And Gertie hung up.
ILLIE was definitely down. As far down as all the Number One Nazis.
He was as low as the chin on the first man on a totem pole. His pockets assayed seven cents and some lint. At noon he went out and purchased a bag of salted peanuts and drank three glasses of water. During the afternoon he checked over his files and called certain members of the distaff side who had once hired him to che
ck up on playful spouses. All of them
assured Willie that their connubial problems were no longer any affair of his and to be careful in the future regarding his business methods or he would find himself out of employment.
“Oh, yeah?” Willie told one of the ladies, his brain getting no chance to first consult matters with his tongue. “Maybe that blonde I saw your bread-winner with a couple of nights ago is teachin’ him Spanish lessons. G’bye!”
At five-thirty, Willie’s pride had taken a worse beating than Schmeling in his second tiff with Joe Louis. His stomach was protesting worse than the stranded Pacific troops. He wanted pie, no matter how humble and so he hopped a subterranean rattler and went downtown to see Satchelfoot Kelly, a citizen who was, to say the least, under normal conditions, a prize polecat in Willie’s book.
Kelly was just leaving his office when Willie arrived at the beehive of Gotham law enforcement.
“Satchelfoot,” Willie said, “I am in a spot an’ when I git in one I always asks myself what are pals for if not to help, huh?”
“Stop beatin’ aroun’ the mushberry bush,” Kelly said, the tip of his nose curling as it always did when it was in close proximity to Willie. “You want t’ make a touch, huh?”
“Somethin’ awful happened,” Willie said. “My pocket was picked an—”
“Nothin’ would bother to try that, Willie, an’ you know it, not even a self- respectin’ termite,” the headquarters detective scoffed. “You have become a bum, so admit it.”
“Awright, kick me when I’m down,” Willie sighed. “All’s I need right now is three bucks, Satchelfoot.”
“Yeah? I’ll tell you what, Willie,” Kelly grinned. “You can’t be trusted with that much. I’ll take you out to chow with
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