The Willie Klump

by Joe Archibald

  Mrs. Plastick came with the glass of water, and Willie wondered at the defunct taxidermist’s apparent splurge into the high brackets just before he was eased into the hereafter. Everything was getting a little mixed up inside Willie’s noggin. He almost forgot the veterinary, called at the veterans’ bureau by mistake to ask for Junius Colt.

  “He is a horse an’ cat doctor,” Willie said.

  “I think we got a psycho here,” Willie heard a man say.

  UDDENLY he remembered he was off the beam and got out of there before

  they collared him. He stopped in at a cigar store and looked up vets in the classified and soon had Colt’s address. He was over on Upper Broadway at about One Hundred and Sixty-Eighth Street. Willie hurried over there and a blond dish asked if he had an appointment and what did he own that was sick in the way of four-legged or feathered friends.

  “It is a personal call,” Willie said. “Sorry, he don’t need any.”

  “I am not sellin’!” Willie flashed his badge. “Take a look at that, Sister!”

  “If I was, I would run away from home,” the blond said.

  Willie was trying to think up a parry

  when a little character wearing a white coat and spectacles came into the office.

  The blond explained and Junius Colt said he would give Willie five minutes and took him into his inner sanctum.

  “It is about Omer Plastick,” Willie said. “Did he ever consult you about a cat? One that was owned by a Miss Peruna Wigginbottom? It was mouse-colored an’—”

  “You are right about that, Klump,” Colt said. “He did bring a cat here. Wanted me to perform an autopsy on it as he thought it was poisoned.”

  Willie’s heart did a half-gainer. “Was it?”

  “It certainly was. Had enough arsenic in it to kill it nine times if it had nine lives like they say,” the vet said. “I remember having a few words with Omer as I lost its tail and couldn’t seem to find it again.”

  “Well,” Willie said. “Things are sure gettin’ crazier all the time, which means I must be on the right track. Good afternoon, Doc. I hope horses an’ elephants start gittin’ bad tonsils an’ you’ll git rich.”

  Willie went back to his office and thought of a shirred beaver coat in a domicile that could not afford anything better than congoleum on a dining-room floor. Peruna Wigginbottom certainly had not paid out eight hundred fish to stuff a cat. When Omer Plastick was tucked into a wicker bye-bye bassinet, Willie had noticed the threadbare seat of the citizen’s trousers. Willie took the wax pear out of his pocket and studied it carefully, knew without much thought that his dentures could not have made the semi-circular depressions in the phony fruit.

  “Well, it looks like I am dealin’ with a cold-blooded killer,” Willie said. “I got enough on a certain character to play my trump cards.”

  He picked up the letter that was still on

  his desk. He read the closing paragraph of

  Durkle’s circular.

  Wake up, you manhunting mossbacks. Crooks are streamlining along with autos, flatirons, and girdles. Modern criminals cannot be stopped by primitive police equipment. For an extra $2.50, you can get the Durkle catalogue of scientific weapons designed to combat crime . . .”

  Willie nodded.

  “The reason I didn’t think Kelly got the right culprit again is a simple one, Durkle. How many old dogs, male or female, can learn new tricks, or want to? Would an old babe who was satisfied with a stereoptican buy a new Kodak to take pitchers? It don’t make sense to me. An’ somebody said strike while the iron is hot, so I might as well get it over with.”

  The president of the Hawkeye Detective Agency picked up an evening paper two blocks away from his office. The headline on the front page screeched:

  RICH ECCENTRIC SLAYS TAXIDERMIST!

  Stuffed Pet Tabby the Motive

  “I do not need to read further,” Willie sniffed. “The arrest was made by Detective Aloysius Kelly, who swiftly gathered the evidence against the accused—”

  William Klump turned into a drugstore, fortified himself with an egg salad sandwich and went into the phone booth. He looked up a name and found that the citizen he was interested in kept his lares and penates in an apartment house on West Seventy-Fifth Street off Broadway. Willie was skipping merrily toward a cross-town bus stop when Gertie Mudgett caught him by the arm.

  “Willie, you don’t look hungry!” Gertie said.

  “Of courst not. I had a ace up my

  sleeve—I mean Satchelfoot Kelly’s sleeve. I am sorry my tongue ain’t hangin’ out an’ all my ribs show for your happiness. I don’t see you wearin’ no shirred beavers sincet you changed boy friends.”

  “Now look, Willie. I only thought that up to make you jealous,” Gertie yelled.

  “Do I look green? Look, leave us stop makin’ a scene here, Gert. I got business on account of a doll worth half a million clams,” Willie said. “As far as I’m concerned, we’re still disconnected.”

  Willie got into the kiosk just two jumps ahead of Gertie’s handbag which hit a very dignified-looking gent in the chops and spread him out over a newspaper stand. Willie sighed deeply as he emerged and ran to the cross-town bus. Gertie could leave the scene of the Donnybrook but there was enough evidence in her handbag to convict her of assault and battery in any court.

  “Poor Gert, she should not be so repulsive—I mean impulsive,” Willie said as he boarded the big bus.

  “Now I better check up quick,” Willie said to himself. “The rubout, the will, the arsenic in the mouser, the vet, the shirred beaver coat, the wax pear—I guess that’s the story. And the Betsy in the cedar chest. Kelly was right as this should be made up in a serial. I wonder did Omer Plastick preserve the tabby’s bread basket in alcohol. I’ll say he did anyways.”

  “Are you Peter Lorre?” a scared voice said to Willie.

  He swung his head around and saw that half the seat was occupied by a timid little redhead.

  “Huh? Me? No,” Willie said. “Was I

  talkin’ out loud?”

  “Yes, you was. An’ stop it, as you scare me.”

  ILLIE was glad when he finally arrived at the apartment house. He

  went up to the twenty-first floor and pushed a bell near a door marked U3. Ellsmere Forditch opened the door and he seemed aghast at recognizing the president of the Hawkeye. Willie walked in without being invited and there were two other characters in the living room, one a male bearing a very close resemblance to Ellsmere, the other, a sharp-faced doll wrapped up in velvet and a short mink job. “I imagine these are the other two relatives,” Willie said tartly. “Gettin’ in their say whicht N an’ J chateau they will send your auntie to. I’m wise to you

  three!”

  “Who is that upstart, Ellsmere,” the niece said in a voice as cold as an eel on ice. “And what does he mean, N and J?”

  “Napoleon an’ Josephine,” Willie explained. “I am sorry my visit is unpleasant, Ellsmere. Was you ever at Omer Plastick’s house?”

  “I—I certainly was not. My aunt insisted on seeing about stuffing her cat herself.”

  “Then you must have a set of uppers that walk in their sleep,” Willie said. “I have a wax pear with the imprint of your crockery in it. It come from a fruit bowl in the Plastick household. You are quite near- sighted, I have noted.”

  What little chin Ellsmere Forditch had quivered slightly.

  “What are you tryin’ to insinuate, Mister?”

  “That you knew from Peruna’s lawyer that she was leavin’ most of her clams to her tabby an’ so you three vultures got t’gether an’ schemed to rub the feline out. You won the toss, Ellsmere, an’ loaded the liver punisher with arsenic. Oh, a certain vet can prove it. Omer Plastick had a hunch an’ consulted the vet before he stuffed the tabby. Omer got in touch with you and threatened to t
ell Peruna and you had to pay him hush money. You knocked

  off Omer and then went to your auntie’s house an’ stashed the Roscoe—”

  “You flathead!” the doll yelped. “I

  knew he’d make a mess of—”

  “Keep your face shut,” the other nephew barked, and unlimbered a miniature howitzer.

  “Well, what is two murders when one has been committed, hah? You should of brought a company of the 82d Airborne, flatfoot, as that is all can stop me from gittin’ my hooks on my share of that lettuce!”

  “The joint is surrounded,” Willie Klump yipped. “You can’t git away with—”

  Taking advantage of a moment’s hesitation on the part of Ellsmere’s brother, Willie managed to grab Ellsmere and use him for a shield. He hooked an arm around the assassin’s neck and shut off most of Ellsmere’s oxygen.

  “Shoot anyway, Humbolt!” the doll shrieked.

  Humbolt banged away and a bullet knocked Ellsmere’s specks off and singed Willie’s locks. The second hit a radiator and ricocheted and turned into a three- cushion billiard shot that finally creased the niece’s upsweep hairdo and spun her around in a tight circle.

  “Don’t shoot!” Ellsmere gulped out. “No? One more rub out an’ we split

  only two ways, dear brother of mine!” Humbolt snarled, and let go once more.

  Willie yanked Ellsmere’s and his own head out of the way in the nick of time, and then the niece grabbed Humbolt around the neck.

  “I got him now, Humbolt,” she yelled. “Finish the dope.”

  “Leggo!” Humbolt screeched. “It is me!”

  “Don’t let him fool you!” the niece yipped. “I don’t fall for that ol’ gag! Why—”

  William Klump had not loitered to examine the prints on the walls. Realizing that the babe had temporarily lost her marbles, the president of the Hawkeye threw Ellsmere away from him and charged low. He hit Humbolt in the belt buckle with the top of his noggin and carried the citizen all the way to the wall and pinned him against it.

  All of Humbolt’s breath whooshed out of his bellows and the Roscoe thumped to the floor. The niece reached for it and Willie’s size fourteen shoe stomped down on her lacquered talons and turned loose a blood-curdling scream from her pipes. In the next moment Willie had the firearm and was head man.

  Two big cops and a few frightened rent payers crashed in on the party and Willie said, “Cone the phops,” and got a little rubbery in the legs. “I am a detective!”

  After the culprits were briefed, and one Lucretia Forditch had let her upsweep down to save her own epidermis, the D.A. sat in his chair and just stared at Willie Klump. Every once in awhile he would glance toward the wax pear that was Exhibit A on his desk, and would keep trying to light the end of his Parker 51. He seemed to be trying never to look toward Satchelfoot Kelly who was showing all the symptoms of a citizen ready to jump up screaming.

  “Yeah,” Willie said. “That pear was bit into by Ellsmere awright, as there is a gap between his front teeth a column of soldiers could walk through. We have two Roscoes now that are almos’ twins, an’ Lucretia’s confession. Peruna Wigginbottom was sure pleased, wa’n’t she? Yeah, an ol’ die-hard like Peruna, who has pitchers of General Grant an’ Lincoln on her wall wouldn’t hide one of MacArthur or Halsey in her cedar chest, D.A.”

  “Stop, Klump,” the D.A. said. “If

  there’s more to it, I do not wish to hear it for awhile. Yeah, the old babe asked for your address.”

  “They poisoned the pear,” Satchelfoot Kelly muttered, counting his fingers at the same time. “Forditch had his teeth-marks in the cat. Mrs. Plastick wondered how a vet could afford a shirred beaver coat—”

  “You’d better leave, Klump,” the D.A. said. “I’ll try and do as much for him as I can.”

  William Klump, just twenty-four hours later received a visitor. It was a messenger boy with an envelope. Willie tipped the carrier a nickel and ripped open the envelope. There was a check enclosed for five hundred clams and the letter accompanying it said Peruna Wigginbottom was just that grateful. With no more relatives left in circulation, she assured Willie that he might expect a little

  more lettuce just after the law of averages caught up with her. Willie was feasting his eyes on the check when the phone rang.

  “This is Gertie, Willie. Oh, I’m so proud of you—”

  “Er—just one moment, Ma’am,” Willie said, taking his mouth away from the gadget. “Miss Brocall, have I many apperntments t’day? I have? Cocktails with you at four? Hello, Miss Mudgett. Sorry I can’t see you this week. G’bye.”

  The phone rang for another five minutes, and Willie grinned at it.

  “I’ll nearly git murdered for this, but right now I can enjoy it. Well, she ast for it. I never ast her t’ pay my phone bill!”

  And Willie picked up the letter from the Durkle Detective School.

  He would send them a check the first thing in the morning.

  HUBBA HUBBA HOMICIDE

  ONE morning William Klump happened to pass by a rooming house on East Forty-seventh Street

  and saw a small black coupe parked at the curb right in front of it. There were big white letters on the jaloppy that said:

  COLBY’S COLLECTION AGENCY

  Several intrigued citizens had gathered and were ogling the auto, and most of them had knowing grins on their physiognomies. “Quite a stunt,” a fat character said. “You don’t have to come right out an’ say whoever lives in there is a chiseler. The landlady must owe somebody plenty, huh?”

  Willie paused also. Then the door of the rooming house opened and an energetic-looking man wearing a plaid suit and a big grin came down the steps counting a little wad of bills.

  “She paid up, huh?” Willie asked. “It is legal what you are doin’?”

  “Natch,” the citizen said. “My card.” Willie took it and pocketed it. “How much is your cut?”

  “Fifteen per cent. Sometimes twenty, accordin’ to how tough the prospect is.”

  Colby got into his car and drove away. “Why don’t nobody tell me these

  things?” Willie said, as he hurried to his office to think.

  The Hawkeye Detective Agency could use a subsidiary, in view of the fact that it was getting to be about as solvent as a hobo’s poke.

  “I can’t afford an auto,” Willie reasoned when he had his feet up on his desk. “But a bicycle with a sign on it would do just as good. He picked up the phone and called a sign painter. Two hours later the glass on his door read:

  HAWKEYE DETECTIVE AGENCY, INC.

  PRIVATE DETECTIVES. MISSING PERSONS FOUND. COLLECTION AGENCY. William J. Klump, President.

  “I’ll need some letters sent out an’ new cards printed so I got to hire a temporary typist,” Willie thought aloud. “Gert will fork over a little of my savin’s if I prove it is to improve my business.” He picked up the phone again. He took a deep breath first. He and Gert had had a little misunderstanding, and he had not seen her for ten days.

  “Hello,” Willie said, when he dialed the beauty shop where Gertie worked. “Miss Mudgett, please.”

  “She ain’t here no longer. Call Madame

  Mujay, Plaza nine, oh, oh, four oh!”

  “Oh,” Willie said. “She quit there, huh?”

  He hung up and called the new number. A voice that was vaguely familiar said:

  “Bon jour, M’sewer. Madame Mujay at your serveece!”

  “Who? Er, this is Willie Klump.”

  “I told you to not never speak to me again, you bum. I am veree bizee an’—”

  “Gert, you have no more French blood in you than a dash-hound,” Willie sniffed. “What is the big idea?”

  “Oh, awright. I’ll explain tonight. Meet me at seven at La Parisienne on Forty- Sixth!” Gertie hung up.

  Willie co
uld hardly wait. When he met Gertie at the eating place, his Adam’s apple spun around and went up and down like a dumb-waiter. Gertie had an upsweep hairdo and a new fur coat, and her face had changed. Willie saw her eyebrows had been narrowed to two little pencil lines.

  “For a minute I thought I made a mistake an’ come to Minsky’s back door,” Willie said. “If everybody in this country wanted to be French what would the UN do?”

  “You wouldn’t understand with your BB brain,” Gertie said. “I have spread out.” “In places, I admit,” Willie said, and escorted Gertie into the restaurant. “Look, what I wanted to see you about, I am expandin’ a little myself and need a little

  financin’.”

  “Now I know you’ll see it my way,” Gertie said as she sat down and inserted a cigarette into a long holder. “I opened up my own place as a lot of the customers where I worked said I should, and two of them backed me with a little money, Willie. They says people flock to beauty shops run by French women as they got the savoy fare. So I took most of your money, Willie, to finance the joint—er—shop. Madame Mujay. I had to look the part, too, so bought a mushrat-dyed mink. Don’t you think I did the smart thing, Willie?”

  ILLIE knew he had to say she did. Otherwise there would be the usual rhubarb. The waiter would come over and request they take a powder and Gertie would swing on him, and then they would be out on the sidewalk. It had been a

  monotonous routine.

  “You did right, Gert,” Willie said.

  “How you doin’, just as if I didn’t know? Why don’t you git pergressive, Willie?”

  “A guy can’t go far if they steal his railroad ticket,” Willie said.

  “There was dirt behind that, William Klump!” Gertie leaned forward, her elbows on the table, like the foreman of a jury when the D.A. draws blood.