Willie’s mouth snapped open and his stomach fell. A gorgeous blonde shut a door behind her and ogled him with lustrous grey-green eyes. Venay Benuta, the Hubba Hubba groaner. Here—with Gazelli. Everything flew around inside Willie’s head. A corpse in a tux, a bedraggled carnation, a pin with a pink head.
Willie remembered a movie he had seen a week ago. He got up and shoved his hand in his topcoat and made as if he had a Betsy.
“Don’t shoot—er—or—I’ll move,” he said desperately. “Frisk him, lady.”
Gazelli lifted his hands. Venay Benuta took a Roscoe from Gazelli’s pocket and when Willie took both hands out of his pockets and hurried over to get the persuader, the night club warbler pointed it right at his ticker.
“Stay put, Buster!” she said.
“I don’t git it,” Willie gulped out. “Don’t you want to be rescued?”
“No. Funny, ain’t it, flatfoot? I found out I liked it here. I took a likin’ to Ancie. We’re that way about each other.”
“Dames,” Willie sighed. “They don’t make no sense.”
“Awright, Klump,” Gazelli grinned. “In that closet where I’m pointin’. Git in there before I break your legs an’ arms and put you in a dresser drawer. We got to figure the best way to bump you off.”
“Look,” Willie yelped. “You—you bumped off Mandy’s bouncer! Oh, I see it all now. You fiends! You are flirtin’ with the hot seat, babe. You better—”
“Me?” the blonde said in her gravelly voice. “I’ll get turned loose soon as we put a deal over, lemonhead. I’ll tell the cops I escaped. I couldn’t identify any of the kidnapers as they were masked and I was blindfolded. Get in that closet, sucker, and don’t drag your feet!”
Willie had no alternative. He went in the closet and the door slammed shut on him and a key turned in the lock. It was as dark as the inside of a lump of tar. He could hear Gazelli talking. The rough person said something about a cement block and the East River. Willie groped around for a light cord and found it. He yanked it and there was light.
He sat down on an old suitcase and heard Benuta say something about shipping a trunk to Argentina with dry ice in it. He wondered what they intended to ship that was that perishable. He thought of one thing, and shuddered.
“All looks lost,” Willie said. “I come to collect a bill an’ fall over the payoff, just as if it will do me any good.”
A decade seemed to slip by. Then Willie heard a knock somewhere. He got up and pressed his ear to the door. Gazelli growled and swapped words with the blonde dish.
“It’s awright, Ancie,” Benuta said. “I
ast her to come.” “Wha-a-a-a-a-a?”
“Oh, go and open the door. I’ve been locked up for four days an’ look at my hair. That dame is the dumbest cluck in the world next to what we locked up in the closet.”
DOOR opened. “Come in, M’dam,”
the warbler said. “Am I glad you got here! Look at my coffure. Isn’t it ridick? And the dark roots are showin’.”
“Bon juror, M’dam,” a voice replied, and Willie’s legs became strips of boiled spaghetti under him. “Eet ees ze nice day, none? Ah—er—you got kidnaped!”
“Look, you dumb crumb-bun!” Gazelli yelped. “You ast this dame to come here knowin’ every cop in town was lookin’ for you? Now, we got two bodies to dispose of!”
“So the more the merrier,” Benuta countered. “These locks of mine will be beyond help if I let ‘em go another day, Ancie!”
“Just a minute!” Gertie Mudgett, alias Madame Mujay, yelped. “I’ve had an ear botherin’ me for a coupla days, but I am sure you said somethin’ about bodies! What goes here? So you put on an act, hah? Maybe to git publisticy, Benuta? But if I remember right, a certain party was knocked off, an’ don’t tell me it was a wax dummy.”
“Look, you phony French twist,” the Hubba Hubba Hartz Mountain canary said, her voice as unlovely as a cheetah’s snarl.
“You ain’t opening your kisser, see. I have already sent you a dozen customers, ain’t I? An’ there’ll be five grand in it for you, too.”
“Why, you—you—you are talkin’ my language,” Gertie said, and Willie sank down on the suitcase and crossed off all the years that should still be coming to him.
“Greed,” Willie moaned. “Avarish. How can there be a better world? There is Gertie sellin’ out for sordid gold.”
“Ain’t I see you somewheres before, Handsome?” Gertie asked.
“I git around,” Gazelli said.
“You sure have,” Willie gulped. “You dumb dame. It was him had us throwed out of the El Clippo before it was the Hubba Hubba. Oh, it is all clear in my dome.”
“Well, let’s get after my hair, M’dam,” Benuta said. “You think Mandy’ll show up pretty soon, Ancie?”
“Yeah. That night club ain’t been doin’ no more business than a oil-burner salesman in the Sahara,” Gazelli quipped. “Yeah, I see you somewhere before, too, babe.”
“Maybe at a convention,” Gertie said. “When do I get the five grand?”
“When we git ours,” the Hubba Hubba doll said. “What you starin’ at?”
“A hat,” Gertie said. “It looks like somethin’ I also saw somewheres before.”
“Yeah?”
“Wa-a-i-i-t a minute,” Willie heard Gazelli say. “Now I remember. Sure! I spent nine bucks for a hunk of black market sirloin to put over my eye. It was a night at the El Clippo, babe. You ruined three waiters, a bull fiddle an’ a bass drum. The punk with you—”
“I never heard nothin’ so silly,” Gertie said. “You must use more snow than Goerin’. M’dam, show me where to plug in my curlin’ iron.”
“Awright,” Gazelli said. “So I’m wrong. Awright. I’ll just sit here an’ keep
rememberin’.”
A door closed. Gertie’s and Benuta’s voices were muffled. Willie heard Gazelli’s voice at the keyhole.
“You know I ain’t kiddin’ don’t you, Klump?”
“It is all Greek to me,” Willie called out.
A key turned in the lock. Gazelli opened the door.
“Come out, punk,” he whispered. “Make one yeep outa ya an’ I flatten you with this jack.”
“The murder weapon,” Willie whispered.
“No kiddin’? When she comes out, you’ll be sittin’ there in that chair. I’ll know by the expression on her pan if I’m right.”
Willie sat down. So did Gazelli. The erstwhile boniface of the El Clippo had a Betsy aimed at Willie. In the next room, Gertie and Venay Benuta were talking. The long hand on a clock crawled around and around. Gazelli suddenly stiffened and sniffed at the air. Willie’s nostrils picked up the smell, too. Gazelli was on his feet just as Benuta screamed:
“Fire!”
Gazelli flung a door open. Smoke was pouring out of a chaise-longue. The night club nightingale was slapping at the little tongues of flame. Willie saw Gertie slap Benuta with more than a pillow. Gazelli leaped at Gertie and tripped over some electric cord.
“Careless of me to put that hot curlin’ iron in that shay long, wa’n’t it?” Gertie screeched, and jumped on Gazelli’s back and started punching. “Come on, Willie! I know you are there somewheres!”
ILLIE came in just as Gazelli arched his back like a wild mustang and
Gertie flew into a corner and struck her noggin against a radiator. Benuta, her eyes
crossed, was on her feet and throwing a lamp-base. Willie ducked it and it whanged Gazelli right in the equator and flattened his bellows.
Then the President of the Hawkeye Detective Agency found himself locked in mortal combat with Venay Benuta. It was a clinch lacking a trace of glamour. Venay’s talons raked Willie, and missed his jugular by the width of a sheet of cellophane. Willie tickled her in the ribs and she howled and let go of his throat, and he got Benu
ta by the tresses and yanked with all his moxy.
Gazelli got up. He fired at Willie, and the bullet went through Gertie’s upsweep. The smoke was so thick now, identities were a tossup. Outside fire sirens screeched. People were hammering on the door. Willie saw a figure loom up in front of him and he let her have it. Somebody got him by the leg and chewed.
“I’ll get hunk with you, Willie!” Gertie yelped.
“I thought it was the blonde,” Willie called out. “Where is she at?”
“I am walkin’ on somethin’ lumpy, Willie. It squawks like a doll. We got to git out alive.”
“That’s logic,” Willie choked, groping through the smoke.
The door fell in. Cops and firemen filled the reeking flat. In about ten seconds four pairs of handcuffs were snapped on the rioters.
Out in the hall, Willie Klump yelped: “Git that blackjack in there. That
blonde is Venay Benuta. She an’ Ancie Gazelli there kidnaped her. I am Willie Klump, private detective. I mean Gazelli kidnaped the canary.”
“Yeah,” a cop said. “This is that Benuta babe. Wait’ll Kelly hears about this! Why, it is Willie! But who is this other blister?”
“Be careful what you call me, you ape!” Gertie yelped. “I am William
Klump’s fiancée.”
“Ancie knocked off Hubert Wigg,” Willie said. “You get hold of Mandy Costi an’ bring him downtown, too.”
“Willie how did you happen to get wise to this job?” a cop wanted to know as they put a pulmotor on him.
“Tryin’ to collect a bill for carnations he owed I. Bloom,” Willie said. “Li’l pins with pink heads.”
“Give him oxygen,” Gertie squeezed out. “He is gaga!”
“Oh, you dumb chickadee!” Gazelli threw at Venay Benuta. “Makin’ an appertment with a hair-dresser. Well, you’ll git braised, too.”
“I will not!” the night club sparrow squawked. “I wa’n’t in on this until I woke up in this dump. I’ll talk my brains out!”
“Then I ain’t worryin’ much,” Gazelli said. “One word won’t be enough.”
“I found the blackjack on him,” a cop said.
“All of you git out of here,” a fireman said. “How can we put out a fire? I wisht LaGuardia was mayor.”
“Let’s go,” Willie said.
It all came out an hour later. Mandy Costi admitted he kept things from the cops for a good reason. He said he was just about ready to call on Gazelli and agree to handing him over a twenty per cent cut on the Hubba Hubba take. It was worth it to get the dame back. Mandy went into a tantrum when he heard his chick had allied with Gazelli when she got the real lowdown.
“You better git more’n one
Philadelphia lawyer to make a jury believe
you started right in with that mug from scratch, babe! I’ll testify you was an excessory!”
“Why, you dirty doublecrosser!” Benuta shrieked.
Satchelfoot Kelly sat in a chair talking to himself.
“He went to collect a bill. Gertie, who was Madame Mujay, got a call from the kidnapee to fix this Benuta’s locks. Willie walked right in on the warbler’s kidnapers, an’ then Gertie joined him. . . . Wait, I’ll start all over.”
“Shut up, Kelly!” the D.A. snapped. “How can this stenog concentrate? What was that, Gazelli?”
“We are not needed here no more, Willie, dear.”
“Just a sec, until I remind him of the renumeration for my corporation on this job,” Willie said.
“You’ll get paid,” the D.A. said.
Willie and Gert left the gray building and limped toward a subway, looking like two survivors of an atom bombing.
“We’re some pair, ain’t we, Willie?” Gert asked. “What would we do without each other like shad an’ roe or ham hocks an’ cabbage?”
“Live to a ripe old age, that’s what,” Willie said.
It went over Gertie’s head. Then she said she was sick of trying to talk through her nose all the time, and was selling out because of the overhead.
“Whicht reminds me,” Willie said. “I
got to git some aspirin.”
Gertie sighed. “Make mine penicillin, Willie.”
.
FIT TO BE TRIED
IT WAS a morning when the mail at the Hawkeye Detective Agency was quite heavy, and William Klump, President, was as excited as a moth feeding on Lana’s shirred beaver coat
when the postman dumped it on his desk. “You sure rang twicet this mornin’,”
Willie said. “Join me in a crumb bun an’ a cup of coffee.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” the postman said, then quickly took a gander at the mail. “Oh, I almost done it again. This stuff, all but three letters, belongs to the Hawker Disinfectant Company next door. I’ll take a little sugar in my coffee.”
“I just happened to think,” Willie snapped, “I am short of crumb buns this A. M. An’ I’ll need all the coffee I got. I am a busy man so run along.”
“Yeah?” the postman griped. “I hope what letters you got are dunnin’ you for all the dough you got.”
“You come under Civil Service, don’t you?” Willie sniffed. “Then try actin’ civil before I report you to Farley.”
“Farley? He ain’t been postmaster since—”
“I didn’t see the newspapers this mornin’,” Willie snapped. “Now go away.”
Willie Klump opened his mail. One letter was soliciting funds for an organization that had been formed for the purpose of suppressing crime.
“That is a lot of senst,” Willie scoffed. “They would ask me to support the Temperance Union if I owned a chain of breweries.”
The second letter was from the Policemen’s Benevolent Ass’n, and contained four tickets at three dollars per. The typewritten message assured William that he would send a check immediately.
“It is intimation!” he grouched. “They are worst robbers than they go out huntin’ for. What’s the use of lookin’ at any more mail?”
Willie ate the rest of his breakfast and was tidying up when a tall, cadaverous citizen walked in. Willie almost told him that he must be mistaken about an address, as U.N.R.R.A. was in Washington. Anyway, the wheat shipments were none of his doings.
“Ah, Mr. Klump, I presume?”
“Have a chair,” Willie said. “You’re a client, I presume?”
“I am. I note that you find missing persons.”
“If they’re above ground, we find
‘em,” Willie said.
“I am Humphrey Buff. Perhaps you know I am appearing at Radio Theatre this week.”
Willie shook his head.
“My specialty is escaping from safes,” Buff said, lifted the skirts of his plaid coat, and sat down. “Once, I had a partner.”
“I begin to see,” Willie said, assuming a professional mien. “He got in a safe oncet an’ was stumped. Somebody moved the safe and you never got the forwardin’ address.”
Humphrey Buff swung his head around on his turtlelike neck and read the letters on Willie’s door as if to make sure he had come to the right place.
“Nothing of the kind,” he said, eyeing Willie again. “It was because poor Elbert could not tolerate hunger any further, my friend. Fifteen years ago, vodville became a precarious method of making a living, and Elbert packed up one night and left Kankakee where we were showing. I have not seen him since. Now that it has come to pass that trodding the boards is once more a lucrative—”
“His full name?” Willie interrupted, reaching for paper and pencil.
Elbert Eely, Escape Artist
Extraordinary!”
“H-m-m,” Willie said.
“I—er—changed my name when I went back to the stage again, Klump. In those days we were known as Squirmerhorn and Eely. I have an old co
py of Variety I shall leave with you. When I knew Elbert last he was about five feet, eight, had a black mustache and a mole over his left eye. If you find him, Klump, I will pay you five hundred dollars.”
“Dear or alive?” Willie said sharply. “Well—er—no. If you find that Elbert
is defunct, the fee will be three hundred.” “It is harder to find citizens who no
longer walk about,” Willie pointed out. “But it is a deal. Of courst, there will be expenses.”
“Keep them down, Mr. Klump,” Buff said.
“Supposin’ I locate him in Manchuria,” Willie argued. “I do not own my own airplanes.”
“Let’s stop being silly, Mr. Klump. I’ll see you are adequately reimbursed.”
“It was the pay I was worried about. All right, I’ll take the case. All right, you give me the addresses where you’ll be the next six months or so. Glad to have met you, Buff.”
The actor placed an old magazine on Willie’s desk, and Willie picked it up and tucked it away among his comic books on top of the filing cabinet. For an hour after Buff had departed, the president of the Hawkeye Detective Agency wondered where in the world he would start looking for Elbert Eely.
“I better sleep on it,” Willie said. “I wisht I was half as smart as Satchelfoot Kelly thinks the D.A. thinks he is. First, I could maybe canvass the morgues everywhere by mail. I never had such a stiff assignment. Oh, well, I can afford to take my time as the dividends should start rollin’ in soon. Mr. Plochnitz said I could expect ‘em the first of the month. Hah, wait until I show Gertie the check. I’ll show her how dumb I really am!”
The phone rang as Willie started visualizing a twelve-cylinder jaloppy with plush upholstery and a built-in frozen food cabinet.
“Hello,” Willie said. “Hawkeye
Dividend and Limousine Co. I mean—” “This is Kelly,” a voice said.
“Up to now I was havin’ one of my good days,” Willie snapped. “What you want?”
“Do you know a Gasper J. Plochnitz?” “I—I do. But how would you,
The Willie Klump Page 11
