The Willie Klump

by Joe Archibald

  “Sure is,” Willie said.

  “You figurin’ on goin’ upstairs, pal? Bet you just got in town.”

  “Why—er—not exactly,” Willie said. “Okay, so le’s be friends, huh? Want

  to lay a little bet, Hiram?”

  “Uh—er—I would if it is goin’ to win,” Willie said, acting much dumber than he actually was.

  “Follow me, Buster,” the come-on said. “I can pick winners nine out of ten times.”

  “Well, awright,” Willie said.

  He trailed the gee up a flight of steps and into a big room where several rough characters were sitting. There was a counter along a wall and it was lined with telephones. There was a board on the wall

  with the names of bangtails and the races they were running in.

  “Sit down, kid,” the rough boy said. “I’ll get Nick Lutzig an’ interduce you.”

  “I’m crazy to meet him,” Willie said, and meant it.

  A few moments later, a squat taxpayer, wearing a plaid gray suit and checkered shirt came toward Willie. The gee limped noticeably and cold chills began to run along Willie’s bones close to the marrow.

  “Hiya, pal. Winky says you want to make yourself some dough. Why don’t you come in my private office an’ have a drink first? I always like the personal touch an’ like to git acquainted with my customers.”

  “Yeah, it is more clubby, ain’t it?” Willie gulped.

  He followed Nick into a back room. So crooks were smart, were they? They didn’t know from nothing, believed Willie. He sat down and Nick locked the door.

  “Well, flatfoot, you should have had more sense than to just come an’ ast fer a slug!” Nick growled. “You think we take chances? We’ve got every bull in this town cased, even you private dicks. Okay. What do you know, Klump?”

  “I know I should of stood in bed,” Willie choked out.

  “Of courst you know they’ll find you in the river tomorrer or nex’ day,” Nick said. “How did you happen to come here so soon after that job over on Twentieth Street, huh?”

  “Seein’ as I will get shot anyways, what can I lose by answerin’?” Willie said. “That bullet MacGonigle fired nicked you, huh? Nick. Your name on it. Not bad. Ha!”

  “Yeah. An’ I still don’t know how he knew I was standin’ on that chair gettin’ at the safe. But he lets go with a gat without even comin’ into the room. That gee was hard of hearin’, too, an’ I don’t think he

  knew I was there. I am sure as all get-out puzzled, Klump.”

  “So you got the jewels, huh?”

  “Not the first time,” Nick smirked. “The safe was empty. So I knew MacGonigle had got to ‘em first an’ doublecrossed us. That punk got into us deep bettin’ on the nags an’ we threatened to tell the old dame, and he told us how we could all come out on top if we’d hold off.”

  “An’ you figured to get the rocks all by yourself, too,” Willie said. “You was crossin’ your pals up, too. Won’t there ever be no honor among crooks?”

  “Yeah.” Nick grinned. “I still can’t figure how he shot me, though. And it’s got me gaga about his bein’ tied up an’ gagged like he was. Well, anyway, we tagged him when he sneaked out of that house, an’ knocked him off. We only got about ten grand worth of rocks offen him, though.”

  “It is quite a puzzle, isn’t it?” Willie said. “I am startin’ to add up a little, though. Funny how good your mind works when you are close to gettin’ the final curtain. Here I got a missin’ person I was hired to look for, but he’ll git buried before I get paid, an’ I’ll get buried before I can tell his old pal. Life is complicated, ain’t it?”

  “Too bad, Klump,” Nick said. “You ain’t a bad guy personal. But you see why I got to rub you out, don’t you?”

  “You couldn’t do nothin’ else. Let’s see if we can reach an agreement, huh?”

  Nick Lutzig polished the barrel of his

  Roscoe with a handkerchief.

  “No use,” he said. “You might as well try an’ make a deal with Russia, Klump. Of courst you know you got frisked of that gat the minute you got inside, don’t you?”

  “I did?” Willie gulped, reached for his pocket, and found it as empty as his midriff.

  “Winky lifted a bass viol out of a night club orchestra oncet, and nobody knew it,” Nick said. “The place was packed, too. I got a hunch MacGonigle was tryin’ to sell those sparklers a little bit at a time, an’ the rest are still hid in his room.”

  “I would say that,” Willie mumbled, and looked for an out.

  He could not see one and he looked back at the gun Nick was fondling, and suddenly Willie’s ears quivered and his teeth snapped together. He remembered what he had forgotten.

  “Yeah, your Roscoe, Klump,” Nick grimaced. “Kraut Walther, huh? I never believe in shootin’ two guys twice with the same gat. Makes the cops work harder!”

  Willie got up and charged like a cornered rhino.

  “It ain’t loaded, you crook!” he yelped. “That trick is older than—”

  Nick Lutzig aimed at Willie and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

  “Why, you wasn’t kiddin’!”

  He took Willie’s noggin in his solar plexus just as he screeched for his reserves. Willie got him as he bounced off the wall and hugged him to him just as the door broke open.

  “Awright, you punks!” Willie flung in the teeth of three gorillas. “Start shootin’ and work your way to me through Nick’s grisket!”

  Willie Klump did not think they would, but they did. A bullet tore through the plaid at Nick’s shoulder and stung Willie’s right ear-lobe. Nick, his marbles back, screamed bloody murder.

  “You wouldn’t shoot me, Winky?” “Oh, wouldn’t I?” the mug mocked,

  and was getting closer to make sure of a vital spot when there was a battering and crashing sound in both the front and rear of the building.

  “The cops!” a bull-like voice roared.

  Glass splintered and partitions caved in. There were shots.

  “A raid!” Nick gulped. “I lose anyways.”

  Willie flung the dishonest citizen right at the cops when they burst into the office. “For oncet,” Willie said, “you snails

  was on the ball. This is Nick Lutzig who killed MacGonigle, the butler. MacGonigle robbed that safe of Penelope’s. It is lucky I forget so easy or you could just as well have forgot to raid this joint today anyway. Who carries aspirin with them?”

  “It’s that Willie Klump,” a cop said. “Search this joint for some jewels

  before you go,” Willie said, and sat down to loosen his nerves. “I got to phone.”

  ILLIE picked one up, and a voice at the other end said:

  “Hold your rompers on, Nick. They ain’t even at the post for the third yet.”

  Willie decided to call Satchelfoot from the precinct house. . . .

  “It was this way,” Willie Klump explained later, with a D.A. and three assistants, and Satchelfoot Kelly looking on with lower jaws drooping. “MacGonigle got to playin’ the hayburners but picked too many goats and was in hock to Nick Lutzig and his hoods. So to escape being ventilated he made a deal, but decided to cross the illegal citizens, at about the same time Nick decided to cross him. I happen to know MacGonigle used to be Elbert Eely, escape artist, and could tie himself up solo. Well, the butler took the sparklers out of the safe, took them upstairs and stashed them. Then, seeing that Penelope Paisley was out to the D.A.R. he had plenty of time to stage the phony burglary.”

  “I need some digitalis,” Satchelfoot gulped.

  “What for?” Willie needled. “You never had a heart. As I was sayin’—now, the butler come downstairs an’ fired off a gun at random, but happened to hit Nick who had come in meanwhile. Nick was standin’ on a chair, openin’ the safe an’ findin’ somebody had beat him to it
when he got shot. He lams, but MacGonigle don’t hear him, as the butler is a little deef. Well, MacGonigle tosses the gun to the floor, whangs himself over the coco with a book-end or somethin’, then gags himself and trusses himself up.

  “You already know how I got a new suit an’ found evidence the butler played the nags, an’ how I started thinkin’ when I saw the little white spot over the eye of the corpse. He’d had a mole took off. MacGonigle was on his way to convert part of his loot into lettuce when Nick and his pals rubbed him out. You found the rest of the jewels in the guy’s room, huh? No wonder butlers are always suspects in them books, huh?”

  Satchelfoot Kelly loosened his tie, unbuttoned his shirt collar.

  “Water—water!” he gasped.

  “Well, why didn’t the gas man give us an alibi if he was innocent?” the D.A. fretted.

  “I wouldn’t know,” Willie said. “Maybe he was just stubborn. Maybe gas men meet lots of lonesome wives in their business. Some wives have husbands who would just as soon strangle you as not.”

  “You get a thousand dollars from the old babe for a reward,” the D.A. said.

  “Yeah,” Willie said. “Let any wise guy try and sell me no more stock whicht has no horns on it. I also git three C’s from the late butler’s old partner, Humphrey Buff. So if you’ll excuse me I will go an’ call him up.”

  “How does he do it, Kelly?” the D.A. asked, in a froggy voice. “He never uses

  no mirrors. Maybe it is because he knows he is stupid but won’t admit it.”

  “That don’t make sense,” Satchelfoot sighed. “But what does when Willie works? You got anythin’ to drink handy?”

  William Klump dragged the world by the tail as he went to his office the next morning. The phone was ringing when he walked in. He answered it, expecting to hear Gertie’s humble apologies. But a male voice twanged his eardrum.

  “Mr. Klump? Say, this is Draper of the F.B.I. Want to congratulate you. Don’t be surprised if you get a letter from Mr. Hoover any day now. He’ll want you to go to work for him maybe.”

  “Who you tryin’ to kid this time?” Willie sniffed. “He is not president no more an’ couldn’t hire nobody. You call up the aquarium if you want to talk to an easy fish. G’bye!”

  Willie clenched his teeth. This was one day he would live through without getting taken in.

  The door opened suddenly. Before Willie could spin around in his chair, Gertrude Mudgett had crossed the floor and was in his lap and throwing her arms around his neck.

  “Oh, Willie, you are wonderful! The papers said you—”

  There was a flash of light that made Willie blink, and there was no thunderstorm going on anywhere on the Atlantic seaboard.

  “Yeah, hold it!” a voice said. “It’s a natural!”

  “Pitchers!” Willie screeched. “I been compermised. It is a badger’s game!”

  He jumped up, and Gertie Mudgett slid off his lap and sat down hard on the floor.

  “You give me them plates!” Willie yelled, but the photographers were already jumping into the elevator when he got out into the corridor.

  Willie stormed back to his office. “You—you adventurish!” he yelled at Gertie.

  “I never had nothin’ to do with it, Willie Klump,” the Mudgett protested. “But what a break for me, ha! I’ll order six of the snaps, an’ when you think you want to cast me aside . . . Willie, why do you act so cold at times?”

  “If you got into hot water as much as I did, you’d want a change,” William Klump yelped, and picked up the phone.

  He gave the operator the first number that came in his head.

  “Hello, hello, Mr. Miffnish? About that fugitive you want me to shadow up in

  the Yukon. I’ll take it. Be there right away. G’bye!”

  He snatched up his hat and ran out of the office. Gertie’s shrill voice turned the corner and followed him to the elevator.

  “Willie, you can’t go dressed like that! You’ll freeze up there with just—er . . . Why that dirty fakir!”

  She went after Willie.

  On the other side of town, an undertaker banged down his telephone, and scratched his noggin. The thing that puzzled him the most was the fact that his name was Miffnish.

  THE MOURNING AFTER

  WILLIAM J. KLUMP, president of the Hawkeye Detective Agency, had been crouching

  behind a privet hedge up in Spuyten-Dyvil for three hours. It was an hour before midnight and Willie had seen no sign of a cat poisoner. Two housewives had hired Willie that afternoon and had told him that a particularly fiendish tabby Borgia had been operating in the neighborhood, and thus far a maltese, a calico, and a manx had succumbed in rapid succession and under suspicious circumstances.

  The ground was damp and there was a chill in the air and Willie kissed a ten dollar fee goodbye. He was warming his bones in a tavern two blocks from the 125th Street Station of the New York, New Haven & Hartford, an hour later when he noticed the two characters sitting at a table in the corner. Their eyes were red and tears trickled down their cheeks.

  “They do not look like fellers that cry over nothin’,” Willie said to the bartender. “Especially the one in the plaid suit.”

  “Who knows what troubles guys have?” the purveyor of spirits growled. “Anyways I got me own.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t hurt to see what I could do for ‘em,” Willie sniffed. “Like cheerin’ them up.”

  “You take my advice, Buster,” the barkeep snapped. “An’ let ‘em alone. Maybe their wives left ‘em.”

  “They wouldn’t be that grief-struck,” Willie argued, and sauntered over to the lugubrious pair.

  The hefty one in the plaid suit spread a handkerchief out to dry and glowered at the private detective. He had a mole over his left eye and the smallest ears Willie had ever seen.

  “Maybe I could be of help,” Willie said. .

  “Sure, Pal. You kin get to blazes out of here!”

  “Now wait, Eddie,” the other moaner admonished. He was thin and had a little round head and a mouth as big as Charlie McCarthy’s. “No cause to jump on the gee. Ah, er, there ain’t much you can do. We just lost our dear mothers.”

  “Oh, they maybe will come back to look for you,” Willie said. “Why don’t you inquire at a police station?”

  “Huh? Why, you don’t understand,” the plaid suit gulped. “They croaked—we mean, they died sudden. A guy’s bes’ friend is his ma an’—sniff-sniff!”

  “Oh,” Willie choked out. “That is too bad. I wisht I could do somethin’, but—we got to expect those things sooner or later. Maybe I could buy you a drink.”

  “Go away,” the little character sobbed.

  “Yeah. Can’t two guys lose their mothers without gittin’ pestered by every bar fly comes along?” plaid suit snorted.

  “I am sorry,” Willie said. He went back to the bar and ordered a second beer. “Their mother died,” he whispered.

  “Huh?” The barkeep looked over at the pair. “Them two had a mother? They don’t look like twins to me anyways.”

  “They don’t have to be, do they?” Willie wanted to know. “Two mothers have been known to die the same day.”

  The barkeep stared open-mouthed at Willie, then turned his back and began polishing glasses.

  “The later at night it gets,” he observed, “the screwier the customers get.”

  AFTER a third beer, Willie went home. At nine o’clock the next morning, Willie purchased a tabloid on the way to his office. After breakfasting on a crumb bun and a pint of milk, he sat back in his chair and read the tabloid. A half-tone on the front page leered at him. It was the likeness of a felon that had just received his just dues and Willie’s eyes popped when he read the caption. Big Joe Atombi! “Why, they got him,” Willie gulped. “The clues on him was read over the radio!”

 
He hurriedly gobbled up the sticks of type under the photo. They said Big Joe Atombi had come a cropper after an intrepid taxpayer had tipped off the cops as to the whereabouts of his hideout, which happened to be just a block from the Grand Concourse. At the risk of life and limb, the story had it, Aloysius Kelly and three brave assistants had moved in on Big Joe, knowing that the criminal character was toting a miniature arsenal.

  “‘The police entered the apartment house shortly before midnight,’ ” Willie read aloud. “ ‘They broke down the door of Atombi’s apartment and rushed in. Atombi came out of the kitchen holding a machine gun and Kelly and King Kong Kelliher, heavyweight champion boxer of the police department, immediately started firing. The slugs from the escaped bank robber’s machine gun spat into the floor inches in front of the detectives. Atombi went down with three bullets in him.

  “ ‘The criminal’s companion slammed the kitchen door shut after firing a bullet through Detective Kelly’s hat, and when the police finally broke into the kitchen, they found it empty. The window was open and Kelly believes that Big Joe’s companion got away via the fire escape.’ ” Willie sighed. “Huh, the big brave mans! I’ll bet Satchelfoot was hiding behind King Kong. Of courst they found Kelly’s hat empty. It always is. So he was tipped off. He would have to be as Satchelfoot, even when he is in his right mind, could not find a colonel in the Pentagon Buildin’. An’ while all that was goin’ on I was huntin’ for a cat murderer. Won’t I never amount to nothin’? Oh

  well—”

  The door opened and Willie swung his head around. A sprout of not more than fourteen summers stood there with his hat in his hand and one foot stepping on the other.

  “I don’t need no office boys,” Willie said.

  “I am not seeking employment,” the adolescent said, and swallowed hard. “Are you Private Detective Klump?”