The Willie Klump

by Joe Archibald

  of coffee when the doorbell rang.

  “I’ll answer it!” Willie said sternly and proceeded to earn his fee. He opened the

  door and saw a beefy face and he pushed it with his hand.

  “Scram!” he said. “And tell all the other newspaper bums don’t waste time.” He slammed the door and turned and grinned at his employer.

  “Git tough is my motto,” he said.

  “I may be wrong, Mrs. Fingly,” the maid said. “But I’m sure that was the landlord, Mr. Frabzicki.”

  There was an angry hammering on the door.

  “I’ll get it this time,” the maid said. She let a very irate citizen in. Mr. Frabzicki threatened to evict the occupants of the apartment. He did more than threaten about an increase in rent.

  UT Mrs. Fingly placated him until he purred. He had a drink and promised

  to decorate the entire joint before he withdrew.

  “You need a bodyguard,” the maid said to the mistress, “like an octopus needs another arm. Klump, you started off good.” “Now anybody can make mistakes, Lucretia,” Mrs. Fingly said. “If there’s anythin’ I like it’s a couple of laughs. You

  slay me, Mr. Klump.”

  “Huh?” Willie gulped. “Oh, it was just a figment of speech. I—”

  “Have some more coffee,” the maid said. “That first cup didn’ seem to work. We generally git our man with the first snort, don’t we, Mrs. Fingly?”

  Lucretia. Willie was sure he’d heard about a dame with a name like that before and she hadn’t been any Sister Kenny.

  “Er, I don’t feel like a second cup, thanks. Ha!” He began to wonder where Mrs. Fingly would keep a Roscoe if she had eased off her husband, Ferdinand. The cops had a bullet but nothing to match it up with.

  “Mr. Klump, I have to do some shopping,” his client said. “I’ll be dressed

  in a few minutes. You shall accompany me. Lucretia, entertain Mr. Klump while I’m gone.”

  “That does it, ma’am,’ Lucretia said. “I

  quit!”

  “You ain’t no nourishment to me neither,” Willie sniffed. “Anyway, I go steady with a dame.”

  “That I would like to see!” Lucretia laughed, and then the door opened. Gertie Mudgett strode in.

  “Well, do,” Willie choked out. “I forgot to lock that door. Hello, Gert!”

  “A newspaper woman,” Mrs. Fingly screeched. “Eject her, Mr. Klump!”

  “You don’t know what you’re sayin’!” Willie yelped. “Hello, G-Gert!”

  “Some layout!” Miss Mudgett snorted. “So now you know where to git ‘em wholesale!”

  The maid made a very grave error by taking Gertie’s arm and twisting. Lucretia went high into the air and disappeared behind a divan. Mrs. Fingly reached for a vase, dumped the flowers out of it and rushed the intruder. Gertie side-stepped nicely and threw a hook.

  Mrs. Fingly’s pretty eyes merged and she teetered on her mules. Gertie followed up with a left and Mrs. Fingly looked quite as inanimate as had her former husband when she hit the Oriental rug.

  Gertie swerved toward Willie. “You rooey! You’re next’ I’ll—” Something bounced off Gertie’s head

  and Willie saw that it was the silver coffee pot. Lucretia leaned against the divan, grinning.

  “How d she like them for apples?” Willie knelt beside Gertie and took her

  hat from over her eyes.

  “What round is it, Willie?” she asked, then jumped to her feet. “Oh, so they want to git tough, huh?”

  “No, Gertie, no!” Willie gulped. “Wait until I collect what’s comin’ to me.”

  The maid helped Mrs. Fingly to her feet and told her to make an appointment with her dentist right away. The doll the grand jury had smiled upon told Willie he was fired.

  “Pay him!” Gertie said. “Or else!”

  Mrs. Fingly demurred, but not for long. “Lucretia,” she said. “Get that old suit of my late husband’s out of the closet. That’s all he’ll get!”

  “Take it, Willie,” Gertie said. “It has to be stylish and you never had style up to now.”

  “Sounds like a good deal,” Willie gulped.

  He walked out with Gertie Mudgett, the suit draped over his arm. It was a plaid creation and quite shiny in spots. Gertie said she couldn’t wait until she saw Willie in it. Willie assured her she would have to, as Ferdinand Fingly had been well over six feet in his socks.

  “The things you git into, Willie,” Gertie said as she took leave of him at a subway. “If I make myself believe for sure that was a love nest, you start hittin’ the road!”

  “Yeah,” Willie breathed out.

  “There was murder in her eyes, Willie. She sure beat that rap. Well, g’by. And git the suit altered soon as you can.”

  ILLIE trekked toward his office, feeling radio-activated. He wondered how long it took certain deadly poisons to work, even on him. He wondered if there wasn’t an easier way to

  make a living.

  When Willie finally got to his rooming house, he tried on the double-breasted coat and vest. The plaid scared him at first when he looked in the mirror but he kept looking until he got used to it. The suit fit quite well and now Willie knew he only had to get the pants shortened. He’d take them to the tailor the first thing in the morning.

  “I bet that babe is guilty,” he said.

  Thursday evening, William J. Klump met Gertie in front of La Lune Bleu, a popular stoking place on East Forty- seventh. Gertie told Willie she’d call a cop when he tipped his hat.

  “Look, I am Willie,” he said.

  Gertie took a second gander and grabbed Willie’s arm. She spun him around.

  “Willie, you are gorgeous, no kiddin’. You got a new look. I bet they will ast you to switch to Culvert. For oncet I will go into a joint’ not feelin’ like I am follered by a panhandler. Oh, let’s hurry, Willie.”

  They went into La Lune Bleu. Gertie slipped Willie a ten-dollar bill. They got as far as the entree when Willie began to squirm. Gertrude Mudgett told him it was pretty late in the spring to still have his red flannels on.

  “I discarded them weeks ago,” Willie grunted and twitched like a snowbird who hadn’t seen happy dust in six weeks. “I guess it must be a horsehair in this burlap. Ow-w-w!”

  “For Heaven’s sake,” Gertie yipped. “You’ll have me doin’ it in a minute. Was you near the monkey cage at the zoo lately?”

  “Ver·r-y funny,” Willie sniffed, and squirmed again like a disgusted moppet at a lecture. He closed his eyes and grunted and dug his fingers into his torso just above his floating ribs. Customers began to eye him askance.

  “Look, Gert, I better go and see what is needlin’ me besides you,” Willie finally said, and got up and sought the men’s washroom. He took off his coat and waited a few moments and he no longer felt the unease. He explored the vest, found it innocent, then examined the lining of the plaid coat. His fingers traveled to a hard lump just under the inside pocket and closer examination found the lining had been ripped.

  Willie opened a penknife and got to work. Finally he pulled something out of the lining of the late Ferdinand Fingly’s coat that made him blink. His ears vibrated and there was a sudden disturbance at his meridian like little pixies were treading down what food he’d already eaten.

  Willie was no expert on valuable dornicks but even he knew there were diamonds. They were set in three bows made out of metal that had never been fashioned from a tin can. Three bows of ribbon! Willie sat on the paper towel hamper and tried to think. He forgot Gertie Mudgett. Suddenly he knew he should get to his office right away. He pocketed the bauble and hurried out. On his way past the cashier’s desk he thought somebody called to him, but paid no attention. It sounded like a dame. He grabbed a cab and directed the driver to the dingy office building on Lexington.

>   “I’ve seen this thing before,” he kept telling himself, but how could that be? Willie snapped on the light in his little office and pawed through the papers on his desk. After awhile he took a gander at the tabloid clipping having to do with a stage babe getting clipped for thousands of clams’ worth of gewgaws.

  “Huh, here’s the inscription of the one I got. Worth eight grand. There could be two in town. It is silly thinkin’ this broach belonged to the blonde doll as I found it in the pocket of Ferdinand Fingly’s coat, deceased. Name under the pitcher says she is Jonquil Del Rey.”

  The time flew. Willie finally stopped making notes and took a gander at his watch. It was eight o’clock. A truck backfired outside and Willie jumped a foot off his chair.

  “Awright, Gert!” he yelped, swinging around. “So I fergot. I—Gert!” Willie, cold sweat popping off his brow, hurriedly looked up La Lune Blue in the phone book.

  POPULAR DETECTIVE 8

  E got the number and hurriedly dialed it. A gruff voiced character answered

  it and Willie asked who it was. It was the head waiter.

  “Look,” Willie said in a dither, “I was there with a dame. She wore a red hat with a green feather in it and a cinema-colored fur coat and ear-rings as big as eggs. She-”

  “Yeah? Are you the guy in the racetrack suit?”

  “It is a plaid one I’ll thank you to know,” Willie said distractedly. “Page the dame and tell her I’ll—”

  “Pal, I’m giving you some advice,” the head waiter said. “I wouldn’t show here. Right now that babe is out in the kitchen up to her elbows—and not in Lux. We saw you lam from the rest’raunt so before that babe eats up too much more we ast that babe can she dig up the bite for the cutlets. She says you had all the clams and—well, we ain’t in this business for our health. No, pal, leave her have maybe three days to cool off unless you want to be on ice permanent. G’by now.”

  Willie hung up. The cold brine trickled out of his scalp and he was as worried as a character getting a pant leg slit and his hair shaved off.

  “This is awful,” Willie gulped. “It is worst than terrible even. Well, I better I go to the show as I can’t waste the tickets. I might as well enjoy my last hours as tomorrer I could be laid out in a bier parlor. I wish I didn’t forget so easy. Huh, that broach. In the late Fingly’s pocket! Maybe Mrs. Fingly rubbed him out for two-timin’ and not for the insurance lettuce. Maybe he knew this Jonquil Del Rey and—maybe Fingly was a master wolf and had a dozen dishes.”

  Dishes! Willie closed his eyes and shuddered.

  The president of the Hawkeye Detective Agency locked up his operations office and left the building. Having ten

  dollars he took a cab and landed in front of the Boothby in style. An usher took him down the aisle, a flashlight showing her the way. The play was already eating through the first act. Willie climbed over two gripping playgoers and fell into a seat.

  “Huh,” he said aloud. “I am just three rows from the stage.”

  “Sha-a-adup!” a citizen said.

  “Who’s smokin’?” Willie countered facetiously. “I would take somethin’ for your nerves if I was you. What happened so far, huh?”

  Threats of cold-blooded murder came to Willie’s ears from the customers surrounding him so he settled down to see if a milkman only rang twice and for what reason. At the moment there were three characters on the stage, two males and a blonde trick wearing a strapless gown. It occurred to Willie after concentration that the doll was supposed to be the wife of one of them and the willing victim of the other’s wiles.

  “I tell you, Hobart,” the blonde emoted, “Humphrey was not here last night! You and your suspicions an’ your jealousy. I tell you I can’t stand it much longer. I can’t! I can’t! I can’t!”

  “It looks like she can’t,” Willie e. sniffed.

  “She tells you the truth, Hobart!”

  “Both lyin are you? The milkman saw you come out of my house at four A.M.!” the character with the Adolph Menjou lip fringe bleated dramatically.

  “So you believe a milkman before you do your wife, do you, Hobart?”

  “Oh, for Heaven’s sake,” the suspected home wrecker orated.

  “Oh, brother,” Willie observed. “Sha-d-d-d-up!”

  The usher came and talked to Willie. In tones no longer polite, she assured him he would get flung out on his rompers if he created further disturbance. Willie subsided

  and took a gander at his program. He brushed up on the cast, then felt flying creatures in his stomach. He read a certain line of type three times. It finally convinced him that the unfaithful wife, Minerva Effingham, was played by Jonquil Del Rey. He felt little prickly pears breaking out along his spine and watched the play avidly, chewed his fingernails until a customer next to him gave up and left the theatre.

  T was the last of the second act. Minerva Effingham and her wavy-haired two- timer finally decided to erase Hobart

  Effingham.

  “You can plead self-defense,” Humphrey suggested. “When the cops come you will be all bruised up like—”

  The play went on. Came the scene in Minerva’s boudoir when she took a Betsy out of the drawer in her dresser and leveled it at her surprised spouse. Something snapped in Willie Klump’s noggin when Hobart yelped:

  “Where did you get that gun, Minerva? Drop it!”

  “Yeah,” the shamus said aloud, “Where did she?”

  “I am going to kill you, Hobart Effingham!” the blonde said. “It is self defense and I’ll prove it, ha!”

  “No, Minerva, no! You must be crazy!” Bang!

  Hobart clapped a hand to the front of his dickey, looked horrified according to plan and then draped himself over a chaise lounge and gasped his last. William J. Klump got up from his seat, fairly climbed over four customers and reached the aisle. He ran toward the stage, climbed over the footlights, and rushed at the blonde.

  “Awright!” Willie yelped. “Gimme that

  Rosco!”

  The Boothby was thrown into a

  Donnybrook. At first, playgoers thought it

  might be part of the act. Then the cops came charging down the aisle. The blonde stared at Willie aghast and then started screaming. The character named Hobart resurrected himself and sprang up from the chaise lounge. Stage hands rushed out of the wings. A loud voice roared:

  “Curtain! Lower the curtain!”

  The entire cast of “The Milkman Only Rings Once” came on stage and they ganged up on Willie. They finally caught up with him but not until he had the play Betsy. It was tucked away inside his plaid vest when they lifted him to his feet and tossed him into a cop’s arms. Onto the stage came a big citizen in a tux just as William J. Klump pleaded his case.

  “I am a private detective!” Willie choked out. “I am here on official business. It is about the murder of a Ferdinand Fingly who was shot by a Rosco nobody could find!”

  “Arrest that crazy man!” Jonquil Del Rey screeched. “Oh, Benny, I am so glad you’re here!”

  She wound her arms around the bulky gee in the tux and Willie appraised the man in a hurry. Somewhere he had seen him before. He had a face with as much meat on it as a three-rib roast of beef, studded by a pair of piggy eyes that glittered like the sparklers in the bauble Willie had in his coat pocket. They reminded the president of the Hawkeye to come up with the brooch, which he did.

  “Okay, ask the babe why I found this brooch in the pocket of a suit Mrs. Fingly gave me for workin’ for her durin’ a brief time,” Willie yelped as the cops tried to drag him into the wings.

  He held it high for everybody to see, and then the big citizen called Benny tossed the blonde dish aside. He let out a roar that only should have come from a lion’s cage and grabbed the brooch from Willie’s hand.

  “You found it—where?” With his free hand he got a big handf
ul of Willie’s coat and yanked the private eye in close.

  “You heard me,” Willie yipped. “In the pocket of a suit worn by Ferdinand Fingly whose widow just got sprung by a grand jury. You ain’t deef! Stop tearin’ my suit!” He gave Jonquil Del Rey a swift gander and saw that the doll looked as healthy under her paint job as eleven cents’ worth of dog meat.

  “What are you doin’ on this stage?” a cop asked the big character.

  “Git lost!” the big gee in the formal burlap growled. “I am Benny Kouf if ya want to know!” He whirled toward the blonde doll. “How’s it they find this trinket I gave ya on a stiff, hah?”

  “It is a mistake, Benny! There could be more’n one. I was robbed of mine and—”

  “Bushwah!” Benny yelped. “It was the only brooch like it in the U. S.”

  HE curtain stayed down and Willie Klump could hear the customers out there seeking the exits. Onto the stage came two irate citizens who introduced themselves as the manager of the Boothby

  and a producer respectively.

  “You’ll sweat for this, somebody!” the manager screeched. “We gotta refund all the dough. We had a play here we spent—” “This last act is for real,” Willie cut in. “Awright, sha-a-a-d-up and let’s listen to the blonde answer a hun’red an’ sixty-four buck question!” He knew now where he had seen Benny before. Benny Kouf was a questionable operator who controlled every bubble-gum and perfume vending machine along the Atlantic seaboard, and once had beaten a rap. Benny, people had been saying for a long time, had more dough than anybody with the possible exception

  of Uncle Sam. “Keep astin’ her, Benny!” “Talk fast, baby!” Benny yipped. Now

  I know what become of all the other

  sparklers I was sucker enough to give ya! So you was two-timin’ with me and financhin’ a jiglo named Fingly, hah?”

  “It is a lie, Benny!” Jonquil Del Rey yowled. “It looks like that Fingly led—a double life—and went around robbin’ places at night. He was the one slugged me that night and stole twenty grand worth of the stuff. See?”