The Willie Klump

by Joe Archibald

  “Yeah, baby,” Benny said. “Could be, couldn’t it?” He turned and grabbed for Willie’s throat. “Tryin’ to louse up my doll’s act, huh? Tryin’ to frame the poor kid, yeah? Well, they won’t have enough of you to throw in jail, you crumb.”

  “Don’t you attackt me!” Willie yelped. “I have got the proof she is still a fast one. Lemme ast ya—did the cops find the Betsy that rubbed out Fingly?”

  “What you beefin’ about?” Benny Kouf growled. “A Betsy? I s’pose you found it, lemonhead!”

  “I’m takin’ an awful chance that I did,” Willie gulped. “Where would be the easiest place to stash a murder Roscoe than in the blonde’s dressin’ room, hah? Who would think to look among stage props unless it was somebody like me who was stuck with the evidence in the first place? Ha, that is funny!”

  “Don’t listen to him, Benny!” Jonquil

  Del Rey pleaded.

  “Let’s put it this way,” William Klump said. “The Rosco I got here was filled with blanks for tonight’s turkey, wasn’t it? Or else Hobart here would be shakin’ hands with Ferdinand Fingly. It could shoot real bullets, too. Well, we will go downtown and fill it with real slugs and shoot one into a barrel of cotton or somethin’ and then compare the marks on it with the ones on the bullet took out of the late Mr. Fingly. If they match, this tomater here will have quite a time explainin’ how the Rosco got out of the Boothby, knocked off a citizen, and then found its way back so’s it could

  make out it slew Hobart Effingham.”

  Benny Kouf’s two chins shook. He gave the blonde cooky he had been sponsoring a look that wasn’t new.

  “Why, you double-crossin’ broad! I got a good mind to tie your throat into a knot. I t’ink I will do that! Me, a sucker for a gimmick like that!”

  He lunged toward the blonde and Willie roared, “Look out!” He was a little late. Jonquil Del Rey had stolen a Betsy out of a cop’s holster, and now she shot a piece of cloth off Benny Kouf’s expensive tux.

  “Everybody stay where they are or I’ll shoot to kill!” the blonde threatened, and backed away. “Before I leave, though, I’m goin’ to fix your wagon!”

  “Who—m-me?” Willie gulped out. “Look I got a big fam’ly—and I forgot my last—somebody stop her!”

  “Awright, you ast for it!” Jonquil snapped and lined Willie up. Kerwhop! She dropped the gun, got her pretty gams crossed up and spun around like a top losing its spin. Jonquil sat down, grinning like a village zany watching a circus parade. Willie Klump gaped at a Gertrude Mudgett and guessed the reprieve would do him no good.

  “I should of let her kill you, hah?” Gertie roared. “Nobody’s goin’ to cheat me out of no murder! Happy birthday to me, Willie, as if you should of ever been born. You won’t see your next one, you wart!”

  “Get holt of her!” Willie roared at the cops.

  ROMPTLY they grabbed her, but not for long. Benny Kouf, who had learned

  his mayhem along the docks in Brooklyn, finally subdued Gertie.

  “I hate to slug dames,” Benny said. “What else could I do?”

  “You can say that ag’in,” Willie sighed. “Well, we better all go to Headquarters and ring the curtain down.”

  In the presence of the D.A., Satchelfoot Kelly, and others of the cast, Jonquil Del Rey tossed aside her stage glamour, let down her blonde tresses and threw the works to herself.

  “My name was Sadie Schmultz when me and a character named Harrisburg Harry worked a swell badger game,” the loser began. “Well, one time we run into a sucker who got tough and we had to work on him. He didn’t pass out but he wasn’t never the same afterwards. The cops nabbed us and I got two to five. We had a sap mouthpiece, and who else was it but Ferdinand Fingly?”

  “Fancy that?” Willie asked.

  Satchelfoot Kelly just stared blankly at the wall and dug the point of the D.A.’s fifteen-dollar fountain pen into the wood of the big desk.

  “Go on,” the D.A. said. “Shut up, Klump!”

  “Well, when I got out of the jug,” Jonquil said, “I says I will go straight. I changed my name and grabbed a couple night club spots. After awhile I meet Benny Kouf and he falls like a ton of bricks. He gits me a part in a show and then buys out half of the one I was just in and I git the leadin’ part. Well, meantime who do I meet on the street but Fingly and he recognizes me. He asks where did I git the sparklers I’m wearin’? I tell him to go and take a runnin’ jump into a—it don’t matter where. Couple of days later he calls me up and says I better see him or else.”

  “Blackmail, huh?” Willie cut in.

  “Who’s tellin’ this, meathead?” the blonde wanted to know. “That’s what it was, yeah. He found out I am anglin’ for Benny Kouf and asks me does Benny know what I was once. Well, Benny didn’t, as he said he would marry class if he ever got married an’ I said I was I from a swell fam’ly in Back Bay in Boston and all my parents was killed in an airplane accident.

  So I had to pay this Fingly off who was in deep with the bookies and such. I gave him the stuff Benny give me and I said I was robbed of it. Well, it come to the point where I couldn’t cover up no longer, so one night I go to Fingly’s joint with the brooch and a diamond ring. This time I take the Roscoe I used in the play. Yeah, the bullet’ll match okay. I wore a heavy veil and nobody could tell who I was. I let the dumb mouthpiece have it and scrammed. Any more questions?”

  “Covers about everythin’,” the D.A. said. “So Fingly put the brooch in the pocket of an old suit where he figured it’d be safe until he could hock it. And Mrs. Fingly gave the suit to William Klump, a private detective. Klump, how did you connect the brooch with Miss Del Rey?”

  “A clippin’ I cut out of a tabloid,” Willie said wearily. “It’s too long for me to explain how private detectives reach collusions. Anyways why should I tell the cops my secrets?”

  Satchelfoot Kelly got up and groped his way to the door. “Go see him home,” the D.A. told a cop. “He’s in no shape to do it alone. Afterwards come back and git me, Mike.”

  “Well, somebody better give me a police excort, too!” Willie yelped. “Do I have to draw you a pitcher why?”

  “Oh, her?” the D.A. said. “The police matron gave her a mickey, Klump. She won’t wake up until sometime tomorrer.”

  Willie groaned gratefully and mopped his pan with a hanky. “Good evenin’, gentlemen,” he said. “Too bad, babe!”

  “I don’t know who is worst off, you or me, you gland case,” Jonquil Del Rey sniffed. “I wonder will Benny give me some bail?”

  Mrs. Fingly called the Hawkeye Detective Agency the next morning just after the news broke.

  “Oh, you darlin’, Mr. Klump,” she said, “to think you kept workin’ for me after what I did! I shall send you a check for a substantial amount as soon as I collect my poor late husband’s insurance. Or would you care to collect it in person?”

  “You can say that again,” Willie said regretfully. “But it better be by mail as I will be confined to my office for several days, I am sure. Excuse me now, huh? The citizen has arrived to put another lock and a bar on my door.”

  “What a character!” he heard Mrs. Fingly say just before she hung up.

  Willie guessed he must be.

  WHAT A SHAMUS!

  TOWARD the tag-end of an average day in the Hawkeye Detective Agency, Inc., William J.

  Klump, proprietor, put down a girlie magazine and wondered why he hadn’t stood in bed or studied plumbing.

  “Maybe I got an enemy has tore out all the pages in the phone books startin’ with aitch,” Willie said to himself, then got ready to lock up. “An’ I should throw away the key,” he sniffed.

  At that very moment his door opened and a member of the distaff side ogled him dubiously.

  “Beg pahdon,” she said. “Where will I find Mr. Klump?”

  “You don’t hav
e to look any longer,” Willie said. “I’m him. Crooks git fooled too, Ma’am.”

  “I should say so,” the visitor agreed, and Willie quickly had her seated.

  It was not every day that a client came in wearing a mink coat and not chewing bubble gum.

  “We don’t put up a big front here as we want criminals to think we are not a success,” Willie told her.

  “Sounds logical,” the visitor said. “Why, that is very clevah, Mr. Klump!”

  “Tricks in all trades,” Willie said. “Now, what is your problem, Mrs.—”

  “I am Mrs. Parslow Clusp, president of the Upper West Side Womans Club,” the nicely groomed middle-aged doll said. “The other night I thought of the most wonderful program for our annual dinner at the Hotel Skelton. It will be definitely out of this world, but out of it! Of course it all depends on you, Mr. Klump.”

  “It does?”

  Mrs. Clusp nodded emphatically. “I am asking you to appear and be the guest speaker—and it must be spectacular. A private eye, aren’t you? It would be wonderful if you could somehow demonstrate how criminals are caught. Like dusting up fingerprints or counting the blood of corpus delictis. The girls said we should try and get somebody from Police Headquarters, but like on the radio, don’t you think private detectives like Fats Spade or Hilary Skeen are more exciting?”

  “Yeah, a shamus,” Willie agreed. “A what?” Mrs. Clusp queried. “The—er—fee, ma’am?” Willie asked.

  “Ha, who don’t hate to talk about money? My time is valuable an’—”

  “Of course, Mr. Klump,” Mrs. Clusp said. “We’re prepared to pay fifty dollars. It all depends on how exciting you make it. It could be a hundred.”

  Willie blinked. “Well, now, Mrs. Clusp!”

  He went over to a file cabinet and pulled out a drawer and rummaged through it. He came up with a nickel- plated revolver and Mrs. Clump squeaked nervously when he placed it on the desk near her elbow.

  “Oh, a gun, Mr. Klump! They call them gats sometimes, don’t they?”

  “And Roscoes and Betsies,” Willie divulged. “Tell you what I’ll do, Mrs. Clusp. I’ll demonstrate how far up a victim was killed by powder marks left. Just give the girls a hint t’ hold onto their hats at what is in store for them, huh?”

  Mrs. Clusp gingerly picked up the gun and held it up in front of her brown eyes the way she would hold a smelt by the tail. “Oh, Mr. Klump, I feel like a gun mole.”

  “Moll,” Willie corrected.

  Mrs. Clusp was elated. She put the revolver down and drew her mink coat around her.

  “I just can’t wait, Mr. Klump. Er—what is on my-y-y gloves? Ugh!”

  Willie looked. He picked up the gun. “Huh, it is just choc’lit, ma’am. I-er—have a eclair in there. Sometimes I git hungry durin’ the day an’ if I’m workin’ on a tough case I don’t have time to run out for lunch. I got that drawer marked B t’ L. Breakfas’ to Lunch. I eat my hot meal outside.”

  “Oh, you are a radio character,” Mrs. Clusp tittered. “Wait until I tell Marge. She’ll scream. Marge is my closest friend, Mr. Klump. She’s program chairman. Then it’s all settled. It is next Thursday at twelve-thirty at the Hotel Skelton. Oh, don’t ever disappoint us!”

  “No, of courst not,” Willie said. “A hundred times, no! Let me show you out.” “B to L!” Mrs. Clusp exclaimed as she made her exit. “It is priceless!”

  * * * *

  Willie, unmindful of the hour, took note paper from his desk and began preparing a speech. Three hours later his phone rang and seemed to jump up and down in its cradle. It was Gertie Mudgett and she was loaded for bear.

  “Awright, you knucklehead!” she yelped. “So I’m stood up like a cigar store Indian. So leave us forget there is such a thing as the Yorkville Vets Ball ten days from now which you was takin’ me to. Mr. Aloysius Kelly said if I should change my mind about excorts to call him up. So you can drop dead, Willie Klump!”

  “Somethin’ important come up,” Willie argued.

  “Well, swaller it again an’ I hope it is Prussian acid,” Gertie snapped and hung up.

  “I wisht I could remember to send for that memory course,” Willie sighed and went to work once more . . . .

  When Willie Klump walked into the Skelton on the great day, a scraggly character with a wide and open countenance and bogged down with anything but an inferiority complex, jumped up from a chair. The president of the Hawkeye recognized him. He was Musky Weevil of the press.

  “Hiya, Willie,” Musky greeted. “A dame got this assignment, but I bought it from her as this I had to see.”

  “Git lost,” Willie sniffed.

  Then Mrs. Parslow Clusp espied him and swooped in.

  “Oh, I’m so glad you came, Mr. Klump! The girls are just simply in a tizzy. We have a private dining room just off the mezzanine and everything will be just wonderfully informal and clubby. Follow me.”

  Willie’s knees got a little mushy as he climbed some stairs. And then he was surrounded by half a hundred middle-aged dames of assorted sizes, and looked for a chance to break and run. Mrs. .Clusp, however, had her arm hooked through his and fairly dragged him into the festive hall and to the head table that was festooned with the biggest bunch of posies Willie had ever beheld outside of a bier parlor.

  The weaker sex stormed in, and last but not least was Musky Weevil.

  Mrs. Clusp presided and started off with the singing of a spirited patriotic song. Willie placed a Roscoe on the table near his plate of salad and half the soprano wails broke right in the middle. Over by the door Musky Weevil beamed with anticipation.

  Willie ate his roast beef with Mrs. Clusp pounding his left ear and telling him it was a shame her friend Marge had such a cold she couldn’t possibly attend. Margie Frostick, that was her name, and her husband was Gaylord Frostick who was simply sure he would be elected borough president come November next.

  “Give me some of your background so I can introduce you right, Mr. Klump,” Mrs. Clusp concluded when the biscuit tortonis arrived.

  “Oh, jus’ say I come up the hard way,” Willie said, and wished the butterflies in his stomach would all drop dead. He did not dare to look at Musky Weevil.

  Came a fifteen minutes discussion of business at hand, most of which had to do with the collection of wearing apparel on the part of the U.W.S. W.C.’s for shipment to the needy in Greece and thereabouts. Mrs. Embree Tew got the floor and reported an alarming development regarding the project.

  “We found three red sweaters, Madame President, six pairs of red socks, and two bright scarlet coats in the bin. It is un-American, an’ don’t you think they got enough Communism there without helpin’ get more?”

  A vote was taken. No more red second-hand duds to Greece. Willie sighed. Then Mrs. Clusp got up and rang a little bell and the jabbering lessened somewhat.

  “And now, fellow members,” she said dramatically, “we come to the piece de resistance of our meeting. We have with us a private eye. A criminologist internationally known, who will give us an insight on the modus operandi of the public enemies undermining our moral fibre. I present to you, Private Investigator William J. Klump!”

  Musky Weevil applauded the loudest. Willie arose and his legs were as firm under him as a pair of daisy stems. His tongue glued itself to the roof of his mouth and he wished that if an earthquake was ever going to hit Manhattan it would do it now. After a while he got going.

  “Madame charwoman, members an’ guests. Er-crime has been rampart sincet the middle evil ages and even before the Spinx. Er, even before that was the first rubout when Cain rubbed out Abel for just a mess of porridge.”

  “Didn’t I tell you he was a card?” Willie heard Mrs. Clusp whisper to a fat doll.

  Musky Weevil was grinning like a jackal and scribbling on his pad.

  “But—er—even to this day crime don’
t pay,” Willie went on. “As like most dames before the new look they most always let a slip show.”

  The audience roared and applauded. Willie felt stronger. “But I am no public speakster. I am only a private eye who believes action is louder than words. 1 am a shamus.”

  “You should be!”

  Mrs. Clusp glanced disapprovingly at Musky Weevil, as did her cohorts.

  “Er—the cops at Headquarters don’t like private eyes at all,” Willie continued. “They don’t corporate with ‘em as they’re jealous. We don’t let them in on clues we git at the scene of a crime an’ vice verser. Cops get paid by taxpayers but a shamus has t’ earn his dough. He perduces or elst! But I guess a demonstration is better than a lot of gab, huh, ladies?”

  Wild applause.

  Willie Klump picked up his nickel- plated Betsy and half a dozen of the club dolls giggled nervously.

  “Er—Mrs. Clusp, if you’d loaned me a handkerchief an’ a piece of cardboard an’ some thumb-tacks?”

  Mrs. Clusp giggled and handed Willie a dainty nose doily. She instructed a waiter to bring a menu card which he did. Willie tacked the hanky onto the cardboard and then gave it to Mrs. Clusp.

  “Jus’ stand out in front of the table an’ hold it out arm-length an’ I will shoot at the hanky. Of courst I use blanks, ha ha!”

  “Oh, is it safe?” Mrs. Clusp had to know.

  “Of courst,” Willie said. “I want to show how powder marks don’t show from a certain distance.”

  Mrs. Clusp took her place and held up the target. A little dame squealed and said she couldn’t look. Willie leveled the Roscoe and fired, and Mrs. Clusp jumped a foot off the carpet.

  “There, you don’t see no powder marks. Now the nex’ time, Mrs. Clusp, you come closter. About half-way nearer.” Again Mr. William J. Klump leveled the Betsy. Bang! A hole appeared in the hanky. A feather jumped off the hat of a bulky matron who promptly passed out. The bullet chugged into the wall and Mrs. Parslow Clusp was horizontal when Willie jumped over the head table.