The Willie Klump

by Joe Archibald

  Pandemonium reigned. A rhubarb set in. Dames screamed and yelled for cops. Musky Weevil reached Willie’s side, picked up a hand and pumped it.

  “I knew I could depend on you Willie! Thanks, pal!”

  “Drop dead!” Willie gulped. “I wisht I could. Oh, how did a live one git in that Roscoe? La-a-a-dies, it is a unfortunate incidents an’ let’s all be calm, huh? I—”

  He saw a big house dick loom up in the doorway and then got a gander at Mrs. Clusp who had her Lily Dache down over her left eye and a water carafe in her hand. The president of the U.W.S W.C. was still a little gaga and looked at Willie but hit the house dick right on the button.

  It was Willie’s chance and he took it. He got to a back stairway and descended rapidly to the basement, the Betsy still clutched in his fist. A big citizen in overalls threatened him with a shovel, saw the gat, and dived into a coal-bin.

  * * * *

  William J. Klump came out of a movie on Eighth Avenue four hours later, wended his way homeward and was apprehended by two big cops in front of his rooming house. Willie was taken to a precinct house for disturbing the peace and playing Russian roulette in a public house. Willie explained how he had purchased the Betsy in a second-hand joint on Second Avenue and showed a permit to pack it.

  “I loaded it first thing t’ day an’ could swear they was all blanks.”

  “Awright, I don’t see how we can hang nothin’ on you, Klump!” a big sergeant said. “It was the babe hit the hotel flatfoot with the water jug. Oh, I wisht I could lock you up, though. I hate private eyes as do all real cops! Scram before we think of somethin’ we can hold you on.”

  Once in his office, Willie stashed the Roscoe in its place, found the eclair and munched on it as he kissed the hundred clams good-by. And Aloysius “Satchelfoot” Kelly walked in, carrying an evening journal. Kelly sat down and tossed the paper to Willie.

  “Ha! Private dick wows womans club! Hotel Skelton luncheon brings back memories of D-Day! So that’s the way you figure t’ git publicity, you lemonhead. You are a disgrace to detection work.”

  “Look, like I told everybody I didn’t know it was loaded, Satchelfoot,” Willie choked out. “An’ if you don’t git out of here what will happen won’t be no accident as this paper knife ain’t no blank. I’ll open you like a letter, believe me!”

  “Awright, Willie,” Kelly said, and then needled, “Who you takin’ to the Yorkville Vets gallop? An’ wipe the choc’lit off your chin.”

  He hurried to the door, opened it, and slammed it behind him.

  “What was he scairt of?” Willie asked himself, and grinned. “Ten bucks a couple. Five bucks to hire a waiter’s dickey. She’ll at least git Kelly into two fights. Then a cab. Well it is an ill wind don’t blow somethin’ my way. Things could be worst.”

  Just two days later Willie found a letter from Mrs. Clusp in the morning mail and in it he found a check for one hundred dollars. She wrote:

  You were sensational, Mr. Klump. It wasn’t until after that we girls realized it was part of the act. Of course it was unfortunate I threw the water bottle. Ha ha. It was fun, though. We won’t never have as exciting a time again, I am sure. Again my thanks. I told my friend, Margie Frostick, all about it and she could just die she wasn’t there.

  Sincerely,

  Mrs. Parslow Clusp.

  “Thanks, girls.” Willie grinned, and slid the check out of sight in the mess in his desk drawer. “Hope it don’t bounce like the water jug, hah!”

  Three days later, much to Willie’s astonishment, he received a visit from another female character who was dressed up spiffier than Mrs. Asterbilt’s coach horse, and he guessed the Hotel Skelton publicity was paying off. The doll was nudging forty or more years fast and having a time keeping a second chin in check, but Willie had to admit she was cute.

  She introduced herself as Mrs. Tyrone Beebe, and wanted a husband checked up for philandry. Willie was about to take down notes when Mrs. Beebe suddenly clutched at her throat. Her big blue eyes widened.

  “K-Klump! I have an attack—coming on. I—I left my p-ills—in the car. G-get them—quick. Car is at the curb! Oh—h- hurry, K-K-K—. My heart, Mr. K—.”

  “Oh!” Willie gasped and legged it out of the office.

  He got downstairs and outside and saw the nifty sedan at the curb. But the door was locked. He ran inside and into the elevator and got back to his office again.

  “Gimmie the key to the car, ma’am, as—”

  “It’s all right,” Mrs. Beebe said. “It passed off, Mr. Klump. Let me have a drink of water, please?”

  Willie got the water. Then Mrs. Beebe said she had better come back some other time as she did not feel up to discussing embarrassing personal affairs at such a time. Willie saw her all the way to her car and watched her drive off.

  “Huh, I should get a first aid skit for the office, as dames git under a strain when husbands look where grass is greener. I bet I would of got a big fee. Looks like I am gittin’ choice clients from now on, an’ should git me a shoe shine.”

  The phone rang. “Hawkeye Detet . . . Wha-a-a-a?” Willie asked.

  “This is Mr. Dillmore Gluten, program chairman of the Great Neck Rotary. Say, how about you putting on that swell act for us you give that womans club, Klump?”

  “You got the wrong number, smart alex,” Willie sniffed, and banged the phone down.

  * * * *

  He got eight more such calls during the few days that followed, and his pride was as frayed as a hobo’s cuffs. He sat brooding in his rooming house the night of the Yorkville Vets wingding and hoped Gertie was irked this night by a jumping wisdom tooth. It was 10 p.m. when his landlady hammered on his door and said Miss Mudgett was on the phone downstairs.

  “An’ you better step on it, Klump. She’s wilder than a Philly pitcher.”

  “Willie,” Gertie yelped when the shamus pressed the receiver to his ear, “you come an’ see I’m excorted home as that Kelly had to go to a murder. Of all nights this would happen. It’s rainin’ an’ I got sore feet an’ lef’ my dough home.”

  “Murder?” Willie howled. “You sure?” “Of courst. The Hotel Bellair, I think.

  Willie, if you dast to—”

  William Klump hung up. He ran upstairs and got his hat and then ran down again. It took him five minutes to get a cab and ten more to get to the hostelry on West Fifty-third.

  He did not wait for the elevator to come down but ran up six flights of stairs. A wicker hamper was being toted out of Room 640 when Willie got to the scene, and a citizen he knew quite well was also leaving. The appraiser of the defunct. Three cops got hold of Willie and he protested to high heaven, and then Satchelfoot Kelly stepped outside, holding something wrapped in a hanky.

  “It’s awright, Grogan,” Kelly grinned. “It is just the business men’s and club woman’s comic. Gert told you, hah?”

  “Who was murdered?” Willie asked stepping in.

  “Who said murder?” Kelly snorted. “A character called Frankie Servo. A Roscoe in his hand and shot up clost right through the juggler. He was a contemptuary of your’n as look at the scrap book he kept there on the table—an’ just look at it. Put your hooks on it an’ I’ll break your arm. He was a burlesque comedian in the roarin’ Finsky days. There is a makeup box in the closet you could use in your racket, Willie. Putty nose an’ all. Ha!”

  “Ain’t you a scream, though?” Willie sniffed.

  “One clippin’ here about two babes tried to carve each other up over a battle as to who got the inside with a stage door nifty,” Kelly said. “The soubrette lost and had four stitches taken in her left flipper.”

  Willie shuddered at the stains on the floor, and looked around.

  “Huh, them suits hangin’ up in the closet, Satchelfoot. They never come with baseball bats. An’ a bottle of Scotch on the dresser. Who’d want
to bump himself off? You are as observin’ as an owl at high noon. Where’s the gun?”

  Kelly laughed. “You will know from nothin’, Willie.”

  “We’d better look out back an’ see can we find the slug went right through the guy, Kelly,” Grogan said. “Elst how will we prove the Roscoe he held shot him?”

  “Shah-h-h-h-hd up!” Satchelfoot yipped. He went into the closet and rummaged around.

  Willie slid closer to the table and riffled the leaves of the scrapbook. There was a fading halftone of a burlesque comic in baggy pants and exaggerated shoes, and press notices telling how Frankie Servo had wowed the runway addicts. A souvenir program of Finsky’s Chatham Square. And here was one where Frankie had posed with a doll wearing about half as much as the law in those days allowed, and Willie’s ears twitched. He just had time to read the caption when Satchelfoot Kelly yanked the book out of his clutches.

  William Klump’s mind could be called anything but photographic and he immediately forgot the strip teaser’s name.

  Ten minutes later, Satchelfoot and his associates were on their way downtown with the Roscoe and the scrapbook, and Willie sat with a harness bull and had a snort of the late comic’s Scotch.

  “Suicide, hah?” Willie sniffed. “I bet this room cost the victim twenty bucks a week. If he was on relief here the taxpayers should be told. That pinstripe suit hangin’ up there never cost lest than sixty clams!”

  “Who knows why guys bump ‘emselves off, Klump?” the cop asked. “Even millionaires do it. Good Scotch, huh? I would of killed this bottle first if I’d been him, as he knew he wasn’t goin’ t’ have no hangover. Ha!”

  Willie shuddered at such sang froid and put his glass down.

  “Maybe that was his wife posed with him in that pitcher. Maybe after she got pneumonia an’ passed away an’ he brooded ever sincet until finally . . . If I saw her name oncet more—what was it now?”

  “Not bad induction, Klump,” the cop said. “Well, le’s lam outa here.”

  “Gert!” Willie yelped. “She’s still at . . . Oh-h-h!”

  * * * *

  William Klump arrived at the East Manhattan Civic Center at midnight, and after quizzing at least a score of citizens, ran into a cab driver who peered out of one good eye. There was a scratch on his pan that had never been put there by a safety razor.

  “A dame wearin’ a mustard colored fur benny?” he said. “Did I see her, pal? How’d you like a bust on the nose?”

  “Brother, I am goin’ to git one,” Willie said. “That was my dame. Kind of an undershot jaw an’—”

  “Stop right there, Buster,” the cabby said. “She ast would I take her home an’ wait while she went in an’ got her dough an’ I said I heard the gag before an’ go look for another patsy. She swung on me an’ then when I come around I see her gettin’ on a big sanitation truck which must have been goin’ her way. Brother, you keep away from that tomater!”

  “You think that is easy, huh?” Willie sighed, and sauntered homeward, wondering why Frankie Servo had eased himself off in the midst of plenty.

  Willie read about Frankie Servo in the paper the next morning. According to citizens who had known the comic, Frankie hadn’t trod the boards for goodness only knew how long, but he seemed to have had few worries of late. The cops had found close to three hundred clams in the defunct comic’s pocket and figured he had maybe been in a business not exactly recommended by a D.A.

  The police were mulling over the idea that Frankie could have been liquidated by a partner as shady as he himself had been. That is, if they could prove the ex-comic hadn’t expunged himself by his own hand. “No relatives as far as the cops know,” Willie said to himself. “Must be awful t’ shove off alone an’ unmourned-for. I better make up with Gert.”

  He dialed a number, gritted his teeth and waited. Gertie answered, but he was not sure it was his affinity for a good five minutes. Her voice was as soft as a kitten’s ear, and had a lilt to it.

  “You sure this is you, Gert?” Willie asked.

  “Why, of courst. Did you think a twin of mine from Siam got in town, Willie?”

  “Then you ain’t sore at me? Look, it was a murder an’—”

  “He sure was. He’s got wavy blond hair an’ brown eyes, Willie, and is he strong?” Gertie gurgled. “He’s only drivin’ the sanitation truck until he gits in a G.I. college to study civic engineerin’ and his name is Orville Brugziski. I got a date with him Sat’dy night. What was it you wanted to ast me, Willie?”

  “Wrong number,” Willie said, and hung up.

  It was late the next afternoon when Willie went downtown to see an assistant D.A. he knew quite well.

  “I was thinkin’ of puttin’ in a side line to my business to help unfray expenses,” he said, “an’ wonder is it legal to be a notarized public along with private investigatin’. An’ how do I git to be one; seein’ as I just went as far as the eighth grade an’ . . . What-a-a-a-at? Where did you git that Betsy?” Willie grabbed for the nickel-plated revolver.

  “That? That’s the gun Frankie Servo bumped himself off with, Klump. Don’t be silly.”

  “I’ll be sillier if I don’t make sure,” Willie yelped, and ran out of the D.A.’s office.

  He ran all the way to the subway and uptown he ran all the way from it and he was puffing like a sideshow fat lady on her way up Pike’s Peak on foot when he finally tore into the office of the Hawkeye Detective Agency.

  “No, it can’t be!” Willie gasped, and pulled open the drawer of the file cabinet labeled B to L. The revolver was gone!

  William Klump fell into his chair and clawed at his unruly locks and tried to think. Of course it had to be. Only Mrs. Parslow Clusp had known. He picked up his phone book and feverishly riffled the pages to the C’s. There it was. The club doll’s name. Seven hundred West Ninety- ninth.

  “I won’t call her as it’ll give her a chancet to skip town. This will be a personal call. Of courst Frankie was rubbed out as Kelly said it was suicide. But Mrs. Clusp wouldn’t know old burleque comics. But would she?”

  On his way to a crosstown bus, Willie suddenly felt a sharp pain in his empennage and leaped a foot off the pavement. He swung around quickly and saw a pair of moppets at the mouth of an alleyway grinning at him. One held an air- gun. Willie took time out to lecture the young citizens on the evils of juvenile delinquency.

  “Aw-w, it was only a B-B,” a sprout yelped, and lammed with his crony. “Sor- r-r-rehead!”

  “You didn’t hit me in the head!”

  Willie stiffened and leaned against a street signpost when a light flashed on inside his noggin. B-B. That was the name in the comic’s scrapbook. Bebe Delatour was the stripper’s name. Now where had he heard it before?

  * * * *

  Twenty minutes later, all agog, Willie buzzed Mrs. Clusp’s apartment bell. Mrs. Clusp, her hair up in curlers, answered the door and was quite surprised to see the president of the Hawkeye Detective Agency.

  “Why—er—Mr. Klump! And me such a fright! Whatever ails you?”

  Willie shut the door behind him. “Remember whatever you say’ll be used against you, madam. Why did you swipe my Roscoe from my office an’ knock off Frankie Servo?”

  Mrs. Clusp recoiled at first, then came back on her toes. “Look, I know you’re a comic, Klump, but enough is enough. I am not havin’ private showin’s!”

  “Don’t stall,” Willie snapped. “Only you knew I filed the Betsy with my snacks under B to L.”

  Mrs. Clusp sat down and gaped at Willie. She started thinking, but fast.

  “Oh, I told half a dozen of the girls about that. I thought it was such a scream, Klump. Especially Margie Frostick my closest friend who just had to hear all about that meeting clear to the last detail. You know, Mr. Klump, I think you’re crazy! I should send for the Bellevue pallbearers, but I just haven’t the hea
rt.”

  “Heart?” Willie’s ears twanged. He ogled Mrs. Clusp until she got scared. “Has that Frostick babe got a bad ticker?”

  “Marge? Ha-a-a-a-a! She’s the bowlin’ champ of our set, Klump. She’s healthier than the captain of the Yale crew.”

  “Er, could you describe her?” Willie asked. .

  “Looks like a big china doll, Mr. Klump. And wears the most gorgeous red hats and always with a green feather.”

  Willie had little pins sticking in him all the way from his scalp down to his chilblains, and now he remembered Mrs. Beebe. He picked up his hat.

  . “Well, thanks,” he said. “A private eye can’t overlook nothin’ an’ I just thought I’d check. Forget it, Mrs. Clusp.”

  Three blocks away Willie quickly looked up Mrs. Gaylord Frostick and found that she lived in the same apartment house as Mrs. Clusp so he hurried right back to the fashionable pueblo and took the lift to the tenth floor. He paused outside a door marked K3-6, and listened. He heard a voice that was vaguely familiar.

  “Wha-a-at, Elsie?” it said. “He did? Oh-h-h, he is simply crocked in the head. For heaven’s sake! W-well, I must hang up as Gaylord is to call any minute and . . . Yes, I will, Elsie.”

  Willie knocked. Mrs. Gaylord Frostick asked who was there and her voice sounded to Willie as if she hadn’t cleaned the gravel out of her spinach.

  “It’s Klump from the Hawkeye,” Willie said sternly.

  “W-what you want?”

  “Why, I thought you’d feel like tellin’ me about your problem now,” Willie said. “The one you meant to tell me.”

  Mrs. Marge Frostick opened up and Willie stepped inside.

  “I can only give you a minute, Mr. Klump. I’ve changed my mind about my husband.”

  She was quite a dish, Willie thought, even though she might have graduated from the G-strings.

  “This’ll take longer’n a minute, I’m afraid, my dear woman,” Willie said professionally. “Why did you say you was Mrs. Beebe that day, an’ why did you throw the fit to git me out of my office? That’s when you grabbed my revolver, huh?”