The Willie Klump

by Joe Archibald

“They are shipped to you in lead cans, huh?” Willie sniffed.

  “To make a long story short I need a bodyguard, Klump,” Spelvin Sump said. “But I can only pay fifteen dollars each day.”

  Willie’s swivel-chair did one revolution before he braked it. “Fifteen dollars? Why Mr. Sump, I—that is, well, I will tell you what. I will make an inception in your case. I have four or five days before I get a report from my ops who are workin’ on a big spy deal, so I’ll give it a try.”

  “Wonderful, Mr. Klump,” Sump said. “You carry a gun, of course?”

  Willie shuddered. If there was anything he hated and did not understand too well, it was a heater with a trigger to it. It suddenly occurred to him that he did not look tough enough to be a bodyguard and that rough citizens would get a laugh before they ventilated Mr. Sump.

  “Look, give me a day or two to think this over, pal,” Willie said.

  “Okay, Klump,” Sump said. “I know you’re a pretty busy man. But don’t let me down whatever else you do.”

  TWENTY minutes later Willie sat and thought it over and the more he thought the more butterflies settled in his stomach. He decided to discuss the dilemma with Gertrude Mudgett when he met her for a movie date that evening.

  Gertie called Willie a heel, when they met and he’d given her a quick rundown of his assets.

  “I should eat my cake an’ let you keep it in the ice-box at the same time?” Willie sniffed.

  “Never mind the incinerations,” Gertie snapped back at him. “Awright. Leave us go to a Shanty an’ then we will see the pitcher at Looie’s Lex. Humphries Bogard and Bacall are in it and it is called The Gat And His Mouse.”

  Willie told Gertie about Sump after taking a bite out of a liverwurst sandwich.

  “Of courst, you’ll do it, Willie,” she said. “Fifteen bucks every day until Sump is shot or out of the woods! That ain’t hay. You could make yourself look tough. Watch Bogard all durin’ the pitcher tonight an’ see how he does it.”

  Willie did. He observed the Bogie technique as closely as possible but knew he could not get away with slapping Gertie in the chops. He studied Bogie’s mannerisms and the way he spoke. He sat through the picture twice and then escorted Gertrude Mudgett to the street.

  “Well, baby,” he said through his teeth. “You think we should lam this burg, baby?”

  “Why, Willie, you are thrillin’!” Gertie exclaimed. “Only you should pull the brim of your hat down over your eyes an’ get a clean shirt and a suit pressed.”

  “Yeah? Who are you to tell me, baby?”

  “Now wait, knucklehead,” Gertie yipped. “Don’t overdo it or I’ll hang one on you an’ put you back in character.”

  “Oh, yeah?” “Yeah!”

  “If you took off ten to twelve pounds and let your hair flop over your eyes, baby,” Willie said, “you could almost pass for Bacall. Come on, I’ll bodyguard you home, baby.”

  “I have got a hunch I started somethin’

  awful,” Gertrude Mudgett sniffed.

  On his way to his office the next morning Willie stopped in at a drug store and purchased some cotton. The clerk mentioned that it was a nice day.

  “What’s good about it?” Willie tossed out.

  “It’s clammy, pal. An’ leave us not git personal, see?”

  “Sha-aa-addup!” Willie said, and walked out. He stood out in front for a moment lighting a cigarette the way Bogard had in the picture, and he peered at passersby from under the brim of his hat as if daring them to make something out of anything. Finally he swaggered down the street toward the building where he was behind a month in the rent, amazed at the change that he’d made in himself.

  Willie, in the privacy of his office, slid rolls of cotton under his upper and lower lips and talked to a pretty doll reclining on a calendar tacked to the wall.

  “Yeah, that’s how it is, baby. We’re through, see? Oh, yeah? So what?”

  A half hour later Willie considered the Sump case and suddenly remembered his permit to pack a heater had expired. He went downtown to see an assistant D.A. he knew and soon had that little detail straightened out. The news spread through various offices and Willie had no sooner decided to hurry uptown and meet Spelvin Sump when Satchelfoot Kelly and two other cops intercepted him in the corridor. Kelly had a Roscoe in his hand.

  “Look, Willie,” Satchelfoot said. “This is a gun. You hold it with this end, see? An’ the bullet comes out the other. Here is where you put the cartridges an’ always remember to put them in with the bullet- parts headin’ out the barrel. An’—”

  “Sha-a-a-ddup!” Willie snapped. “You want I should blast you, huh? Look, copper, you are as funny as a brace on a sprout’s knee.”

  “Huh?” Satchelfoot gasped. “What’s come over the lemonhead? Is it them comic mags did this? An’ he is goin’ to carry a Roscoe!”

  “Why not?” Willie yelped. “With the likes of you around there has to be somebody to protect scientrists while they make atomic—it is none of your business!”

  ATCHELFOOT KELLY had to sit down after taking that one and he looked wonderingly at Willie Klump. “Where did you git the snow, Willie?” he finally asked. “An’ now tell us you know where the Behr brothers stashed the hundred and thirty grand they took from

  the armored car over in Bayonne, ha!” “Nobody will ever know where that

  is,” Willie sniffed. “You cops are stumped for keeps on that one, especially after that attempted jail-break at Trenton. I’ll be seein’ you coppers around.”

  “Get him!” Kelly gulped. “A split personality, looks like. Gertie must’ve used a cleaver on him. I don’t get it!”

  “You will,” Willie said curtly. “Just keep astin’ for it, bigmouth!” He slid a cigarette between his lips and nearly swallowed one of the rolls of cotton. On his way uptown he mentally reviewed the Bayonne robbery and’ the corpses that became strewn in its wake. All of the guilty parties in the crime, that was now a year old, had got their come-uppance but over a hundred grand was still missing from circulation.

  The job, the cops said, had been planned far in advance. One of the Behr boys had wheedled himself into a job with the armored car outfit. He had personally expunged a fellow-employee and had driven the C.O.D. sedan into the hinterland where he’d been met by the other Behr and two dishonest gees.

  The swag jalopy had been dynamited and the contents taken. Several weeks afterward, the criminal characters had apparently put on a rhubarb over a split of the take and when the cops arrived in the back room of the Tenth Avenue tavern Louie Behr was quite dead. Another miscreant was tottering on the ragged edge when placed in the pickup truck of a healing hacienda and he sang the other Behr and his pal right into the Trenton pokey before he breathed his last.

  Despite hours of cooking in the grill room, Waxie Behr and the other gee refused to divulge where they had stored the heavy lettuce. Waxie claimed that only Louie knew and that he was not a spirit medium. Six months after being convicted, Waxie Behr and his crony participated in a very spectacular attempt at breaking out of the Trenton klink and the last Behr absorbed half the ammo in a gun tower and was hustled to the pokey morgue. The only criminal character left of the original holdup gang was given an additional ninety-nine years, and so Willie figured he would not be interested in even a million bucks by the time he left the pen which could only be in a hearse.

  One guard had been expunged during the attempted break and six had required more than a little first aid. The cops of two states had about made up their minds to forget it all, and had soothed their consciences with the thought that the crime had not paid.

  “I am sure glad I never got mixed up with them tough Behrs,” Willie told himself, and a passenger across the way dropped his newspaper and eyed him askance.

  “Who you starin’ at, punk?” Willie said, the Bogard coming out in him once more,
“I’m on edge, so you look out, see?” Willie stopped in at a cigar store two blocks from his office to call Spelvin

  Sump. The client was very pleased to hear his voice and was no end pleased to hear that the Hawkeye was going to protect him by the day. Mr. Sump instructed Willie to be at his home up in the Fleetwood section of the Bronx at eight o’clock the next morning. He was to be escorted downtown to pick up some tools necessary to the secret work he was engaged in.

  “I’ll be right on the dot, pal,” Willie said. “Ah—how about a detainin’ fee when I see you?”

  “We will discuss that, Klump, when you get here,” the client said, and quickly hung up.

  “H-m-m,” Willie said. “Who knows I may be guardin’ a citizen more famous that Pasture or Madame Curry. The future of the world could be in my hands an’— yeah, when the great secret comes out my pitcher’ll be in Life. I can’t wait until Satchelfoot sees it.”

  A series of startling events overtook William Klump the moment he rang the bell of Spelvin Sump’s little abode on a shady side-street far uptown. They shouldn’t have even happened to such as Willie. An angular female with her red hair full of steel clamps opened the door and glared at him.

  “We got whatever you’re sellin’, so run along, Buster,” she snapped.

  “I am here to see Mr. Sump,” Willie said. “He hired me to personally bodyguard him beginnin’ as of now. I am to excort him downtown an’—”

  “Wha-a-a-a? So he’s like that ag’in, is he?” The irate female spat at Willie. “I should have you arrested for takin’ advantage of my poor husband!”

  HE turned around fast and Willie was quite sure it was to pick something up with which to fracture his skull and so he turned and fled, a lot of the Bogard in him seeping out. He waited two blocks away to

  see if Spelvin Sump would appear and explain but an hour went by and no Mr. Sump. Willie Klump sadly trudged toward the Fleetwood railroad stop trying to figure it all out, but his noggin kept bumping against a dead end.

  9:05 A.M. Willie Klump dropped into his chair at the Hawkeye Detective Agency feeling as much like Bogie at the moment as a smelt feels like a whale, and hoping that the niggardly Mrs. Sump’s next batch of biscuits would burn to a crisp.

  “Maybe I didn’t git the right address an’ there might be more than one Sump up there,” Willie mumbled, and reached into his pocket for his memo book. Out tumbled the picture of the mouse in the swim suit and Willie picked it up and had to admire it. He was holding it more up to the light when the door behind him opened. Too late he tried to ditch the snapshot and Gertie Mudgett leaped across the room and ripped it out of his hand. She took one quick gander at it and flung it away, picked up a dictionary and belted Willie on top of the head with same. All the words seemed to fly out of the dictionary, break up into letters and swarm around his noggin like bees. Faintly he heard Gertie’s voice.

  “So you didn’t have the nerve to take that job, you jerk!” Gertie howled. “I come by to make sure an’ here you are gloatin’ over a pitcher of the doll you are two- timin’ me with. I’ll see a lawyer, Willie Klump, an’ name her for annihilatin’ of affections. Good—by!”

  “Look, Gert,” Willie gulped out, when the smog was out of his glimmers. “If you’d just read on the back of the pitcher, you’d—hey, Gert!”

  Willie Klump leaned forward and held his noggin in his hands and lost track of time.

  9:22 A.M. The door opened once more and Willie spun around and saw Spelvin Sump. The character looked both apologetic and addled.

  “Awright,” Willie said. “Make up your mind, huh?”

  “Mr. Klump, I am so sorry,” the client answered. “You see I am keepin’ it from my wife I am in danger. And certain people call me—well—eccentric like all inventors. She couldn’t see why I should hire a bodyguard of course. Now to show my good faith I will pay your first day’s—

  ”

  Outside in the street a truck tire blew and Spelvin Sump nearly jumped out of his rompers. A strange look appeared in his eyes and he asked Willie Klump who he was and why he had been brought here.

  Willie yelled at the top of his lungs when he asked what the gimmick was and Mr. Sump was quite startled again. His eyes changed back to their original expression and he laughed guiltily.

  “Don’t mind me, Klump. I was thinkin’ of how to harness atomic fractions and was preoccupied.” Sump reached down and picked up something that had nearly slid out of sight under Willie’s desk. He looked at the snapshot of the blonde and scratched his inventive head. Then he stared at Willie.

  “My dame just caught me with that,” Willie sniffed. “She didn’t give me no time to tell her I found it in my closet where I room. Some other roomer before me left it there. Well, give it here an’ we’ll talk business.”

  “I suddenly do not feel well, Klump,” Spelvin Sump said in a very flaccid voice. “Some other time. Good day to you.”

  “An’ go jump in the river, you crackpot!” the president of the Hawkeye Detective Agency yelled. “Make up your mind if you are Mr. Hyde or Dr. Jeekle!”

  Willie mopped exasperating dew from his face and reached for a tabloid he’d bought and forgot to read. Staring him in the face just as if he hadn’t trouble enough was a half-tone of Aloysius “Satchelfoot” Kelly. A headline screamed:

  ALERT DETECTIVE FOILS ARMED ROBBERY!

  Inside, on page 2, was the account of Kelly’s brave deed. He had been off duty and walking past a bar and grill on Seventh Avenue when two rough characters ran out of a ginmill after shooting up two customers and the barkeep. Satchelfoot had tangled with both in a spirited gun battle and had triumphed. Police believed that the arrest of the two hoods would lead to the extermination of the gang that had been terrorizing the West Side for months.

  “Now he won’t be fit to live with,” Willie griped. “The only way he could ever nab crooks is to have them run into him with open arms like they did. Huh, they should have glued his ears back before muggin’ him. He looks like a scairt door mouse.”

  T TWELVE o’clock Willie went to his filing cabinet and pulled out a drawer marked L. He came up with two soggy honey buns and a jar of cold coffee and was just spreading a newspaper over his desk when Spelvin Sump came in, more agitated than three eggs in a mixing

  bowl.

  “Look, bud, I’ve only got so much patients with you,” Willie yelped loudly. “Leave us in on the act!”

  “You must help me, Klump,” the strange client pleaded. “I am in dire peril an’ don’t dare go home. They are trailin’ me. I saw ‘em an’ jumped in a cab an’ come here. You must put me up for the

  night.”

  “Where I sleep an extra lodger?” Willie yelped. “Even if he was a Singer midget who smoked too many cigarettes, he would over-crowd things,” Willie yelped. “Look, I will call your wife an’—” “No! No! Not that!” Sump dropped

  into Willie’s chair and wrung his hands. “On second thought I wouldn’t do that

  to a dog,” Willie sniffed. “Awright, but I

  want a detainer fee, if I am hired at last!” “Here is ten dollars,” Spelvin Sump

  said, and dug down for his wallet.

  “It is a deal,” Willie said. “Of course you will have to pay two bucks to share my room. I hope you will not judge the Hawkeye by where I live as who can’t be particular nowadays, huh? I just missed a duplexus apartment by fifteen minutes this A.M. Sit down an’ relapse, pal, and then we’ll have a rummy game until it gets dark.”

  “I shall never forget you, Klump,” the client said.

  “Er,” Willie asked, “you wouldn’t have atomic energy on you? I heard it soaks through.”

  “No, Klump, I carry four lead pencils.” “An antidope, huh?” Willie said. “That’s nice to know.” Then he hunted up

  a deck of cards.

  7:45 P.M. Willie Klump and Spel
vin Sump left the office building and hailed a cab. En route to Willie’s rooming house a stop was made to purchase sandwiches. They entered the skylight room around eight and Spelvin Sump remarked that lifers certainly must enjoy better accommodations at the State pens.

  “Yeah, but you have to commit murder to git a room,” Willie said, and shooed a pigeon off the dresser. It took off and zoomed up through the skylight. “We will have to toss up to see who sleeps on the floor, huh?”

  8:30 P.M. to 10:35 P.M. Sandwiches and more gin rummy. Then to bed.

  Willie won the toss and he gave Sump the extra pillow and a blanket. The president of the Hawkeye Detective Agency had had a trying day and he had no sooner hit the sack when Morpheus slugged him between the eyes. Willie dreamed that he was in a dentist’s chair and was being given gas just as a fire alarm rang. The molar mechanic ripped off his white coat and took off announcing that he was a volunteer fire-fighter. Willie tried to yell that the citizen had forgotten to turn off the sleep vapor. He woke up and discovered that a pillow was pressed against his face and that something heavy was on top of the pillow.

  “M-m-mph-umph,” Willie choked out and began to struggle. He kicked with his legs and flailed with his arms and managed to squirm out from under and fall out of bed. Something landed beside him with a loud thump and he rolled over and covered it like a blanket and banged at it with his fists. It made noises like a man and then Willie remembered he’d brought his client home with him. He jumped up and pulled a light cord and looked down at Spelvin Sump.

  “Why, you dirty strangler!”

  Sump got to a sitting position and felt of a mouse under his eye as he looked up at Willie.

  “W-Where am I, huh? Oh, it is you, Klump. It was awful as I dreamt I was murderin’ my wife.”

  “Yeah?” Willie asked, and shuddered. “So that was it? Well, I am sittin’ up the rest of the night an’ drinkin’ black coffee as soon as I stew some up. You can have the bed.”