The Willie Klump

by Joe Archibald

  Do Us Part.”

  “Sounds like incombatibility to me,” Willie said. “That all you got against her?” “She took nearly six thousand dollars worth of war bonds with her when she

  left,” Mr. Grooby said ruefully.

  “Whicht makes the lam pretty tough,” Willie said archly. “You must give me a description of the babe—er—your wife. Then we will discuss my fee.”

  Mr. Grooby reached into his pocket and withdrew a wallet. From it he extracted a small photo of a big-eyed blonde with a retrousse nose. “It don’t do her justice,” he said. “It was took in one of them two-bit places in Asbury Park.”

  “But we’ll show her justice shall be done,” Willie said severely. “H-m-m, not much to go on, as she is a stirrotype of about ten thousand other blondes, Mr. Grooby. Any place you think she might have gone? Like with relatives out of town, or to her old hunts—I mean haunts?”

  “She was an orphan,” the client said. “I have been to all the places here in this city that—well I was sure she’d been to. I used t’ find book-matches she brought back. And swizzle sticks an’ glass-coasters. You know—I never begrudged her no fun, Klump.”

  “This is a tough case, Mr. Grooby,” Willie sighed. “I am afraid my fee must be at least fifteen—”

  “Mr. Klump, you shall have ten per cent of the value of the bonds she has not cashed in by the time you find her!” Grooby said. “That should be an incentive for you to work fast, should it not?”

  “You got me, pal!” Willie choked out. “Le’s make it a flat twenty bucks, huh? Win or lose. I’ve seen dames spend moolah, Mr. Grooby. I was not born yesterday!”

  “Very well,” the client said. “It is a deal. But you will try, won’t you, Klump?”

  When the door of the Hawkeye Agency closed behind the departing client, Willie dropped the photo of the blonde into his coat pocket and picked up the letter from his sister. He began reading where he’d left off.

  A lot of us have got together an’ made up a partition and are going around getting signatures whicht we will present to the supreme court and force them to give Hake a new trial, or at least compute the death sentence. Willie, we want you to come up here and be a private investigator for us as it looks like the evidence was full of circumstances. It means you will save a life, Willie. Elmo is so young. Justice has a right to be done in the country as well as in the city, say we. What do you say?

  If you do not come and help, Willie, we will know you have become too high-toned for the likes of us, and don’t ever dare come back home again. Aunt Sophia’s asthma is acting up again. The hog we killed yesterday weighed over two hundred pounds, dressed. Which reminds me, how is your girl, Gertie?

  As ever,

  PHOEBE

  WILLIE picked up the newspaper clipping and read it through. In print, Elmo sounded like a fiend. He’d driven through the Vermont countryside in a stolen jalopy and had been found parked on a lonely wooded road with a bottle in his lap, getting ready to lose a weekend, when the cops found him. There was also a wrench in the sedan with stains on it that had not come from tomato catsup. And there was also a corpse in the trunk in back, the remains of the citizen who owned the car.

  “It looks like stale meat to me,” Willie mused. “I could never find that blonde before she hocked the bonds, and if Elmo is not guilty, they can get maple sap out of elm trees. But I have to show Grooby I am busy on the case, or I lose the twenty bucks. And I should show the folks back home that success never went to my head. Or should I? Ha, I will kill two birds with one stone.”

  Willie slept on it all that night. Toward noon of the next day he phoned Mr. Ferbus Grooby.

  “Grooby? Well, this is William J. Klump, Hawkeye Detective Agency. I think I have a lead, and it’ll take me out of

  town for a couple of days. Expenses should be light, as I never could sleep in them train hammocks. Huh? Oh, not more’n ten bucks, as I will eat with relatives.”

  Willie reached his home town, the county seat, at nine the next morning, and Phoebe met him with a pick-up truck.

  “You haven’t changed a bit,” Phoebe said. “Is that the same suit you left with?”

  “The secret is not to look sharp, so that crooks are caught off guard,” Willie said. “Anyways I never was one to put on no dog. Take me to the D.A. here.”

  “Huh? You mean the sheriff, don’t you? Maybe you can talk to Elmo, too,” Phoebe said. “They still have the murder car and the exhibits A and B—the bloodstained topcoat an’ wrench.”

  The county sheriff looked askance at William J. Klump when he was introduced. “Now I know you’re wastin’ your time, Phoebe,” he said.

  “Leave us have more facts, and let me look at the jalopy,” Willie said, ignoring the professional jealousy.

  “Awright, private eye,” the country flatfoot said. “This Elmo Hake claims he was hitch-hikin’, and a doll give him a ride at a roadside joint. He was thumbin’ his way down from Barre, where he worked in the quarries. The doll hands him a bottle of hooch and he takes a swig. So they drive about three miles when a citizen comes up from under somethin’ in the back seat an’ sticks a gun in the back of Hake’s neck. By this time, Hake said, he had four healthy pulls at the bottle. He passes out both from fright and too much blended nitro, and when he comes to, me and two deputies are slappin’ his face. That’s all Hake knows. That’s a corker, ain’t it, Willie? By Godfrey, what chance did he have?”

  “An’ he was wearin’ the bloodstained topcoat,” Phoebe said. “Sheriff Schlemmer

  here got suspicious then and looked in the trunk of the sedan, and there was a dead man all folded up.”

  “He was the owner of the jalopy,” the sheriff said. The keys in the ignition had his name an’ address on ‘em. We checked an’ found the car was stolen thirty miles north.” The sheriff went on, “This Elmo Hake had the whim-whams after committin’ murder, the prosecution brought out, an’ got himself some grog to steady him down. But he knocked himself out, ha! A dame, he says. There was no sign of no dame bein’ in that sedan. It wa’n’t his hat an’ topcoat that had the blood on, he says. He lied because a character held up a gas station just south of White River Junction wearin’ a gray coat an’ purple-brown hat, an’ drivin’ that sedan. The feller up there indentified him as Hake.”

  Willie sighed. “Phoebe, there never was a more airtight case unless it was a box carryin’ atonic energy. However, while I’m here, I shall case the murder car.”

  “The labels was cut out of the coat and hat,” the sheriff said. “Mos’ likely Hake stole them, too. Anyways they both fit him perfect.”

  HE dark blue murder sedan was parked in back of the county jail. The trunk was open and Willie looked in at the bloodstains. Then he began to search the upholstery of the jalopy and suddenly he

  came up with a little gold mermaid.

  “Huh, you had your eyes examined lately, Schlemmer?” Willie asked the sheriff. “This is a doll’s earring. So it looks like Hake gits a new trial an’ maybe he’ll even duck the volts up at the State Prison in Windsor. It is a good thing you called a private investigator in from the big town, Phoebe. Now justice will be done.”

  “Shah-h-h-hd up!” the county sheriff yelped. “I’m tryin’ to git a word in. This is sure luck. Nearly everybody in town have been stickin’ their necks into that murder car since the conviction, includin’ my wife, Mamie. Las’ night she missed that earring, Willie. I give ‘em to her las’ Chris’mas. What a break. Them earrings cost me three bucks each.”

  Willie sighed and sat down on the running board. “It ain’t my day, I guess,” he said. “An’ no detective has a chancet to do much after a crime gets so stale. It is like trying to prove a baked apple once had red, green, or yeller skin. Er, what makes you think Hake is innercent, Phoebe?”

  “Just lookin’ at him, Willie,” his sister said. “You know extinctively
he wouldn’t hurt a horse-fly.”

  “I knew a axe-murderer oncet who never missed a mornin’ feedin’ pigeons, come blizzards or droughts,” Willie said, “but he chopped off a human head. Could I see Elmo, Mr. Schlemmer?”

  “I guess it’s okay, Willie,” the sheriff answered. “He could use a laff.”

  “V er~r-ry funny!” the president of the Hawkeye Detective Agency of New York City snorted.

  Elmo Hake peered through the bars at William Klump and he was the saddest looking sack Willie had ever seen in any pokey.

  “This is my brother I was tellin’ you about, Elmo,” Phoebe said. “He is here to help you.”

  “Oh, no, Lady!” Hake groaned. “Don’t needle me at a time like this. I’m on my way to the hot seat, not no county fair.”

  “I disagree with you, Phoebe,” Willie put in, not really meaning what he said. “If ever a cold-blooded murderer had it writ all over him, this character has. But I have a perfessional repertation at stake an’ if

  there is one shadow of a doubt about his guilt, I shall get rid of it.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” the prisoner gulped. “I still say I am innercent. I never killed Hank Dewbetter, an’ that wa’n’t my coat an’ hat. That lawyer of mine never even tried. My coat was a darker gray an’ it had a hole burned in the right sleeve just below the shoulder. I smoke a pipe, that’s what burned it.”

  “Well,” Willie said. “To spring you, we’ll have to find a dame and your topcoat. Always it seems it is shareshay la fam. Whicht reminds me, I have a very important case on back in New York. What color hair did the babe have you said give you a lift, Elmo?”

  “Red,” Hake said.

  “Hmph, always a moll has red hair. Why don’t a guilty citizen give a dame, which he thinks up out of thin air, black or chestnut locks?” Willie observed. “Well, I’ll do what I can for you, pal.”

  Outside the jailhouse Willie shook his head. “I never heard a worst alibi, Phoebe,” he said. “Nobody can prove a man that guilty innercent. You might as well git resigned to the fact that he’ll fry. Say, didn’t you say you had a boiled dinner cookin’?”

  ILLIE KLUMP took off in the pick- up truck with his sister Phoebe after stoking up on Vermont ambrosia. The first stop was at a roadside quick and not-so- clean where Elmo Hake claimed the

  redheaded doll had staked him to a ride.

  The proprietor of the restaurant, a rustic with a face as wide open as a rescue mission on Saturday night, told Willie what he’d told the court. He remembered Elmo Hake stopping for a hotdog, but he hadn’t seen any doll with red hair.

  “We had maybe three or four customers at the time, an’ I didn’t have no

  time to see who had autos an’ who didn’t. That feller is guilty,” he opined.

  They visited the gas station that Elmo had been accused of knocking off.

  The attendant, an old character who Willie was certain voted for Abraham Lincoln, said, “That Hake feller? He come walkin’ in here an’ asked the way t’ Albany just as I was closin’ up. He left the car down the road a piece. He stuck a gun into my stummick an’ stole forty dollars offen me. Then he run. Lucky I wa’n’t kilt myself. The chair’s too good fer him.”

  Willie shook his noggin and climbed back into the pick-up truck. He watched the old garage man walk right into the gas pump as if he had no idea it was there.

  “Gol dang it!” the old native yelped. “I

  guess Sarah’s right. I need spectacles.” “That must have been some lawyer

  Elmo had, Phoebe,” Willie said. “If that gas station rube testified, they must ‘ve had a Seein’ Eye dog lead him to the stand. But even Mr. Skeen, trailer of lost citizens on the radio, would not git anywhere with this case. Phoebe, the evidence is too inclusive. Nobody saw no red-headed dame. Elmo forgot to throw away the wrench he slugged his victim with. He parked, like they said, because he got the jitters, an’ calmed his nerves with booze. He passed out and was nabbed.”

  “I still don’t believe it,” Phoebe snapped. “An’ if someone like you can git to be a private eye in New York, then I should go there an’ steal all the business away from Elizabeth an’ Arden.”

  “Nobody can do the impossible,” Willie retorted.

  “Oh no?” Phoebe countered. “Pa an’ Ma learned you to talk, didn’ they?”

  “I’ve had enough,” Willie said sourly. “I shall take the next train back to New York. First, though, I must wire a client to show him I am earnin’ that twenty—that I’m on the ball.”

  Willie, when he reached the public utility office, wrote out a message to Ferbus Grooby as follows:

  LEAD WAS BUM STEER. HURRYING BACK TO PICK UP ANOTHER. I AIN’T YET BEGUN TO FIGHT. THIS IS COLLECT.

  WILLIAM J. KLUMP.

  The citizen at the counter scanned the wire and looked quizzically up at Willie. “You forgot the address who it goes to,” he pointed out.

  “Huh?” Willie scratched his pate. “Well, what do you know? I had it writ down, an’ it’s in my other suit. Well, skip it, as he wouldn’t have paid for it anyways. Good afternoon.”

  Willie was quite discouraged when he walked into his office in New York twenty-four hours later. He picked up his mail and idly plied his paper cutter. One circular said, “Private Investigators Make Big Money! It Is Not Too Late To Enter This Specialized Field! This Means YOU! Sit Down Now And Send For Particulars. Now!”

  William Klump quickly reached for paper and pencil, suddenly got hold of himself.

  “Huh, what am I doin’?” he sighed. And then the phone rang. He knew by

  the way it danced on its cradle that Gertie was hanging on at the other end, and he picked it up gingerly.

  “Hawkeye Detective Agency, William

  J. K—oh, hello, Gert.”

  “Just where the aitch have you been?” Gertie Mudgett roared, and nearly broke Willie’s eardrum. “Chastin’ a blonde most likely, hah?”

  “How did you know—er—that is, I was, in a way,” Willie said. “She is a missin’ person, an’ is still missin’, so don’t git no ideas.”

  “You knucklehead!” Gertie yelped. “My boss had a skip tracin’ job an’ we called you. One of his customers run out on a bill. There was a hundred bucks in it for you; an’—what was that you said ag’in? You was chastin’ a doll? Oh, when I get my hands on you!”

  “A client just stepped in,” Willie said. “G’bye!”

  He wiped his brow and opened another letter. He read: “Are You Lonely? Are You Blue. Are You Looking For A Wife? The McKimsey Matrimonial Bureau Will—

  Willie began to count his fingers. He had to get hold of himself. He got his hat and left the office. Two blocks north he bought himself a tabloid and took it to a beanery with him. Crime, he saw, had lifted its ugly head while he’d been out of town. A rough person had held up a jewelry store in the Forties and had sprinted away with two grand worth of baubles. The crook had been apprehended just one hour later by Detective Aloysius Kelly. The tabloid said it had been shrewd work on Satchelfoot Kelly’s part noticing the little flakes of sawdust on the floor of the jewelry shop. Satchelfoot had hurried to the tavern nearest the scene of the holdup and had caught the culprit. There was a scratch on his pan that had been put there by the doll behind the jewelry counter.

  “I should’ve stood in the sticks,” Willie sighed. “Now I’ll have t’ listen to that lemonhead crow for the nex’ five years.”

  ARLY the next morning Willie was in his office when a fist whanged against

  his locked door.

  “Hey, Willie!” the repulsive voice of Detective Aloysius Kelly called out. “I know you’re in there. I smell coffee.”

  “Go away an’ drop dead!” Willie

  yelped. “I ain’t leavin’ nobody come in as I am tryin’ t’ make up my mind t’ commit suicide. Anyways I heard what a
hero you are supposed to be, so save your breath, blubberhead.”

  “Awright, but don’t shoot yourself in the head as the museums would want it intact,” Satchelfoot Kelly sneered. “You know, for awhile I thought you’d run up t’ Vermont to git that thousand bucks some slayer’s kin offered to anybody who could find a mystery redhead. Then I tumble the offer wa’n’t in the papers until this afternoon. I guess though you ain’t quite that nuts. I’ll see you around, drip!”

  “It is not right for anybody to hate anything the way I hate Satchelfoot,” Willie told himself. “A thousan’ bucks, huh? Just a way for somebody t’ git publisticy out of a lurid crime. What they won’t do nowadays to git their name in the paper. I think I’ll call Mr. Grooby later an’ ast haven’t I earned the twenty bucks anyway.”

  Willie did. He called around five-thirty and his client answered in a very happy voice.

  “Oh, that you, Klump?” Grooby prated. “The most wonderful thing has happened. Flossie was cooking my dinner when I reached home just five minutes ago. Oh, she had the most terrible experience. Somehow she got amnesia, and when it left her she found herself in Shamokin, Pennsylvania. She worked in a store there for two whole days to get her bus fare back. She never got in touch with me as she did not want me to worry. Aren’t women the limit?”

  Willie sighed deeply. “That is wonderful, Mr. Grooby.”

  “Now, Mr. Klump, you shall have your fee,” Grooby said. “Come out and have dinner with us tonight, and I shall pay it. Just a moment, Klump. What was that, Flossie? Yeah, I will. Klump, she says to

  pick up a couple cans of beer on the way, if you don’t mind.”

  Willie said he didn’t. A free meal was nothing to scoff at these days. He took a gander at the address again, then set forth. Twenty minutes later he was ogling a modest apartment house on West Seventy- sixth Street just off Amsterdam. It was a walk-up and Willie was wheezing when he rang a bell on the sixth floor. Mr. Grooby let him in and introduced Flossie, and the private eye could not imagine any blonde looking any dizzier even if she had amnesia.