William Klump was on his feet in a jiffy and he lifted up the divan and pushed it with all his might and he heard Sheehan say some very uncouth things as he went down under it. Mrs. Theodore Brottinger stared at Willie for a moment, her lipstick stretching all out of shape. Then she fired her Roscoe and the slug went through a pocket of Willie’s coat but the private shamus hit upon a clever ruse and fell flat on his face. “Ug-h-h-h, you’ve gone an’ kilt me,” he choked out and made 1ike a death rattle.
“Hah!’ Sheehan yelped triumphantly as he got out from under the sofa. “Now we’re in the same boat, baby. You lam outa here an’ I will right after and in the roadster whicht will also be part of my take.”
“All right, Georgie,” Trixie said, and her voice was like air escaping from a slow leak in a tire. “M-M-Mum’s the word. I don’t know what made me act like—”
“Lo-o-okout, Trixie!” Sheehan howled as Willie came up from the floor like a wild
cat on springs. The private eye tore the Roscoe loose from the ex-model’s hand and swung toward Sheehan and the big character turned as white as a mackerel’s dickey.
“No, don’t shoot, pal,” the big man howled. “It was a banana in my pocket!” Mrs. Theodore Brottinger, deadlier than the male, made one more try at Willie with a vase big enough to hold Margaret O’Brien, and Willie pivoted, put his head down, and hit the glamor doll in the solar plexus. The vase continued on and hit Sheehan who had charged in to get himself a piece of Willie’s throat.
“She must git her girdles made at Bethlehem Steel,” Willie gulped, as he felt of his pate. “I better git the Long Island cops right away.”
William J. Klump was sitting on Georgie Sheehan and eating the last of the banana when the gendarmes arrived.
“Why, that woman you got tied up is Mrs. Brottinger, you lemonhead!” a flatfoot said.
“Yeah, an’ you will be surprised who elst,” Willie said. “She is mixed up along with this gee in the rub-out of Barnaby Bowers over across the river. You search this shack an’ look for twenty grand and also a thirty-two caliber Betsy before we load these characters into the blitz jalopy. The big boy under me is Mervin Merrivale, alias Hubert Whipple. The doll used to be the character who was always with another guy when her outraged husband come back from a hard day at the office.”
“Don’t open your trap, Trixie,” Sheehan yelped. “Save it fer a big mouthpiece.”
William Klump waited until the house was ransacked. The cops found that Sheehan had packed his bags and in the false bottom of one, there reposed twenty grand in coin of the realm. And stashed with the clams was a thirty-two caliber Betsy.
“She wa’n’t really robbed of them
jewels that time,” Willie explained as he followed the culprits out to the new look paddy-wagon. “She had Sheehan come in through a winder one night an’ lift them so’s she could hock’em. I don’t know why jus’ yet. It looks like some dishonest gee was blackmailin’ her an’ not her partner in crime.”
“Then that other cutie is innocent, huh?”
a cop asked Willie.
“Satchelfoot Kelly made the arrest,” Willie sniffed. “Any more questions?”
EORGE J. Sheehan, accompanied by his aliases and a very scared and penitent Mrs. Brottinger, finally reached headquarters in the borough of Manhattan. The D. A. convinced the recalcitrant pair that no lawyer lived or had ever been born who could possibly beat their rap, and
Sheehan started singing.
“It’s a long story sir,” the criminal character said. “Just after me an’ Trixie— her name was Mamie then—got back from a couple of jobs in Philly where we shook two characters down for three G’s, this Barnaby Bowers got a gander at her comin’ out of a beauty parlor. He offered her a job as a model an’ she took it. It was swell goin’ straight, she tol’ me. Well, I was overboard for the babe an’ still am an’ so whatever she wanted was okay by me, even though it meant the end of a sweet racket. Times got kinda tough fer me.”
“It is sad, ain’t it?” Willie sniffed. “Shut up, Klump,” the D.A. snapped. “Well, who comes along one night but
this guy Theodore Brottinger. He meets Trixie at a night club an’ dates her up,” Sheehan went on. “Inside of three months they git married. Somehow this Barnaby Bowers finds out who she used to be an’ he begins to put the bite on her. He wants a hundred grand an’ so Trixie calls me up to meet her an’ shows me how things stand. We cook up the jewelry deal an’ I peddle
the stuff an’ take the cash to Bowers.” “Huh,” Willie exclaimed. “An’ Bowers
was goin’ t’ force another model, to wit Jellica Devine, to marry him or he’d expose her sister’s past. If I was on a jury, I wouldn’t let nobody fry for killin’ the likes of him!”
‘Thanks, Klump,” Sheehan said. “Just tell me one thing, frogface. How in aitch did you git wise I was mixed up in that rub-out? You don’t look smart enough to git by the third grade even now.”
“Bowers tipped me off,” Willie said. “He grabbed a phone when he heard his assassin outside the penthouse. He said they was goin’ to kill him. She an’ somebody else it sounded like at the time so it looked as if a dame was one of the guilty parties. Get it. She an’—Sheehan. I guess I’d never tumbled if Tilly Hoffenspiel hadn’t told a radio quizmaster who lost at Waterloo and won five hundred fish. Gertrude Mudgett, that’s who I go steady with, kept tellin’ me that she an’—”
The D. A. groaned and dropped his head in his hands. Satchelfoot Kelly, who had been listening to all this, got out of his chair and placed a hand on the big guilty character’s shoulder. “I almost feel sorry for you, pal. I know how you feel as once I sat over in Brooklyn an’ got beaned by a line drive by a bum who never had a battin’ average over two hun’red. I wisht you could go out an’ get plastered with me.”
“It shouldn’t happen to a Republican,”
the guilty gee griped.
“Drag the river tomorrer as I’ll be there,” Satchelfoot said, and closed the door behind him.
“Sour grapes,” Willie sighed. “Always it is that way. You would think that it was the first time I ever apprehended a criminal person.”
“That’s what has us stumped, Willie,” the prosecutor said. “Each time we think it just has to be the last. There is nothing in
any book on criminology I’ve read that applies to you.”
“I guess they was written ‘fore my time,” Willie said.
It was two hours later just as the president of the Hawkeye Detective Agency walked out of the lift of the building where he had office space that a doll rushed up to him and threw her arms around him. Soft fur that nearly purred brushed Willie’s face. An exotic perfume atomized him and soft lips pressed against his cheek. “You darlin’, Mr. Klump! You sweet precious thing, you. Darlin’ ” said a honeyed voice.
“I’ll kill the guy that wakes me up,” Willie sighed.
“That was a down payment, Mr. Klump,” Jellica Devine said. “Now you send me a bill for five hundred dollars as soon as you get to your office.” Willie’s knees wobbled when she kissed him once more. And then the lift stopped at the floor again and coughed up Gertie Mudgett. Gertie stood aghast for a second, then came alooping.
“Run, Jellica, as it is my dame!” Willie yelped and started running. “It is every man for himself an’ I’m the only one!” He reached his office and locked the door
behind him. The sounds of battle seeped in through the door as Willie grabbed up the phone.
“I’ll tear you limbs from limbs, you man-stealer!” Gertie howled. “I’ll—put down that fire-axe! No!”
“Lay off or I’ll split you up like cord wood,” Jellica Devine screeched. “Now you listen to me, sister!”
Willie got the cops. “Yeah, they’re havin’ a fight over me. She an’—oh no! Never mind as I don’t want t’ start that all over ag’in. Wrong n
umber.” He went to the door and listened, wondering at the sudden quiet.
“Yeah, I shouldn’t be so impestuous, honey,” Gertie said between gasps for breath. “I’ll buy you a snort, huh? You think you could git me in as a model, somewheres?”
“An auto body works,” Willie said, and grinned. He listened as the two dolls walked toward the elevator. “Why, you can easy have your engagement ring now, darlin’,” Jellica was saying. “I’m paying him a fee of five hundred dollars for—”, and, Willie reeled away from the door to get his aspirin tablets.
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