“So you wouldn’t listen, huh? Look, Willie, I had a hunch, and all yesterday my spine was full of needles, so I go and call on Gertie. She is not in an’ it was after midnight. I called ten minutes ago and she wa’n’t there. They got her, Willie!”
“Tell me some news, you big false alarm!” Willie yipped. “Like Japan quit. Of courst they did as they called me and . .
. I cannot waste time with you as I got to stand in the hall where Gertie lives and intracept that package whicht is worth a half million.”
“Willie, you said half a million?” William Klump hung up and hurried out of the house. All that day he waited for the mailman to ring twice although he had heard somewhere that they never did. It was close to five P.M. when Willie finally had the package in his hands once more. He told Gertie’s female boniface that he had changed his mind about not giving it to Gertie himself.
“The personality touch, ha!” Willie grinned, and shook great globules of fretting oil from his brow. “And I got to git a card to put inside.”
At exactly five-thirty, Willie Klump entered the den of dishonest characters. One was a beefy individual with big jowls and a pair of eyes that could worry Dracula. One had a shanty under it. He held an ugly-looking Betsy in a big hairy fist. The other two gees were the worse for wear and could never be considered, by any stretch of the imagination, for positions as bank tellers.
Sitting in a corner, tied up as securely as traffic during a four-alarm fire, was Gertrude Mudgett. She had a handkerchief tied around her mouth, but her eyes pinched-hit very well for her stymied pipes as they broomed Willie.
“Don’t blame me, Gert!” Willie said. “I am just as puzzled as you.”
Willie shifted his gaze and he saw a great square metal door set into the wall. There was a small dial in the center. Willie knew it was a wall safe, but it was also the biggest he had ever seen.
“All right, you silly-lookin’ cove,” the big character said, taking charge. “Blarst your eyes, hand over that box if you know what’s good fer yer!”
“Yeah,” Willie said. “But why all the fuss over the thing? I admit I pulled a fast one and made out I lost it. It could not hold no half million.”
* * * *
One of the rough persons narrowed his eyes, took a gander at his partner. “Er—listen, sweetheart,” he said to the big boy. “Don’t tell me you wa’n’t kiddin’ about it bein’ worth a half million? Only fifty bucks each for pickin’ up that babe? Now, look here!”
“Shut your ugly mug!” the massive character said. “Both of you get out or I’ll bloomin’ well bash your wits outa yer!”
“Er—you are from Limehouse or some place,” Willie said, as the gorillas took a powder. “Somethin’ is goin’ on inside my dome but I can’t just . . . Well, here is the box! I unwrapped it just to make sure there was no half million dollars in it, and . . . Ooops, it, slipped!”
The music box hit the floor and snapped open and the melody that had been the rage in the big town’s bistros for weeks poured out.
Mo-o-o-o-n Over-r-r-r My-y-y-y A-Amy!
I lo-ove her—can you-u-u-u-u bla-a-ame-mee-e-e-e-e!
“Ain’t that awful?” Willie asked pleasantly. “I still like ‘One Meatball.’ See, it is a case of mistook identity. Ha, we all make mistakes, so let my babe. . . Huh?”
The big person had the Betsy pressed against Willie’s floating rib. Gertie was making sounds behind the gag that reminded Willie of feeding time near the bear cage up at the Bronx Zoo. Willie tried to make some sounds of his own but his vocal organs were paralyzed.
The door of the wall safe was making sounds, however. The dial was turning as the music played on. There was a faint clicking sound, then another and suddenly the safe door swung open. “Moon Over My Amy” ceased, and the portly crook laughed deep in his throat, making a sound like a load of empty barrels going over a wooden bridge. He backed away slowly, his miniature howitzer still covering the president of the Hawkeye Detective Agency.
“Just a little music box, yes?” the mysterious ruffian mocked. “Ever hear of electronics, old fellow? In this safe there is a half million dollars in jolly old diamonds. Too bad I have to be such a ruddy heel, as you say over here, old custard. Can’t let you live, you know!”
“We could talk it over,” Willie choked out in a dry squeaky voice. “Why can’t I?” “Obvious why not, isn’t it? I have removed from this jolly old world more than one cove because of those diamonds. A chap named Fluke, I believe. Another who . . . But shall it be the lady first,
what?”
“By all means,” Willie said in a hurry. “I am not anxious to . . . No, Gert, don’t believe me, as it was a slip of the tongue. I swear it! He don’t dast kill us!”
“Don’t coax him, jughead,” Gertie yipped, having worked her gag loose, her voice sounding as if it had been strained through a scoop of mashed potatoes. “How you gib me into thib mesh, huh?”
“You wouldn’t believe it,” Willie yipped, then was sure he heard somebody brush against the door outside. His eyes widened and he raised his voice. “Some lugs are suckers, Gertie. Hah, riskin’ a hot squat to save a half million bucks for a big slob like this one, and they won’t even git a chance to spend fifty skins each. Didn’ he kill off his other pals, huh? Oh, I’ve heard of suckers!”
Willie ducked. A bullet scraped his blue serge close to his clavicle and thudded into the wall. The door burst open and the gorillas came in, but shooting. The big brain swapped artillery fire and Willie took an infiltration course under the flying lead as he wriggled toward Gertie. He got hold of the corner of a rug and yanked viciously and the ponderous person let out a yell and hit the floor on his posterior.
“Git that gat, Willie!” Gertie Mudgett screeched. “You got to fight the winner, don’t forgit! It is not just hay in that wall. Here, let me do it, as I just busted loose, girdle and all, Willie!”
With Gertrude Mudgett swinging, Willie had odds of six to one. He waded into the two gorillas who had no time to go out of the apartment house and look for a store that sold refills for Roscoes, and Willie put on an exhibition of unorthodox fighting that would have made Maxie Rosenbloom look like a Billy Conn.
Gertie thumped the vital oxygen out of the heavy in the drama and then swung at the last male person on his feet. Willie did not regain consciousness until some time later when the place was filled with cops.
“Look, Gert,” he said, “it was a slip of the tongue . . . Oh, I am glad to see policemen. Stop her as she will kill me!”
“Shush, Willie,” Gertie said. “And it was a slip of my fist, so we are even. Now tell me, how did you get into this Donnybrook?”
“Because your birthday was comin’ up,” Willie said. “I saw a way to save a couple of leaves of cabbage, Gertie. I . . . Wait until I get well, huh?”
* * * *
An hour later, in a back room of a precinct station, the big criminal character, much the worse for his experience with Gertrude Mudgett, admitted to being Bertram Torkle, alias “Bertie the Big,” alias the “Paddington Pachyderm.” Satchelfoot Kelly arrived just as Bertie unfolded his wild and weird tale. “So I pushes my pal, Harry the Horseplayer, orf the train on me way to Liverpool,” Bertie pointed out. “A week after I am in the States, I bash Willie Charmonger over the bloomin’ pate and throw him in the river, yus. Then I hears that Harry the Horseplayer was not dead after I am over here for a while, but in a horsepital in Liverpool. So I says to meself, ‘Bertie, Harry will never rest until he tracks you down or gets his share of the ruddy stones, the last which he will want more than anythin’.’
“I figures I had best try and find a hidin’ place for the diamon’s, see? First Harry would want them before killin’ me. So I hears about these blinkin’ electronics and find me a smart cove who knows all about such things. So he rigs up the mechanism of the wall safe so that it is a bloomin’ affinity fe
r the sound waves comin’ out of the blarsted music box. Yer foller me?”
“Not too close,” Willie said. “But go on, Bertie.”
“Fluke, the blinkin’ doublecrosser, delivered the goods, then raised his price. I refused and the gent walked orf with the music box which made the safe no good without it, yus? So I called a person named Jabsy to foller him home and get the box even if he had to do the cove in. Jabsy gets the box after murderin’ Fluke, stops in at a drugstore to tell me he has it. He picks up a package by mistake, a box of hard candy in one of them tin boxes, some other gormless gent has placed on the counter. They look that much alike. This clerk, Lamprey Pingree, advertises he has the real music box and so I send my pals to pick it up.
“Who walks out but that gent there,” Bertie said, pointing a fat finger at William Klump. “Carryin’ the ruddy box. My confederates do not tumble at first, but recover their wits in time to chase this cove with the blinkin’ cow eyes and catch up with him near . . . I have no doubt you chaps know the rest. Jabsy tapped him with a piece of lead pipe in his office, but the music box wa’n’t there. Then we traced where this gent’s lady frien’ lived to kidnap her and put the pressure on him. Blimey, that was a blinkin’ safe nobody could crack, gents. There ain’t a man in the world could pick it. Lawks, I was so bloomin’ near an’ yet so blarsted far, what? The jolly old chair for Bertie, no doubt?”
“If you have any about it,” Willie said, “you are a worst optimist than a citizen who would try an’ hatch eggs under a rooster, old thing. Well, Satchelfoot, it looks . . . Gertie, what in the world is Kelly doin’?”
Satchelfoot was at the window, peeling off his coat. His tie was draped over a chair. The window was open. Kelly placed his watch and bill-fold carefully on a table. “Stop!” Gertie cried out. “You will kill yourself. There is six stories there.”
“They can’t be worst than the one I just listened to,” Satchelfoot said.
Three cops rushed him just as he threw one leg over the window sill. Kelly put up a fight.
“They can handle him, Gertie,” Willie said. “1 think we are finished here. I . . . Don’t look at me like that, Gert! I swore it was a slip of the tongue! For heaven’s sake how many times . . . Well, good-by, boys!” he yelped. “Here we go ag’in!”
When the running footsteps of Willie Klump and Gertie Mudgett faded on the stairs below, an Assistant D.A. sighed heavily and handed a written confession to Bertie along with a black cigar. He shoved the fountain pen in his mouth and touched the flame of a lighter to it.
“Just sign there, my friend,” he said, wondering where rubber was burning. “Only six more payments . . . What am I sayin’? Well, I ought to quit. I should quit this business and go back sellin’ autos.”
From out in the street came a painful yelp from Willie Klump.
“Let’s not be hasty, D.A.,” Satchelfoot said. “She’ll kill him yet.”
WHERE THERE’S A WILLIE THERE’S A WAY
WILLIAM J. KLUMP, president of the Hawkeye Detective Agency, specialists in
personalized service in the person of Mr. Klump, sat down for a game of rummy with the boys in the back room of the –nth precinct station, in midtown. He glanced at the clock on the wall.
“Only got an hour, guys. I have to meet Gertie at seven.”
“How’s business?” a character by the name of “Hardhat” Hanrahan asked, and laughed.
“It is bad enough without them wantin’ to add twenty-five thousand more cops to the force,” Willie complained. “What’s goin’ to become of small businesses, huh? With the war over, we anticipated a wave of crime. Where is it?”
“That is the way with politicians,” Hardhat said. “They make promises an’ then double-cross us voters. Half a cent a point okay, Willie?”
“Yeah.” Willie nodded.
A crime-chasing citizen called “Porky” Gibbs began to riffle the pasteboards. Just as he was about to deal, he cocked his head to the side.
“Some body’s comin’ an’ the footsteps are familiar.”
Willie listened. Sounds came from the corridor outside as if someone was beating a sack of oats against the floor.
“Yeah,” he sniffed. “I am sure it is somethin’ I hate.”
The door flew open and Aloysius
“Satchelfoot” Kelly entered.
“Well, well, my favorite game, boys. The same suckers, huh? And Willie!” He advanced toward the table, rubbing his palms together. “Somethin’ told me to drop in.”
“It should of been from twenty thousan’ feet without a parachute,” Willie grunted. “Then I would of been awful glad to see you arrive, Kelly.”
“You say the nicest things, Willie,” Satchelfoot grinned, and pulled up a chair. Porky scowled at him and dealt the cards. Just fifty minutes later, William Klump paid two dollars and ninety-four cents to Satchelfoot Kelly and wiped his brow.
“An’ I was takin’ Gert to dinner on that money,” he gulped. “Satchelfoot, maybe I could pay you tomorrer night instead?”
“Oh, a welcher!” Kelly snapped. “I also don’t trust you, Willie. I’ve heard you ain’t exactly solvent. Sorry, ol’ pal.”
“I am glad you ain’t a landlord an’ I had a wife an’ eleven kids livin’ in one of your flats an’ it was the coldes’ night of the winter, Satchelfoot,” Willie said. “The only
soft thing about you is your skull. Well, I’ll think of somethin’. Thanks for the game, boys.”
“Don’t mention it,” Kelly grinned.
“I was not talkin’ to you, lemonhead.” Willie bridled. “I do not expect to be doin’ it for some time to come.”
Outside in the street, Willie felt a touch of panic. It drifted out of his midriff as he took a big silver watch from his vest pocket. Gertrude Mudgett had given it to him three years before and on the timepiece had been engraved—G. M. to W. K.
“Sixty-fifty nine,” Willie said. “I think Sam is open until eight. I can just about make it an’ then meet Gert only about a half hour late. It is flirtin’ with a fractured skull but what else can I do? That Kelly!”
Willie hurried into the shop on upper Lexington just about the time Gertie expected him in front of a restaurant nine blocks downtown.
“Evenin’, Sam,” he said. “A little short t’night. How much on the watch, huh?” Willie laid the timepiece gently on the counter of the emporium that thrived on contingencies such as his.
“If my own gran’mother asked me, Klump,” Sam said. “I would be honest with her and say about four dollars. Then I am doin’ her a favor.”
“But it is me who is astin’ you, Sam.” “So you get three, Klump. Take it or
leave it.”
“You talked me into it, Sam,” Willie said.
Two minutes later the president of the Hawkeye Detective Agency hurried into a kiosk and caught the first rattler to fifty- ninth. When he approached Gertie Mudgett on the run in front of Henri & Antoinette’s French restaurant, he could see the evening promised pyrotechnics. He skidded to a stop.
“I know I am a skunk, Gertie,” he yelped. “I’m a heel and even a cad. So I
admit it an’ you don’t have t’ convince me. I was detained as somebody I know well got into a jam an’ I had to help him out. The Bible says a good Samaritan oncet stopped an’. . . .”
“Why, Willie,” Gertie said. “I am so proud of you! It is why I picked you as you have such a kind heart. I forgive you, sugar.”
“Huh?” Willie asked. “You feel awright, Gert? Maybe you are workin’ too hard an’ . . .”
“Don’t be, silly,” Gertie said. “Let’s hurry before they are out of blueplate specials. What time is it, Sugar?”
“Why—er—ha, I had to take my watch to git it fixed, Gert,” Willie said, getting scared again. “I am to pick it up tomorrer.”
E ESCORTED Gertrude Mudgett int
o the restaurant and when he sat down
he managed to let his napkin slide off his knees. He bent down and retrieved it, at the same time slipping a pawn ticket into the cuff of a blue serge trouser leg. Willie sighed deeply as he lifted himself erect and grinned at Gertie. His lady love was not grinning.
“What’s the trouble, Gertie?” he asked in a gravelly voice. “Like I said outside, maybe’ you been workin’ too hard an’ . . .” “I been thinkin’ about that, William
Klump. I’m losin’ my looks, huh?” “Why, I didn’t say. . .”
“You just as much. Awright, so I got circles under my eyes an’ maybe got a gray hair or two, but what girl wouldn’t who spent the best years of her life waitin’ for the likes of you? You are all alike. You stall ‘em off until a younger face comes along an’ . . .”
“Gertie, I only mentioned . . .”
“It is the same old story. They forget them in November after they’ve met ‘em in June,” Gertie went on and then let the floodgates down and buried her face in her
napkin.
“I only said . . .” Willie began, then felt someone tap him on the shoulder. He looked up and saw a big waiter giving him a cold eye.
“Look, punk, maybe it ain’t my business, see? But why don’t yer bully somebody yer size, hah? One of them big brave mugs that browbeats his wife, huh? Gits her in public an’ humilitates her.”
“She is not my wife, understand?” Willie snapped.
Gertie sobbed louder. “The way— you—said—that, Willie Klump. Just as if you—was—glad—oh-h-h-h-h-h-h!”
“Scram, pal,” the waiter said and picked up a heavy tray.
“I’ll have you discharged,” Willie threatened.
“I own half of the joint, pal. I’m Henri although I was borned Mike Gratsky in Brooklyn. Now I’ll give you two seconds t’ hit the road, bum! We ain’t the court of inhuman relations. Go see Mr. Antonio on the raddio. Anyways, scram!”
Gertrude Mudgett picked up her reticule and left abruptly.
The Willie Klump Page 5