Satchelfoot?”
“Oh, I meet all kinds in this business, Willie. I threw him in the hoosegow last night. He had a sucker list on him, and guess whose name was on it?”
“Mine,” Willie said. “That is, I was one of the preferred clients.”
“Ha-ha!” Kelly laughed. “Atomizers, Incorporated. How much you buy, Willie?”
“A thousan’ shares at fifty cents a share,” Willie said, beginning to feel a little woozy.
“Yeah? Atomizers. Ha-a-a-a-ah!” “Atoms is everything today,” Willie
said. “Mr. Plochnitz says after they blowed up Bikini, the stocks would rise like jet planes. There would be atoms workin’ electric toasters an’—”
“We raided Plochnitz’s office. There is a little store-room with about a hundred atomizers in it. The glass ones with the rubber bulbs you spray cologne with. Oh, Willie!” Satchelfoot howled.
Willie hung up and fell into his chair as limp as garbage pail lettuce. Five C’s had taken wing, had flown the coop more conclusively than had Elbert Eely. Gertie would find out before the noon whistles, and she would have a dozen more synonyms for the word “moron” when he met her face to face.
“I can’t be as dumb as I act,” Willie told himself. “Who could? But I must have been. Well—”
Again the public utility necessity clamored to be answered. At first Willie ignored it, hardly in the mood to argue with Gertie Mudgett over the fact that there might be insanity in his family most anywhere. But he concluded that he might as well take the rap sooner as later. He snatched up the phone.
“All right, go ahead!” he yelped. “Say it all at oncet, you—”
It was not Gertie’s gravelly voice. It was a scared squeaky one.
“Please come to Four-ninety-seven and a half West Twentieth Street at once, please!” it said. “It is a robbery. Oh, do hurry!”
“You should of called the public detectives!” Willie said. “I’m a private . . . Hello! Hel-l-llo! She’s hung up. Oh, what a day so far! I got to look for a missin’ person I can’t never find. I get bankrupt, and now—well, I’ll call Kelly and the real cops. What am I sayin’?”
Willie did not call Headquarters until he got to a cigar store a block from the scene of the felony. Then Willie Klump went on and rang the bell of an old brownstone that looked as if it had not been lived in since Dewey smeared the Spaniards at Manila. A little wrinkled doll opened the door. She let Willie into a place that was an antique dealer’s dream. Smells belonging to the Gay Nineties slapped Willie in the face.
“Oh, thank heaven, you got here,” said the little old doll. “I’m Miss Penelope Paisley.”
ENELOPE wore a taffeta dress that
Hetty Green must have tossed away. She swung a lorgnette and had a big tortoise shell comb sticking out of the pug at the nape of her neck. She led Willie into a library that would have tickled Karloff.
“There is poor Mr. MacGonigle tied up there,” she said.
Willie looked at the trussed flunkey. Nothing had ever been tied up more thoroughly, not even a trust fund.
“He been here all this time?” Willie asked.
“Of course,” the little doll snapped. “And I know my detective stories. I didn’t disturb a thing.”
“Glub-ug!” the butler said.
“That is not a Scotch dialect,” Willie said.
“He is gagged, you lunkhead,” Penelope Paisley sniffed. “Are you a detective?”
“The bonner fide ones are on their way,” Willie explained. “You got me by mistake.”
“I figgered that when you got here,” the old girl countered. “Have patience, MacGonigle, they’ll be here any minute to untie you.”
Willie was lolling on a horsehair sofa when Satchelfoot Kelly and his men arrived. Kelly snarled at the private snooper and threatened to make Willie take his name out of the phone book.
“I pay my telephone bills,” Willie said. “Everybody makes mistakes.”
“You been robbed?” Kelly asked
Penelope.
“Why, no! I been havin’ a scavenger hunt. We play like this often, me and my butler. When are the real police comin’?”
Willie Klump went into stitches. “Well—er—were they valuable, what
was took?” Satchelfoot went on, picking up a bronze statue and looking nasty at Willie.
“What do you think? They only belonged to Catherine the Great of Russia once. Ivan the Terrible give ‘em to her.” The ancient eccentric sniffed.
“We all have forgot somethin’,” Willie offered. “Don’t you think the butler would like to git loose?”
“First I got to look at him as he is,” Kelly said. “Huh, quite a knot on his noggin. The intruder used more than a banana on him. Untie him, men.”
The detectives had to cut MacGonigle loose. They ungagged him and Penelope ran out and came back with a bottle all covered with cobwebs. “I bet that is pre- war,” Satchelfoot said.
“For once you are right,” Penelope said. “My grandfather bought it when Lincoln was elected. This should revive MacGonigle.”
The butler took a heavy snort, worked his arms and legs to get back into circulation, then dropped into a chair.
“Awright, start in from the beginnin’,” Kelly said.
“Well,” Willie said. “This is not like in books. This time how could the butler of done it?”
“You shut up, Klump, or we’ll throw you down the cellar stairs!” Satchelfoot howled. “Go on, MacGonigle.”
“Le’s see now. Yeah, I was in the lib’ary here sortin’ out some books last night about eleven when somebody walks in quiet as a mouse. At first I think it is Penelope—Miss Paisley. But when I turn my head I see it is a burglar. I always kept a gun over on the shelf in the corner, so I was ready for him. He was quick as a cat, though, and was springin’ at me when I fired. I missed him, an’ then somethin’ hits me on the head, and when I come to, I am tied in a chair. That’s all I know.”
“I come in late from a D.A.R. meetin’,” Miss Paisley said. “I went right upstairs and went to bed and it wa’n’t until ten o’clock this mornin’ I come down and found MacGonigle.”
Satchelfoot stroked his chin and then asked the butler to show him where he stood when he fired off the Betsy. MacGonigle got up and went over in a corner. He kicked his foot against something and was about to stoop down and retrieve it when Satchelfoot warned him.
“If that’s the Roscoe, an’ I see it is now, you keep your mitts off it!”
Willie Klump watched MacGonigle go through some pantomime. Satchelfoot Kelly walked over to the moldy portieres and finally located a hole that never had been made by a moth. And from that moment things got so complicated that Willie Klump’s head buzzed like a bee farm.
HE hole in the drapes was nearly six feet from the floor. Satchelfoot went
into the next room and found bloodstains on the floor. He jumped back into the library.
“You didn’t miss the burglar like you thought!” he yelled at the butler.
“But you shot at him in here, didn’t you?” Willie asked.
“Sure,” MacGonigle said.
“So he didn’t bleed until he got in the middle of that parlor in there, hah?” William Klump scoffed. “Maybe he could suspend his animating and stop his heart at will.”
“I pass,” the butler said, and pawed at his bony face. “You got me there, awright.”
“Willie, you keep out of this or—”
“An’ how could you of hit the burglar in the first place, Mac?” the president of the Hawkeye insisted. “To of nicked him in the flesh, he would have to of been eight foot tall. So there is a clue, Kelly. A circus freak is the suspect. Why is it I always have to start you off on the right foot?”
“You’ll git my foot in a minute, you mushmouth!” Kelly raved.
>
“You got to admit the guy is right, Kelly,” a cop said.
“Are you on my side or his, McNinney?” Satchelfoot pouted.
“Well, somebody better get the culprit!” Penelope Paisley snapped. “I was only robbed of a quarter of a million worth of jewels. Maybe you think they grow on privet hedges!”
Satchelfoot gasped. “W—was they insured?”
“No. So do somethin’ right away.” Satchelfoot’s nerves acted up. “Stop
scratchin’ your head, Willie. You make more noise when you—”
“That is just some rats in the woodwork,” Penelope sniffed.
“Maybe one wearin’ shoes is hidin’ in there with ‘em,” Willie said.
“Where is the safe?” Kelly asked suddenly.
“Huh, I wondered how long it would be before you thought to ask,” the wrinkled doll said. “It is in the wall out in the parlor behind my dear brother’s picture.”
Willie followed the cops into the next room. The picture of Penelope’s brother was leaning against the wall, sideburns and all. An iron door swung open. There was a high chair standing against the wall under the gaping square hole in the faded wallpaper.
“Photograft everythin’, men!” Satchelfoot yelled. “Now we’re gettin’ somewheres. The guilty citizen stood on that old chair to reach the safe an’ maybe left a footprint.”
Willie Klump sat down near an old etagere, and wondered why he tried to think of something all of a sudden. However, whatever thought had occurred to him ducked back out of sight in one of his few brain cells. He digressed, thought of a citizen named Plochnitz, the new blue serge suit he was going to purchase with the first dividend from Atomizers, Inc.
He was definitely atomized himself for the next few minutes while Satchelfoot and his men combed Penelope’s old pueblo. Satchelfoot’s cry of triumph scattered his fogginess. Willie got up and hurried out into the library.
“Who did it?” he yelped.
“While you was asleep as usual, I got a suspect,” Kelly said. “We found the gas man’s book and pencil right at the head of the stairs leadin’ to the cellar. He better prove he dropped it some other time than last night. He could of carried it along so’s if he got caught in the house he could say he forgot to read the meter and come back to do it. If he has been shot any place, he is
cooked. If the boys in the lab can tell the blood we got a sample of comes out of the gas man—”
“He could have an alibi where he was last night,” Willie said. .
“He better,” Kelly snapped, “We’re goin’ after him right now. I bet we got this solved, Miss Paisley!”
“I got my doubts,” the old doll said. “Shake on that.” Willie grinned, and
Penelope did.
“Awright,” Kelly huffed. “I’ll show you septics.”
Willie did not bother going along with the cops. It sounded too pat all around. He went back uptown to his office and proceeded to forget about the jewel robbery. He had a missing person to find.
That afternoon the papers said Kelly was holding one Elmore Boody for questioning in connection with the big robbery on Twentieth Street. The gas man, according to Satchelfoot, could not prove where he was while the outrage was perpetrated. He couldn’t or wouldn’t.
Once, Boody told the cops, he had suffered from amnesia. The only thing that puzzled the law was the fact that there was not a scratch on the suspect. Kelly promised he would make Boody confess all, however, within a day or two.
“Huh,” Willie said. “I better write some things down. Like if the butler missed when he fired at the burglar, how could he have drawn blood? An’ how the wounded citizen waited until he got in the parlor to start bleedin’. And he would have had to of been bleedin’ while he tied MacGonigle up, as it must of took him quite some time. If the gas man was somewhere else at the time, why can’t he say he was? Maybe Satchelfoot is right for oncet, as nobody can be wrong forever.”
Willie, after he had noted these thoughts in an old case-book, turned his attention to the disappearance of Elbert
Eely. He asked himself where he would go if he was a disheartened Thespian, and tried to think of a likely place. He remembered the colored gentleman who had found a mule that had been lost when all other searchers had given up, because he had figured where he would go if he was a mule, and went there, and there the mule was.
“I don’t think that would work,” Willie sighed, and struck off on another tangent just as the phone rang.
“Hello,” Willie said.
“You dope! Of all the lame-brained crackpots! I heard about that stock, Willie Klump! You muddle-skulled stooge for a village idiot! I thought you was the mos’ beetle-brained gland case before, but now—”
“Wrong number,” Willie gulped, and hung up. “Gertie must of waited to think up all of them insults before she buzzed me. I wisht I was sure she wa’n’t right, though. Oh, well.”
Willie Klump slept fitfully that night wishing a man with a mustache and a mole would stop sitting on his chest every time he dropped off.
He was pulling on his blue serge pants at eight a. m. when the landlady yelled his name. He went down in the hall and picked up the receiver and heard Satchelfoot’s excited voice.
“Start all over,” Willie said. “Or wait until you finish eatin’ the banana!”
“The cops up in the Bronx picked up a stiff, Willie. Who you think it was?”
“Hitler? I told everybody he wa’n’t dead.”
“No, no, Willie!” Kelly yelled. “It was MacGonigle, that butler, who was tied up. I don’t get it, Willie.”
“For heaven’s sake!” Willie choked out. “They could of rubbed him out easier las’ night, couldn’t they?”
“They got him in the morgue, Willie. I
. . . Why am I telling you about it? I’ve been so excited an’ upset I don’t know what I’m doin’. You keep out of this thing!”
“You won’t let me, it looks like,” Willie retorted.
The president of the Hawkeye Detective Agency was curious. He hurried to the morgue, and who was already there looking at the remains of MacGonigle but Penelope Paisley!
“It’s him, the poor man,” the spinster gulped, and reached into her old reticure for a nose doily. “Oh, hello, Mr. Krump. Who would want to murder such a faithful servant?”
“I wisht I knew,” Willie said, and kept looking at the physiognomy of the corpse, and wondering about a certain little blemish thereon.
“Would you please see me home, Mr. Frump?” Penelope requested. “I’m so nervous and all. A maniac is at large.”
Willie took the old doll downtown. He was about to take his leave of her after he had gone in the house, when he saw some old clothes piled up on an old sofa in the hall.
“Don’t tell me you are disposin’ of the butler’s duds so soon, Miss Paisley?” he queried, eyeing her askance.
“Oh, those are old clothes that MacGonigle got together to give to the poor Europeans,” Penelope said. “You even suspect me, don’t you, Krump?”
“Klump is the name,” Willie said. “Er—I’ll take these over to where they’re shipped out if you want. Why, this blue suit is the color I wear. He had good taste, didn’t he?”
“That will be wonderful,” the spinster said. “Thanks for thinkin’ of it.”
“Not at all,” Willie said, and left.
He felt elated for a change, told himself that charity begins at home. Maybe there would be a few alterations,
but it would be a saving of forty bucks, even if he’d had forty to save. When he got to his room, he made sure the pockets of the hand-me-down were empty. They were, save a slip of paper that was part of a letterhead advertising a place called “The Excelsior A.A. 1987 Second Avenue.”
N THE paper MacGonigle had evidently scrawled:
Jiving Jane�
�Hialeah. 20-1
“That is race track talk,” Willie said. “Why, I bet the butler played the hayburners. He got in deep an’ owed some tough boy a load of cabbage an’ . . But he was the one tied up! This gets worst all the time H-m-m, Excelsior A.A. I wonder if there are birds of a feather there. Well, for oncet I am not goin’ to stick my neck into no door of a mortuary an’ say yoo-hoo, here I am for keeps. I will pack a Betsy.”
The weapon was over at his office so Willie scooted over there and pulled at a drawer of the file cabinet that took a notion to go on strike. Willie yanked and nearly pulled the whole works over on top of him and a lot of magazines, mostly comics, piled up on the floor at his feet.
He was picking them up when he recognized the old copy of Variety, the journal devoted to the activities of Thespians.
“Huh, I forgot all about it,” Willie said. “I wonder why Buff left it.”
He sat down and riffled the pages, came to a place marked with pencil. It was an ad and it said:
OPEN FOR ENGAGEMENTS.
Squirmerhorn
&
Eely Escape Artists, Ext’y.
The fine print had let it be known that Elbert Eely was a wonder, even in reverse. He could truss himself up as easily as he could release himself from any kind of cord known to the trade. He was a two- way wonder who had performed for crowned heads.
“What do you know?” Willie mumbled. “Fancy that? Wha-a? He can tie himself up? No, I don’t believe it. I shouldn’t think on the spur of a moment! But—but—but— That corpse at the frozen cadaver plant, there was a spot over one of the eyes. No, even this couldn’t happen to me. Oh, I know mustaches an’ moles can be took off, but—”
Willie went over to the window and got some fresh air. Then he went over to the file cabinet and found a Roscoe he had purchased from a G.I. Ten minutes later he was on his way to the Excelsior A.A.
Willie appraised the building carefully before he took action. The Excelsior A.A. was on the second floor, above a delicatessen store. He looked harmless enough as he stood there, and so a flashy- looking individual sauntered up to him and mentioned that it was a nice day.
The Willie Klump Page 12