The Willie Klump

by Joe Archibald

  “That is right,” Bartholomew gulped painfully. “The monster couldn’t have been gone long as my poor darlin’ wa’n’t hardly cold.”

  “I could say somethin’ but I won’t,” Willie sniffed.

  “That saved you at least a broken arm, flannelmouth!” Kelly roared. A cop came up with something and waved it at Satchelfoot. “Picked it up offen the floor near a chair leg, Kelly. Wow!”

  “Now leave us control ourselves,” the detective said, and snatched the find from the cop’s fingers. Willie came over and took a gander at a snapshot that evidently

  had been taken on a bathing beach. “That’s the wolf!” Willie yelled. “Tsk-tsk, what an intimate pose! An’ that bathin’ suit of the blonde’s would not make a modest kimoner for a field mouse. Bro-o-other!”

  “It was from that chair I picked up the han’bag,” Kelly said. “It was busted open an’ so the pitcher must of fell out. Now all we got t’ do is find out who the stout boy is an’ go git him an’ throw him in the cooler! Search the joint high an’ low for phone numbers, address books an’ billy doos!”

  “An’ for a cigar butt whicht never was chewed,” Willie offered. “Was there moola in the doll’s poke, Satchelfoot?”

  “Not a sou. Leave me alone, you bother me,” Kelly growled.

  “Could of been a burglar,” Willie said, and looked at Bartholomew. “Didn’t you ever hear about mothers knowin’ best, Fusty? Look at the pitcher an’ then tell us your ex-wife was on an outin’ with her dear Uncle Looie. Ha!” Willie removed his brown shoes and put them on the right feet.

  One hour later Satchelfoot Kelly’s number one helper, Hardhat Hafey, came up with a small memo book in which was an entry that made the bloodhounds bay quite gleefully. In fact, Hardhat plucked it out of the pile of odds and ends from the deceased’s pocketbook which Satchelfoot had gone through at least three times.

  “If an elephant trumpeted in the next room, you couldn’t locate it, Satchelfoot,” Willie sniffed.

  “Sha-addup!” Kelly said sourly. “Huh, Amberson G. Cronkite the Third. That complicates things awright. I hope the other two ain’t in town.”

  “Oh, don’t!” Willie sighed and pawed at his face.

  “Hotel Broadway Plaza,” Kelly went on. “Quick, Hardhat, call that joint an’ ast is the crumb registered there?”

  Hafey did. He was told that Amberson

  G. had checked out half an hour ago.

  Satchelfoot Kelly threw the works. “Two of you guys cover the Pennsy, the others the Gran’ Central! Hardhat, you an’ me will hit it for La Guardia! Willie, you stay here an’ watch the—what am I sayin’? You come along where we can hold you under surveyance!”

  “Pardon me,” Willie said. “You have took Mr. Fusty’s hat, Satchelfoot. An’ you wa’n’t carryin’ a dame’s han’bag when you come in. Not that you couldn’t use a new face, ha! Le’s all count to ten before we do nothin’ more, don’t you think?”

  “Who’s excited?” Kelly yelped. “Awright, tell the boys to remove Fusty—” “An’ I’ll tell the blonde not t’ dare t’ leave town,” Willie needled. “Satchelfoot,

  it is sometimes a pleasure t’ know you.”

  MBERSON G. Cronkite the Third was spotted by William Klump just an

  hour later walking through the gate at La Guardia and just forty seconds later was in the toils and burning like Rome during Nero’s star act. “Unhand me this instant, riff-raff!” the captive vociferated. “I am under arrest for—wha-at?”

  “Just murder,” Satchelfoot snapped, and jostled the character into a police jalopy and whisked him away. “Where was you between the hours of eight an’ nine- thirty, huh?”

  “I was seein’ a friend,” Amberson G. snapped. “That is, she—all right, I called on Mrs. Fusty, but she was alive when I left.”

  “Ha ha,” Kelly laughed. “Leave us hear the one about Hans an’ Gretchen. We got the pitcher of you an’ the babe in bathin’ suits. Don’t tell me you are a married man!”

  “I am and I will!” Cronkite croaked. “I—er—oh, if this frame ever gits out—!”

  “You think the Mrs. will be sore, huh?” Willie asked.

  “Look, my wife has a million bucks,” A. G. yelped. “She is primmer than a starched bib an’ all her ancestors got passage on the Mayflower an’ if she ever fin’s out I looked too long at a picture of Hayworth, I’m tossed out without a dime. Look, how can we fix this?”

  “We’ll ast the D. A.,” Kelly sniffed. “With all that dough in your wife’s name why kid aroun’ with dames like Electra? What is she, eighty-two years of age?”

  “I didn’ want t’ mess up with that number,” A. G. yipped. “Look I was on the beach up at Playland an’ she comes up an’ starts a conversation. After awhile she slips an arm aroun’ me an’ I remonstrates with her—”

  “So I see by the pitcher,” Willie said. “You better shut up as every thin’ you say will be used against you.”

  “Can’t you shut your big mouth, Willie?” Satchelfoot yelped. “He was confessin’!”

  “Er, that’s right,” Cronkite gulped out. “I better send for my lawyers.”

  “Plural is right,” Willie sighed. “With the way you’re over a barrel. It was quite a treat you give the customers in the Picadillo couple of nights ago. I got to testerfy I saw you there with the blonde.”

  The D. A. really went to work on A. G. He heated up the grill and licked his chops. “So far here is how you stand, Cronkite. You admit bein’ friendly with the deceased. You got a wife named Prudence who still levels like the Pilgrim maids. You would of got tossed out by her if she found you was a philanderer, right?

  “You got no dough of your own an’ are a salesman, yeah? So you tell the babe your ardor has cooled, an’ so she threatens t’ contact the Missus an’ flash the woo snapshot. You knocked her off an’ rifled her handbag to get the evidence. Maybe you got a couple of the prints an’ even the negative, but overlooked one. You admit

  you sneaked in and out while nobody was lookin’—”

  “That ain’t so,” A. G. choked out. “I got framed by the doll. I don’t know who snapped the picture on the beach. I give her five hun’red t’—”

  “Oh, blackmail, hah?” Willie cut in. “Shut up, Klump!” the D.A. rapped. “Shut up, Willie,” Kelly said.

  “Okay, dear Miss Echo,” the private dick sniffed.

  “There wa’n’t a dime in her han’bag, D. A.!” Satchelfoot yelped.

  “Wha-a-a-a-a?” Amberson trumpeted. “Then it was a prowler got in. She was killed an’ robbed, I told you I gave that trick five hun’red bucks an’—no, I won’t say nothin’ more except to my lawyers. Let me wire them as they are in Boston, Mr. D. A.”

  “You should git them from Philadelphia,” Willie suggested. “Even they would have t’ buy the jury. You look guilty t’ me! You got a bad temper, too.”

  “Can’t you shut that comic up, Kelly?”

  the D.A. asked of Satchelfoot.

  “If you’ll let me use a fire-axe,” Kelly bit out.

  “Awright, I’m holdin’ you over for the Gran’ Jury, Cronkite,” the D.A. snapped. “Leave him wire his mouthpieces, boys.”

  “They are Bradford, Bradford, Standish, Alden an’ Alden,” Amberson G. told the D.A. “They’ll git me out of this.”

  “Not unlest they’ve hired another partner named Houdini,” Willie observed just before he was evicted rather roughly.

  “An’ stay out!” the D. A. cried as William J. Klump picked himself up out in the corridor:

  “I’ll sue!” Willie said.

  “You’re lucky, my friend,” the suspect told Willie in passing. “I wish they would throw me out.”

  ILLIE called up Mrs. Fusty the next

  A. M. Bartholomew’s ma said that

  Electra got just what she had been sticking her ne
ck out for. “Well, it looks like there’s no more use followin’ her, Klump,” she said. “Unlest you are a member of the Pallbearers’ Local. I’ll see you get paid your balance just the same.”

  “That is nice,” Willie replied. “How is

  Bartholomew takin’ it, huh?”

  “The poor guy, Klump. You would think he lost his last dime. Good riddance, I say,” Mrs. Fusty said. “Well, goodby.”

  The evening journals made it quite plain to all that Amberson G. Cronkite of Boston, Mass., was beyond a doubt a most fiendish murderer, and that the trial would be a matter of dull routine. The facts were in the D. A.’s pocket. He would fire off the gun, and A. G. would start out on the last mile, at the end of which he would be wired for everything but sound.

  “For once I got to admit Satchelfoot can’t trip ‘up,” Willie griped. “Huh, only one thing, though. Where is the Roscoe knocked off the tomater? I have not heard anybody found it yet. Not that it will help the codfisher as who would expect him t’ keep it in his bag for a souvenir. I wish I knew what A. G. told his lawyers which he didn’t give to the D. A.”

  The phone rang. Willie snatched it up. “Hawkeye Detective Agency, Inc. W.J. Kl—huh? Oh, hello, Gert. Huh?”

  “Ain’t it excitin’, Willie, the victim bein’ the blonde we saw an’ the one you was shadowin’?” Miss Mudgett trilled.

  “It is wonderful,” Willie sniffed. “Like as if a organ grinder lost a talkin’ monkey who was his chief means of keepin’ him out of the poorhouse. That job would of netted me five C’s, Gertie Mudgett!”

  “Oh, you will git a break yet, Willie,” Gertie commiserated.

  “In a arm or leg,” Willie said. “That Kelly. He wouldn’t of got nowheres if somebody hadn’t give him a pitcher of the whole thing. An’ the more I think of it if a

  character like this Cronkite was so desperate about gettin’ what a doll had on him, he would of been more careful. Well, I got a client comin’ in any minute an’—”

  “You lie by the clock, Willie,” Gertie said. “But I got t’ run along myself as I am thinkin’ of puttin’ down a payment on a television set. G’by.”

  Now late the next afternoon, Willie Klump received a visitor. It was Bartholomew Fusty. He was clad in a new suit and appeared very distinguished. “When anybody wants t’ forget, Klump,” the little character said, “they dress up as it helps their morale. This has been a very trying time for me.”

  “It was not good,” Willie agreed, and envied the sparkler on Bartholomew’s left pinky.

  “Now I am here to pay my just debts, Klump. My ma was right as usual. Who would think my wife would lead a double life?”

  “I won’t answer that one, Fusty.”

  “Well, anyway, here is a hundred dollars, Mr. Klump. I hope that is satisfactory and clears up every thin’. I want t’ start out fresh an’—”

  “If you stick to that you will grab another dame very soon, Fusty,” Willie grinned. “Thanks.”

  Fusty had only been gone a few moments and Willie was sitting back in his chair feasting his eyes on the century note when the door opened. “Oh, Willie, is this a coincidents? Oh, no you don’t! Leave me have that dough, as yesterday I find out I need more’n fifty t’ git the raddio set.”

  Willie contemplated resistance, visualized the consequences which smelled of iodine and sulphur drugs, then handed Gertie the Fusty fee. “Take it,” he gulped. “I am in no mood for judo this aft, an’ it is better to be busted financial than physical.”

  “It’ll be yours as much as mine, Willie,” Gertie sniffed, “as you can also use it when we git married.”

  “Oh, now I feel much better about it all,” Willie sighed, and when his nemesis had departed he wondered if private detecting payed in and around New Zealand. “I think I will go an’ see a movie which will leave me seventy-six cents for the automat.”

  It was close to six-thirty when William Klump emerged from the flicker house and nearly seven when he got to his rooming house. Mrs. Flickerhopper, his present landlady, met him at the door and then clamped a hand over his mouth and dragged him back into her kitchen. “I got some san’wiches made for you, Klump,” she finally whispered. “You can git out of town ‘fore they catch you maybe. I don’t know why I am doin’ this for a fiendish criminal but I had a cocker spaniel oncet with eyes reminded me of yours an’—”

  “Look, what goes?” Willie gulped.

  “For heaven’s sake, where you been?” Mrs. Flickerhopper yelped hoarsely. “Gertie Mudgett called you over two hours ago from the precinct station as she was arrested an’ locked up as an excessory in the murder of that blonde named Fusty. Finally she got hold of Detective Kelly who made her tell where she got the marked hun’red dollar bill which Amberson Cronkite said he had marked before he paid—didn’ you read the even in’ papers, Klump?”

  “Sometimes I don’t,” Willie forced out of a throat as dry as corn husks in November.

  “They are sittin’ in your room waitin’ for you,” the landlady squeaked. “Kelly an’—they want you for murderin’ the blonde. Look, take these san’wiches an’ git goin’, Klump. Good luck—er—you got your rent ‘fore you go? Well, never mind-”

  “Why, the little wampus!” Willie

  roared, and bolted out of the kitchen. He was near the front door of the Flickerhopper establishment when Satchelfoot Kelly yelled at him from the head of the first flight of stairs. “Don’t move, Willie, or I’ll shoot!”

  “Me, too,” Hardhat Hafey yelled through his nose.

  ILLIE opened the door and flew out. Bullets from police Betsies whanged

  past his ears and ricocheted off the sidewalk. Willie turned to the right and ran toward Lexington Avenue, oblivious to the fact that he had become the world’s fastest human when he reached it, and jumped into a cab. “Quick—Three hun’red an’ forty- one East Eighty-seventh! I got a gat an’ will blow out your brains if you stop at no traffic lights!”

  “Don’t, pal. I got a wife an’ six kids. I’ll git you there. Was that a police sirene I jus’ heard?”

  “It wa’n’t Margeret O’Brien whistlin’ t’ Lassie!” Willie yipped, and knew now how citizens like Dillinger, Baby-faced Nelson, etcetra, had felt at odd times. “I git the hun’red from Bartholomew—Gertie grabs it from me—a radio outfit spots the marked century—where did Bartholomew—? Of courst, the dirty li’l sheep in a wolf’s sport coat! Is this as fast as you can go, Buster?”

  “I got my foot through the boards an’ up close t’ the cylinder head, you bum!” the taximan flung back, and then jammed on the brakes. “Here you are, an’ no Constellation could of made it faster!”

  “Wait for me,” Willie said. He ran down a little flight of steps and banged on Bartholomew Fusty’s door. The little citizen opened up, tried to shut the door again, but Willie got his foot in it and also some fingers around Mr. Fusty’s throat. He shoved the little citizen inside picked him up and threw him into a big chair where Bartholomew bounced around like a rubber

  ball.

  “Well, for oncet I meet a dishonest person I can handle, huh?” he yelped. “You framed that wolf from Boston, you pint- sized assassin! You come in after he went out awright. Then you bumped off your wife an’ cleaned her han’bag of the five C’s. Them leafs of lettuce was marked by Amberson G. Cronkite but you didn’t know that, hah?”

  Bartholomew Fusty sat up straight in the chair. His little face wore a very mean grin, and he was clutching a Roscoe in his right hand. “Cops wouldn’t never figure t’ look under a cushion of a chair for a gun, huh, Klump? What dumb cluck would ditch one there? Ha ha!”

  “Don’t you dast shoot that thing off!” Willie howled. “The joint is surrounded— an’ this time I ain’t kiddin’!”

  “I listen t’ the radio,” the little character sniffed. “What an ol gag! Goo’by, Klump!” Bang! Willie ducked quick when the wind
ow pane was busted in. Satchelfoot’s bullet knocked Bartholomew right back on the seat of his pants and the little man fired at Hardhat from that position and a hole appeared near the top of the flatfoot’s derby. Willie Klump dove at Bartholomew and covered him like a tiger rug. “You must of got—tire—trouble,” he gulped at

  Satchelfoot. “What held you back, huh?” “We got here two or three seconds right

  after you, Willie,” Hardhat said. “We was listenin’ outside t’ see if you was a confederate t’ somebody.”

  “It looks like you’ll never arrest the right citizen, Satchelfoot,” Willie said. “Why did A. G. mark the bills?”

  Kelly sat down and shook his head hopelessly. “He told us late this A.M. he was goin’ to pay no more through the nose an’ would risk his wife dumpin’ him, by provin’ blackmail on the doll. But when he left her joint that night he lost his nerve oncet more. But he’d marked the hun’reds

  awright.

  “So we send out the alarm by the newspapers to look over hun’red dollar bills. The warnin’ was in the noon editions of the evenin’ rags. Looks like some people read it an’ some didn’t, includin’ you, Gertie, an’ that pocketsize murderer, huh? Well, the radio out-fit over by Times Square called us they had picked up a dame holdin’ one of the hot C’s. Imagine how I feel when I see Gertie Mudgett in the klink!”

  “Oh, brother,” Willie sighed.

  “Awright, you poor man’s Pete Lorry,” Kelly yipped at Bartholomew.

  “Talk ‘fore we run our fists down your t’roat as far as your stummick. It is only your shoulder I hit an’ you will live.”

  “But jus’ so long, don’t forget,” Willie said.

  “Okay,” Bartholomew said sadly. “Me an’ Electra planned it all ourselves. We find out who A. G. Cronkite is at the beach, so she frames him. I’m standin’ behind one of them big beach umbrellas an’ snap the pitcher when she makes the lovin’ pass at him. From that time on I bet she got ten grand out of that sucker. That is why I never wanted nobody buttin’ in, Klump, like my mother hirin’ you t’ shadow Electra, see? You sure nearly loused it all up in the Picadillo.”