The Willie Klump

by Joe Archibald

  Willie felt a little radio-activated when he walked west. After a hamburger he went to a telegraph office and composed a night letter which ran as follows:

  BURPSON SAFE COMPANY, GRAND RAPIDS, MICH. HAVE YOU GOT A. J. LUSCOMB CRUMP THERE? IF NOT WHERE IS HE? STOP WANT INFORMATION ON MAN STOP WIRE WILLIAM J. KLUMP ALL INFO IN FULL TO HAWKEYE DETECTIVE AGENCY, INC., ROOM 349, WACKEY BLDG., N.Y.C. STOP.

  Willie managed to scrape up the tariff for the service rendered and went to his hotel to pitch and toss all night like a shrimp boat caught in the middle of the Atlantic. At eight A.M. he was sitting in his office biting his nails. At nine a messenger arrived and handed him a yellow envelope marked collect.

  Willie surrendered all but thirty-eight cents of his assets and feverishly ripped open the telegram. The words jumped at him and each one was like a hammer hitting him between the eyes:

  WILLIAM J. KLUMP, HAWKEYE DETECTIVE AGENCY, N.Y. J. L. CRUMP LEFT OUR EMPLOY THREE MONTHS AGO STOP WAS EXPERT ON COMBINATIONS BURPSON SAFES STOP UNABLE TO GIVE YOU FURTHER DETAILS STOP W. P. GOOGINS, BURPSON SAFES.

  William J. Klump grabbed up a notebook and the stub of a pencil, and wrote faster than a post office clerk.

  No. 1. It could be. A citizen could make more scratch opening Burpson Safes when they was full of payrolls than he could by just testin’ them out at so much per a week.

  No.2. A character like J. Luscomb Crump would not be an habituated criminal so would not know how to case joints to first get in where a safe was. Adult relinquents like Melvin Trumbo would and might hire out for a consideration.

  No.3. It looks like Crump could of crossed or been crossed on the Pusey Plastered Novelties deal and I wonder how? I can’t think of everything all at oncet. I—

  The phone rang. Willie picked it up. “Awright, hurry up as I’m in conference an’—huh? You must have my room as of tomorrow night as a convention is comin’ to town? Look, I’ll see the OPA. You can’t—you can, huh? So I’m evicted ag’in! An’ they say lightnin’ don’t strike twicet in the same pl—that’s it! Thanks, pal! You don’t know what you did for me!”

  “We don’t?” the room clerk at the Luxoria gulped in reply. “Odd character,” Willie heard the man say just as he hung up.

  “Well, I must be a little different than most. Of courst it could strike in the same place but there is more chancet it would hit some other place than the first time. I must get down to the telegraft office.”

  VERY soon Willie realized that he was a fiscal fiasco before he got to the message center so he hopped into a drug store and called Gertie Mudgett.

  “Look, star of my life,” he said when he made connections. “I got to have at least three bucks an’ it is life an’ death. I am at Lex an’ Forty-Eighth, Gert. Don’t spare the horses!”

  Gertie arrived fifteen minutes later and Willie took her in his arms and kissed her in front of everybody.

  “Oh, you precious lump of sugar!” he cooed.

  “Oh, Willie!” Gertie sighed. “Is three enough? Take ten, please!”

  Willie did.

  “I have to rush back, sweetface,” Gertie said, her eyes dewy. “Willie, I misjudged you awful, didn’t I?”

  “Why didn’t I think of this technique before?” Willie asked himself as he slammed the door of a cab behind Gertrude Mudgett’s derriere. “Well, this is no time for romance.”

  He went in and sent another wire to the Burpson Safe Company asking for the location and sizes of their brand of cribs in the big town. Then he rushed back to his office to wait.

  Willie did not get a telegram back from Grand Rapids. Mr. Googins called him long distance instead.

  “Is this Mr. Klump, Hawkeye Detective Agency?” he queried. “Well, we wonder what this is all about and we hesitate to give you the information you want without first consulting New York Police Headquarters. After all, Mr. Klump, we have no way of knowing whether you’re responsible or not. You could be a crook.”

  “Look, I have got a lead on the robbery of one of your safes here,” Willie said in a huff. “The one at the Pusey Plastered Novelties Company. Unlest we prove that a Burpson Safe is punchproof, how you goin’ to sell many more around here? Of courst I work private but if you feel that way—”

  “Klump, you sound like you’re on the level,” Mr. Googins said. “We have to be careful you know. Now, there are about a dozen of our new safes there but the two biggest ones are owned by the Krippinger Casket Company in the Bronx and the Garfinkle Girdle Company on Tenth Avenue. If you do prove that safe there was not forced open there is a thousand dollars in it for you, Klump. You don’t mind if we investigate into your character and integrity in the meantime, do you?”

  “Not at all,” Willie gulped. When he hung up he wiped his pan. “I am glad no television is attached to these phones. An’ I better work fast ‘fore they get a report back on me. Huh, I have got to gamble between girdles an’ coffins. An’ that two heads wore the same size hats.”

  Willie knew he had to work fast and so he did. He looked at a girlie calendar and saw that it was the thirteenth of the month. He called up the Krippinger Casket Company and asked for the head of the accounting department.

  “This is the office of the internal revenue,” he said fast. “We are just checkin’ up. Do you pay your employees by the week or twicet every month.”

  “On the fifteenth and thirty-first,” the coffin concern’s comptroller answered. “Look, you guys should’ve known that by this—”

  “We are awful mixed up here,” Willie said, and severed connections without further ado. He fell back in his chair and marveled at his gall. It scared him. For the first time since he had opened the Hawkeye Detective Agency he admitted that he would need help on this one. He picked up his hat and left the office.

  An hour later Willie sat in the D.A.’s office between two big policemen trying to convince the prosecutor he should not be packed off to the nuthatch.

  “Look, leave us go over it ag’in,” Willie pleaded. “This Crump was a combo expert. He an’ some crooks knocked off the safe at the Pusey outfit an’ erased the watchman. Crump quit the Burpson Safe Company an’ would know how to open all the other Burpson cribs, wouldn’t he? Well, he had a fallin’ out with the crooks worked with him an’ was croaked. The dishonest gees figured they wouldn’t need to cut Crump in if they could grab the combos of other safes he might be carryin’. Now this Krippinger Casket Company could be one of the—”

  “He’s stark an’ ravin’ mad, D.A.,” Satchelfoot Kelly choked out. “A corpse come to bed with him an’ it turns out he is an ex-employee of the Burpson Safe Company usin’ an alias an’—Fats McGlone on the radio wouldn’t swallow that coke-eater’s dream. Why don’t you just call the wagon?”

  HIS seemed like a wonderful suggestion to the man from the Public

  Prosecutor’s office.

  “I’m askin’ myself why I don’t, Kelly,” the D.A. yelped. “Give me a chance. You know what this lemonhead has done before when we figured he was crazy, don’t you?”

  “Why not prove he’s insane?” Hardhat Hafey sniffed. “We’ll cover that casket outfit the night before they pay off their help.”

  “It is a fifty-fifty gamble,” Willie argued. “You cops ain’t been gettin’ no place with the Pusey thing. What can we lose?”

  “We can’t lose a thing, Klump,” the D.A. snapped. “But you can get tossed out of that two-bit clothes-closet you call a detective agency and get psychoanalyzed to boot. Somethin’ tells me it’ll be worth it.”

  “I’ll go along with that,” Satchelfoot

  Kelly said gleefully.

  At precisely ten o’clock that night William J. Klump, Hardhat Hafey, and Satchelfoot Kelly were camped in a big storage closet in the offices of the Krippinger Casket Company up in the Bronx. Just outside was one of the most modern and biggest of Burpson Safes loaded with nearly fifty
grand.

  “This better be good,” Kelly griped. “If it happens to be a turkey I am personally strangling you with my bare hands, Willie. There is only about enough air in here for three canaries. The D.A. must be near a breakdown, too, or he’d never listened to you. Huh, a guy on parole cased the Pusey job for the combo expert and kept a hat Crump lost an’ now has the combo of the crib out there. Hardhat, I got a good mind to go home.”

  “You ain’t got a good mind to do nothin’,” Willie sniffed. “It is the thanks I git for lettin’ you cops in on this. We will know for sure in maybe three hours.”

  An hour slipped by. Two hours. Satchelfoot Kelly, nearly a psycho, was panting like a big bloodhound on a hot August afternoon. Hardhat Hafey was mumbling like a sheepherder and Willie Klump was beginning to wonder if he had not laid a very bag egg this time.

  “I count to a hun’red,” Kelly suddenly gasped. “Then I punch you right on the nose, Willie, an’ go on home.”

  “You couldn’t count as far as fifty, Satchelfoot,” Willie sniffed and mopped more brine from his physiognomy. “You—sh-h-h!”

  “Huh?”

  “Sh-h-h,” Willie admonished again. “Listen to that noise! If it is a mouse, then it is jimmyin’ a winder open.”

  “Yeah,” Hardhat whispered. “An’ there it goes. Willie, you could of been right.”

  Came next some low voices from what had to be very low characters. There were soft footfalls out in the office. Then a familiar voice seeped into Willie’s big ears.

  “This is sure a lead-pipe cinch, Arky,” it said. “An’ we won’t need to leave it lookin’ like a punch job now Crump is in the city Kelvinator. Awright, I’ll read off the combo—”

  “What are we waitin’ for?” Kelly whispered.

  “Give’em a chancet to git caught right in the act,” Willie whispered back. And then Satchelfoot Kelly sneezed louder than a human ever should.

  “Oh, cripes!” Willie gulped. “Now we got to bust out of here, Hardhat!”

  A Roscoe roared just as Willie shoved the door open and he felt a bullet burn along his scalp inside his hat. Hardhat Hafey quickly liquidated one of the rough characters but Satchelfoot fell over a wire wastebasket.

  “Melvin Trumbo!” Willie yelped at a hood trying for the open window. Melvin whirled and fired a shot that zipped close to Willie’s left ear and the slug disintegrated a two quart bottle of red ink that stood atop the Burpson safe.

  “Where is everybody?” Willie howled. “Hardhat, go ahead an’ shoot for Heaven’s sake!”

  WHEN he saw Hardhat and a criminal person locked in deadly combat and Melvin Trumbo was half out of the window. Willie rushed forward and got one of Melvin’s feet in his hand and the other one right in the teeth. Honeybees swarming in his noggin, Willie hung on for dear life and dragged his quarry off the window sill. Melvin’s chin made a very sickening thump as it made contact with the hard floor.

  “I’m dyin’, Willie,” Satchelfoot Kelly yelped as he stumbled away from the safe. “I’m covered with blood.”

  “It is only that you are in the red, lemonhead,” Willie gasped as he banged Trumbo’s head against the floor. “Where are you, Hardhat?”

  “I’m awright,” Hardhat called out. “This gee wouldn’t leave me git my fist out of his mouth fer awhile. Looks like we hit the jackpot, Willie, an’ leave me congratulate you.”

  Melvin Trumbo sang even before he reached the bastile. It was just the way Willie Klump had figured it was. This guy from the Burpson Safe outfit had made a deal with him and two other pals. After the Pusey Plastic Novelties rubout and robbery, they went into a huddle and asked each other why did they need J. Luscomb Crump any longer.

  “Yeah, we jumped him an’ he put up a battle,” the ex-con divulged. “Arky had to let him have it. We walked him out of the joint an’ by mistake one of us put my hat on his dome. We took ten grand off him an’ a notebook with safe combos in it. We leave the shnook to croak out on the street somewheres but what does he do but cross us up!”

  “There never was honor among thieves,” Willie sniffed. “Yeah, he had enough moxey left to git a taxi to his hotel where he come into my room by mistake an’ died in bed with me. I wonder how many people will believe this one?”

  “Take me out of here,” Melvin sighed. Willie Klump and Gertie Mudgett

  were sitting in a tavern a couple of days later listening to Fats McGlone, Private Eye. It was about a hospital blood bank being held up by a grim character all dressed in black and flying a black autogyro. Fats McGlone finally trailed the guilty party to his lair which was an old cellar in a haunted house. It was Dracula back again and in modern dress.

  “Willie, you was right,” Gertie sniffed. “I never heard nothin’ so farfetched.”

  “It is too tame,” Willie commented dryly. “Why don’t they get some oomph in that program?”

  “Supposin’ the crooks had gone to rob the girdle factory instead, Willie?” Gertie wanted to know.

  “Huh? Maybe because I figured they figured if they got caught there they’d git a two-way stretch, ha!” Willie said.

  “I shouldn’t of ast,” Gertie sighed. “Let’s have another beer.”

  THE GAT AND THE MOUSE

  AT SEVEN-FIFTEEN one morning William J. Klump saw an advertisement in a newspaper that

  said a room was for rent on East Fifty- First Street, and at seven-twenty-one he was ringing a doorbell at the aforementioned address. Eleven clamoring citizens were behind Willie when the landlady came to the door.

  “I’ll take it,” Willie gasped out. “An’

  even furnish my own soap an’ towels.”

  Five minutes later Willie had a roof over his head, not more than five inches from the top of his noggin. The skylight that acted in place of windows was stubborn when he yanked a chain but it finally opened and dumped two pigeon eggs onto his bed. There was also one chair in the room, a dresser with half the mirror, and a washstand that could easily have come over with John Alden and Priscilla. All of this was going to cost Willie eleven dollars every week.

  “There is even black markets in bedrooms,” Willie complained as he scattered his personal belongings about. “I wonder if the pigeon eggs are fresh. Ha, the old babe never told me breakfast come with the room the first day.” He took a pan from his straw suitcase and filled it half full of water and put this on his portable hot plate.

  The eggs were delicious. Feeling much better, the president of the Hawkeye Detective Agency stowed his cooking utensils away in the closet that he was sure had not known a broom’s kiss since the house was built. Willie picked some old papers off the floor and carried them to an old grocery carton that served as a waste- basket. Something fell to the floor and he stooped to pick it up. It was a snapshot of a very delectable blonde wearing a bathing suit. He turned it over and read:

  To my darling—Hoping you won’t stay away from me long.—Your Goldilocks.

  “Huh,” Willie sniffed. “Who’d go away and leave her in the firs’ place. I will keep this and burn Gertie with it sometime.”

  WILLIAM KLUMP arrived at his office at ten A. M., wondering why

  he bothered. With Willie business was oknup which is a very expressive word spelled backwards and used by lots of citizens especially those who never studied with the Harvards. It seemed that all the dames in the city had stopped distrusting their husbands and that all characters were paying their debts on time and were being careful not to turn up missing just to spite the private eyes.

  “I must git me a sideline,” Willie decided. “Maybe git the agency for a burglar alarm outfit. I’ll look up some of them in the classified.” Willie could not find that type of directory so he phoned the telephone company. Getting the right party he wanted to know the reason for such poor service to customers.

  “This is the Hawkeye Detective Agency, isn’t it?” a very haugh
ty voice replied. “Mr. Klump, we want you to understand that we are giving you prompt and efficient service. Your phone is being disconnected as of now.”

  “Thanks,” Willie said. “I thought—wha-a-a?”

  The president of the Hawkeye Detective Agency had no sooner hung up when the door opened. He swung around in his chair and saw a short and bulky character taking an uncertain gander at his layout.

  “Sorry, wrong office,” the visitor said, but Willie detained him with an impatient gesture. “I should have a suit of seven offices all done in chromo and alligator hide, huh?” he asked. “Then crooks would know how successful I was catchin’ them an’ business would slow down. It is a blind, of courst.”

  “You are Mr. Klump?” “Who elst? Have a chair.”

  Willie noticed that the client had oversized ears and arms longer than most citizens. They had muscles that bulged his sleeves out and the hands at the end of each extremity were almost as big as clowns’ feet. His face certainly would never cause folks to get him confused with Van Johnson.

  “My proposition must be kept in the strictest confidence, Klump. I am Spelvin Sump, an inventor.”

  “Invent me a telephone, will you?” Willie asked. “Mine was just—er—go on, Mr. Sump.”

  “You have heard of the atomic bomb?” Willie nodded. “As long as I only hear

  of it and not at it, I am satisfied.”

  “H-m-m-m,” Sump sighed. “Well, I am about to perfect the atomic bullet, Klump, and I have reason to believe I have enemies who will try and steal my handiwork—or kill me.”

  William Klump stared at the visitor’s vest to see if a strait-jacket might not be underneath. “Er, Mr. Sump, to make atoms you have a geranium mine.”

  “Uranium, Klump,” the client corrected. “I have a friend who works at Oak Ridge and of course there are radioactivated particles left over from—”