You Only Hang Once

By H. W. Roden

You Only Hang Once, first published in 1944, is a noir murder mystery featuring private-eye Sid Ames and public-relations man Johnny Knight, who discovers a dead lawyer in his office. Ames, who has a predilection for alcohol, is hired to investigate the murder, and along the way, two additional murders occur, plus blackmail and thieves fighting over a packet of diamonds. Author H. W. Roden (1895-1963) was an author of mystery-thrillers; You Only Hang Once was the first of four books featuring Sid Ames and Johnny Knight.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Phocion Publishing
• Release date: Nov 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781789129878

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Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

YOU ONLY 4

HANG ONCE 4

CONTENTS 129

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 131

YOU ONLY HANG ONCE

H. W. RODEN

You Only Hang Once was originally published in 1944 by William Morrow & Company, New York.

1

The swivel chair was tilted back, my feet were comfortably on the desk and I had the morning paper opened at the sports page reading about a plater called Brass Monkey which had run second at Tanforan. I had put a deuce spot on it to win.

I had neither heard the door open nor close. But some sixth sense warned me that I had a visitor. I let my eyes crawl up the type of the newspaper until they slid over the top. I was looking into the muzzle of a steel-blue police positive revolver. The barrel looked to me about the size of the entrance to the Holland Tunnel.

By sheer will I forced my eyes to look beyond the gun to the wellmanicured hand that was holding it. Then down to a pair of gray tweed slacks which Brooks Brothers would have been glad to acknowledge came from their establishment. My eyes traveled a knife-edge crease in the slacks to a pair of natty black-and-white sport shoes. Then back to the gun.

It was pointing right at my navel. I pulled my feet off the desk—not fast, mind you—and put them on the floor. This didn’t help much because now the gun, which hadn’t moved an inch, was pointing at where I fancied my heart to be. But it got me into a position where I could take a quick gander at the upper half of my intruder.

He was leaning carelessly—all except that gun hand—with his back against the closed door. His dark blue sport jacket was a fitting complement to the slacks except that it was just a touch too narrow in the waist and just a bit too broad in the shoulders. His pale magenta shirt had three-and-a-half-inch points to the collar. A red-figured lavender tie was matched exactly by the handkerchief protruding from the upper left pocket of his jacket.

A face went with the ensemble. A face which was so handsome it startled me. It was more than handsome—it was beautiful. A chin and mouth like a girl’s; a perfect, straight nose; wide-set large blue eyes under arched brows; all crowned with a head of blond wavy hair which made his six feet somehow seem taller. Yes, a beautiful man. I idly wondered how long he had sat under the wave machine to get that hair effect.

There was a faint perfume in the air and it wasn’t of the barber shop variety. That, and not some prescience, was what had probably tipped me off to his proximity in the first place.

I began to get mad. God damn it! Stuck up in broad daylight, in my own office, and by a fag. I started to get up. Then I noticed the pupils of his eyes. They were like pin points. He was hopped to his shell-like ears. I sat down again.

Get your hat, he said, and it seemed as if the words hurtled out without his opening his lips. The gun was very steady, but the hand holding it had tensed. Probably when I started to get up.

Nuts, I said and it sounded a lot tougher than I felt. What is this? Come on, pretty boy, talk before I take that popgun away from you and knock your teeth out with it.

His pupils weren’t even pin points now. They were just flecks of black showing through the corneas.

Get your hat.

It was just the way he had said it the first time. Same intonation. But it was heavy with menace. My stomach crawled a little.

I slowly stood up, taking a long time banging drawers shut. I was careful to keep my hands showing all the while. What I was after was something to break the tension. His—not mine. I was afraid if his hand didn’t ease up a little that roscoe would let go.

Besides if I stalled long enough I thought perhaps Miss Warner might come in and break up the party. Miss Warner was my new secretary, stenographer, office girl. She was the rest of the newly created firm which the letters on my office door said was that of: JOHN ALDEN KNIGHT—PUBLIC RELATIONS.

I’d hired her a week ago, not because I’d had a sudden rush of business, but because I needed someone to sit in the front half of my small two-room suite on the second floor of the Caldwell Building and open mail, answer the telephone, greet visitors and write letters. The latter two chores being strictly on the light side.

Miss Warner was picked for the job because of the three girls who responded to my two-dollar ad in the Clarion she had the prettiest legs. The rest of her went well with the legs too, although I had to admit she was no mental Brunnehilde. The Monte Carlo Ballet was strictly a gambling joint in her book.

She was as reliable as Yellowstone’s Old Faithful in one respect. Whenever I needed or wanted her she was either out to lunch or gone to the can. She must have been right on schedule when my pansy hophead came through the outer office or she would at least have questioned him. Maybe if I could drag it out long enough, she would be back there when I needed her—this once.

Keep your hand away from that button. Get your hat and get going.

There was an impatience in the tone this time that brooked no funny business. I moved around the desk, walked over to the hat rack by the window and picked up my snap brim felt hat. I put it on my head with a jauntiness I was far from feeling. Blond Boy hadn’t moved. Neither had the gun.

He swung the door open and I walked straight for it, hoping Miss Warner would be at her desk pecking away at that one-finger exercise that passed for her typing technique. I had thought of a way to get over to her what was going on, as dumb as she was. I might as well have saved my gray matter. She was either lingering over a long lunch or busy in the john. The office was empty.

Blond Boy had slipped both hands into the wide pockets of his tweed jacket as we stepped into the second floor corridor. He had also stepped up close to me so that I had no doubt what the hard object nudging me on the left hip was. The pressure increased as I started for the elevators.

Take the stairs, he said, and I kept right on going past the first two elevator doors. As we came abreast of the third one, it suddenly rolled open.

I said down hopefully, but the operator shook his head and indicated that he was going up. Only one passenger alighted. He was a little yid lawyer named Berenson who had an office on the same floor as mine. We had only a nodding acquaintance but today I laid it on.

Good afternoon, Mr. Berenson, I almost yelled, over-stressing every syllable.

He either thought I was drunk or that we were just a couple of pals starting out for a round of golf. He nodded and went right on.

Blond Boy didn’t like it either. I got a crack in the ribs from the heavy barrel sight which even through his coat and mine hurt like hell. I was getting mad again and started to figure whether I might not be able to take him, gun or no gun. I had him by two inches in height and I’d guess my one hundred and eighty-five pounds would shade him by ten. Those football shoulders didn’t fool me either. Some tailor dreamed those up.

Maybe I could take him at that. And I promised myself that sooner or later I would, too. But rough. Right now he had me intrigued. I wanted to know what it was all about. And when I was ready to take him, not to just swing for his pretty chin and hope his persuader didn’t blast me. I wanted to hurt him bad. To kick him in the groin and step on his face. As you would treat a spider or a snake.

We were down the steps by this time and were strolling through the crowded lobby all the world like two business men going out for a late bite of lunch. I thought for a minute that the revolving doors might stymie him but he had that all figured out. He went right in with me as if he had become confused and got in my segment by mistake.

The faint perfume he wore was very noticeable at such close quarters. I was glad to get out into the open air.

Parked at the curb was an ordinary Chevy coupe, of nondescript color, which would have gone unnoticed in an empty parking lot. The Caldwell Building is on Fourth Street just off Main, so is not on a heavily trafficked thoroughfare. Cars were moving to and fro, but there was not so much activity that a car sitting quietly at the curb would command any special attention. Especially if it had a driver at the wheel. This one did.

Even with him sitting in the front of the car I could see that he was short and squat, with a chest like a barrel and a neck as big as a boiler maker’s. His ears were a sight to bring tears to the eyes of a cauliflower addict and his nose was a thing apart. It had been mashed flat and if there was any cartilage left in it, it wasn’t discernible.

I recognized him at once as Maxie Ware, a one time stumble-bum pugilist who had dropped out of sight—at least my sight—the past few years. A long time ago as a sports writer on the Clarion I had done a feature story on Ware, pointing up a comparison between him and some of the least attractive features of Tony Galen to, whom he resembled in stature. Max probably couldn’t read for he always thought that piece was the crowning event in his short fistic career. I was aces with him for having authored it.

As I walked toward the car, my ever-present escort sticking like a porous plaster, I recalled someone having told me that old Bruiser Max had left the ring to join up with Vitala Barretti’s gang—Barretti being our local night club operator and gambling overlord. Things began to make a little sense now. I supposed the blond gunsel was also Barretti’s. I had some numbers I could start adding up.

Hi, Maxie, I said as I got abreast of the tonneau door. He jumped a foot.

Cripes, scribbler,—all newspapermen were scribblers to Max—I didn’t know it was you we was goin’ to pick up. Yance here didn’t say nuttin’.

So Blond Boy was named Yance. I’d remember that. As if divining my thoughts, he opened the rear door, shoved me in, and followed right after me.

You drive, Max, and keep your trap shut. It was practically an oration coming from the monosyllabic Yance.

I thought maybe I might stir things up a little so I said to the cauliflower ears in front of me, Well, Maxie, you two boys going steady now?

Aw, cripes, was all the response I got from Max but I knew I’d hit him where it hurt because the back of his neck got lobster red. From Blond Boy I got a different sort of response, a crack across the knee with the butt of the gun. I figured the sadistic bastard liked me to get out of line just so he could let me have a little treatment. I thought my knee cap was split. I also thought I might be sick to my stomach.

I shut up.

2

We drove west on Main Street. Not fast, just at about the right speed not to attract any sort of attention. At Sixteenth we made a right-hand turn and a little later on turned right again. After about six blocks through a residential section I knew very well we turned north and headed straight out to the suburbs.

By this time I knew we were headed for Route 91, the superhighway which connected our so-called-by-the-Chamber-of-Commerce fair city and the big burgs to the east. I also began to have a faint idea of where we were headed. If I was right, then I was really sore. Sore and maybe a little bit scared.

Five miles out into the country we turned off the pavement on to a graveled country road and started to climb. The winding road slowed our progress but Maxie drove it as if he knew just where he was going. I did, too, now. None of us said a word.

Max kept his eyes on the road and gave his attention to driving the car. Yance held the gun carelessly in his lap. Carelessly, but not careless enough for it to soil the crease of his slacks—or, for that matter, for me to make a grab at it.

Fifteen hundred feet above the valley the road came to an abrupt end. A sign on the right proclaimed this fact; one on the left pointed the way to a wide well-kept lane and said, private—sundown club—members only. We went right in. I guessed we were members all right.

The Sundown Club was owned and operated by Vitala Barretti. It was a place where those with a little loose change in their pockets might come for dinner, dancing or a fling at the wheel. If you didn’t like any of the five wheels, there were four crap tables, two twenty-one dealers, two chuck-a-luck cages and a room full of slot machines. If none of these diversions pleased you, poker, faro, or chemin de fer could be arranged. But definitely. Vitala aimed to please his customers.

So far as I knew, the place was run on the level. It had a reputation for being sinister enough to give the youngsters a thrill and at the same time reliable enough to draw the country club set. A deb on her second date out might easily run into her old man, the president of one of our leading banks, trying his luck on the double O. If either was embarrassed the matter was usually quickly adjusted by agreeing that what mother didn’t find out wouldn’t worry her.

I had been to the Sundown Club a good many times. But my visits had always been purely social. This was the first time I had visited it under compulsion and in the company of a broken down pug and a fancy sniffer. I had to grin when I thought about it. But I was worried, too, and with good reason.

In the days when I had done police reporting for the Clarion, Barretti was just sewing up the rackets in our town. A merchant didn’t need night watchmen around his store if he was a member of the United Protective Association, Vitala Barretti, President. If he wasn’t a member the cost of putting in new plate glass windows was terrific. Or a manufacturer who subscribed to the Workmen’s Benevolent Association, V. Barretti, General Manager, was pretty sure to have more workmen in his plant than in the hospital. And any manufacturer who didn’t subscribe was fairly certain to have vice versa.

Before rackets became unpopular with the local government and changing administrations, Barretti had seemingly amassed enough of the root of all evil to acquire the old Warren estate on the top of the mountain and to convert its rambling Swiss chalet of a house into a very attractive supper club and gambling room. He still kept his thumb on whatever graft the town afforded, but that was so limited it was an open secret that his chief income was now derived from the take at the Sundown.

Barretti had telephoned me three times in the past two days and asked that I come to see him. Each time I had told him to go to hell. I wished I hadn’t now, for there didn’t seem much doubt that I was going to visit him.

We turned into the drive bisecting