The Chinese Disks

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The speaker was a pale, rat-faced fellow. His voice, half snarl, half whine, ended with a twitch of ugly lips. Beady eyes blinked nervously as they stared at the swarthy, firm-set visage on the opposite side of the battered desk.

“You’re a stoolie right now, Duff,” rasped the swarthy man. “What’s more, you’re going to like it. I brought you here so you could talk. No stall works with me. Get that?”

There was a pause as the two men faced each other beneath the light of a lamp that hung above the desk.

Silence followed while the beady eyes tried to outblink the hard-boiled gaze that met them. Twisted lips were holding back.

The room in which these two had met was an unused office of detective headquarters. The rat-faced man was “Duff” Corley, a small-fry mobster from the underworld of Manhattan. The swarthy-faced inquisitor was Detective Joe Cardona, ace of the New York force.

Duff Corley was not the first of his ilk to meet Cardona in this little office. Detailed to special investigation in the badlands, the star sleuth forced these appointments whenever he saw fit. Few crooks had the nerve to refuse an interview when Joe Cardona demanded it. They preferred to answer the detective’s summons; then try to bluff it out.

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