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When he awoke he remembered at once that he had several little matters to attend to. Hanada's funeral would be cared for by his own people. But he must see Cio-Cio-San; he must get the hundred dollars promised to Jerry the Rat and he must put in a claim for the thousand dollars reward offered for the arrest of the Russian. He need bother his head no longer about the captured Radicals.
Youse guys come with us. Youse guys is wanted at the station." "What for?" Johnny demanded. "Youse guys know well enough. Treason, they call it." "Treason?" Johnny gave a happy laugh. "Treason? They'll have hard work to prove that." Had one been privileged to see Cio-Cio-San at the moment Johnny Thompson and his friend were arrested, he might easily have imagined that she was back in Japan.
"Cio-Cio-San," he said thoughtfully, "I remember hearing you tell of having been robbed of a treasure. Did you find it last night in the submarine?" "No," she said softly. "Last night was a bad night for me. I lost my best friend. He is dead. I lost my treasure. I do not hope to ever find it now." "Cio-Cio-San," Johnny said the name slowly.
"But the girl, Cio-Cio-San?" Johnny questioned. "She is not of the secret police. She helps me as a friend, that's all, and I will help her if I can." Johnny wished to question him regarding the treasure, but something held him back. "So you see how it is." Hanada spoke wearily. "We have gone so far, so very far.
Certainly if the treasure the strange Jap had spoken of as having been stolen from the Japanese girl was the envelope of diamonds, and they had hoped to recover them from Johnny that night, they would have no intention of restoring them to Cio-Cio-San. "I'd advise her, if I were you," said Johnny slowly, "to find out as much as she can, and not take too many chances.
However, there was no call for effort on her part. Like a tigress the Japanese girl, Cio-Cio-San, sprang at the man of her own country. "You traitor!" she gasped. "You have betrayed me, your fellow-countryman, and murdered my friend!" and she drove her dagger into his breast to the hilt. Mazie closed her eyes and sat down dizzily.
Yet here was the man's note requesting him to meet him in his private office at five o'clock. "All right, I'll do that little thing," Johnny whispered to himself, "but meantime I'll go out to the University and see Cio-Cio-San." An hour later he found himself sitting beside the Japanese girl on the thick mats of that Japanese room at her club.
The craft rolled over, once, twice, three times and then hung there, with the floor for its ceiling. Overcome with fright and misery, Mazie did not stir for a full minute, then she dragged herself from the gruesome spot where she lay. She gave one quick glance at the door. It appeared to have been wedged solidly shut. Then she turned to Cio-Cio-San, who also had arisen. "What can have happened?"
"Yes, he is an old friend." "And mine too. Good! To-night we will go. We will get that man. Three of us. That bad one!" "All right," said Johnny. "See you at the depot to-night." "Wait," said the girl. Her hand still on his arm, she stood on her tiptoe and whispered in his ear: "My name Cio-Cio-San; your friend, Hanada friend. Good-by." Then she was gone. Johnny walked to his hotel as in a dream.
Would he be followed? Even as he asked himself the question, he fancied that a dark form moved stealthily across the street. "Well, anyway," he said to himself, "I can't desert my Jap friends. Besides, I don't want to." "Chicago," said Hanada some time later, as Johnny related his conversation with Cio-Cio-San. "That means the end is near." The end was not so near as he thought.
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