“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.

“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.  “Since you do not hope ever to see your treasure again, perhaps you will tell me what it was.”

“Yes, I will tell you.  You are my good friend.  It was diamonds, one hundred and ten diamonds and ten rubies, all in a leather lined envelope with three long compartments.  The rubies were at the bottom of the envelope.”

“Then,” said Johnny, “you are not so far from your treasure after all.  A few of the stones are gone, but most of them are safe.”

He drew from his pocket the envelope which he had carried so far and at such great peril.

Had he needed any reward, other than the consciousness of having done an honest deed, he would have received it then and there in the glad cry that escaped from the Japanese girl’s lips.

When she had wept for joy, she opened the envelope and shaking out the three loose stones dropped them into Johnny’s hand.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“A little reward.  A present.”

Taking the smallest of the three between finger and thumb he gave her back the others.

“One is enough,” he told her.  “I’ll give it to Mazie.”

“Ah, yes, to Mazie, your so beautiful, so wonderful friend,” she murmured.  Then, after a moment, “As for me, I go back to my own people.  I shall spend my life and my fortune helping those very much to be pitied ones who have lost all in that so terrible Russia.”

As Johnny left that room, he thought he was going to have that diamond set in a ring and present it to Mazie the very next day.  But he was not.  That interview with one of Chicago’s leading bankers at five o’clock was destined to change the course of his whole life; for though the Big Five had never decided to act in unison with Hanada in his wild dream of a Kamchatkan Republic—­the plan which had brought his arrest as a conspirator—­they did propose to work those Kamchatkan gold mines on an old concession, given them by the former Czar, and they did propose that Johnny take charge of the expedition.

THE END