"Did you see that? There it goes again! Lights flashing beneath the water. It's the 'sub' for sure. Couldn't be anything else."
"I have seen such lights before," said Johnny, striving hard to maintain a sane judgment in this time of great crisis, "but I attributed it to phosphorus on the water."
"Couldn't be!" declared Hanada. "Couldn't make a flicker and flash like that. I tell you, it's a submarine, and the home of the Radicals. That's why we couldn't find them. That's where our Russian disappeared to that night on the bridge. That's where the shots came from. Remember right from the center of the river? That's where your four assailants went to when they vanished from that deserted building. It's the Radicals. C'mon! We may not be too late yet. We'll get them before the police get us."
Together the three rushed from the room.
"Did you say they were carrying a woman?" Johnny asked Jerry, as they hastened down the stairs.
"Yes, a skirt; a swell-looking skirt. Mouth gagged, hands tied, but dressed to kill, opry coat and everything!"
"Some more of their dirty work," Johnny grumbled, "but we'll get them this time. If we can convince the police that they're there they'll drag the river and haul 'em out like a dead rat."
At the moment when the three men were hurrying down the stairs which led from Johnny's room to the street, Mazie sat silently searching the faces of the men about her. Wild questions raced through her brain. Who were these men? Why had they kidnapped her? What did they want? What would they do to her? She shivered a little at the last question.
That they were criminals she had not the least doubt. Only criminals could do such a thing. But what type of criminal were they? In her research courses at the University she had visited court rooms, jails and reformatories. Criminals were not new to her. But these men lacked utterly the markings of the average city criminal. Their eyes lacked the keen alertness, their fingers the slim tapering points of the professional crook. Suddenly, as she pondered, there came to her mind a paragraph from one of her text-books on crime: