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. The room in which she paced anxiously back and forth was Japanese to the final detail. The floor was covered thickly with mattings and the walls, done in a pale blue, were hung everywhere with long scrolls of ancient Japanese origin. Here a silver stork stood in a pool of limpid blue; there a cherry orchard blossomed out with all the extravagant beauty of spring, and in the corner a pagoda, with sloping, red-tile roof and wide doors, proclaimed the fact that the Japanese were a people of art, even down to house building. Silk tapestries of varying tints hung about the room, while in the shadows a small heathen god smiled a perpetual smile.
But it was none of these things that the girl saw at that moment. This room, fitted up as it had been by rich Japanese students, most certainly had brought back fond memories of her own country. But at this instant, her eyes turned often to a screen behind which was a stand, and on that stand was a desk telephone.
Hanada had promised to consult Johnny Thompson regarding the strange proposition of the unknown Japanese. He had promised to call her at once; by eight-thirty at the latest. The stranger was to return for his answer at nine. It now lacked but ten minutes of that hour, and no call had come from Hanada. She could not, of course, know that the men on whom she depended for counsel were prisoners of the police. So she paced the floor and waited.
Five minutes to nine and yet no call. Wrinkles came to her forehead, her step grew more impatient.
"If he does not call, what shall I do?" she asked herself.
Then there came the sharp ring of the telephone. She sprang to the instrument, but the call was for another member of the club.
Three minutes in which to decide. She walked thoughtfully across the floor. Should she go? Her money was now almost gone. It was true that a treasure, which to many would seem a vast fortune, had disappeared from her father's house over night. It had been taken by force. And she knew the man who had taken it; had followed him thousands of miles. Now there had come to her a man of her own race, who assured her that the treasure was not in the possession of the man who had stolen it, but in the possession of an honest man who would willingly surrender it to her, providing only he could be made certain that it was to go directly into her hands. That this might be, he demanded that she meet him at a certain place known to the strange Japanese. There she might prove her property. The story did seem plausible—and her need was great. Soon she would be cast out upon the world without a penny. So long as she had money she was welcome at this club; not longer.
There came the purring of a muffled bell in the hall. He had come.
Should she go? A mood of reckless desperation seized her.
"I will," she declared.