forty thousand dollars' worth of rare gems? And did they not belong to
someone else?

"To whom?" Johnny said the words aloud as he thought of it.

His mind turned to his Japanese comrades, the girl and the man. He had
told neither of them about the diamonds. Perhaps he should have done so,
and yet he felt a strange reticence in the matter.

He was to meet Hanada at eight o'clock. Hanada had never told him why
they were pursuing the Russian; why he could not be killed in Siberia;
why he must not be killed or arrested if seen now, until he, Hanada,
said the word. He had not told why he thought that the Secret Service
men had committed a blunder in offering a reward for the Russian's
capture.

As Johnny thought of it he wondered if he were a fool for sticking to
this affair into which he had been so blindly led. He had not shown
himself to his old boss or to Mazie. To them he was dead. He had looked
up the official record that very morning and had seen that he was
reported "Missing in Vladivostok; probably dead."

Should he stick to the Russian's trail, a course which might lead to
his death, or should he take the diamonds to a customs office and turn
them in as smuggled goods, then tell Hanada he was off the hunt, was
going back to his old job and Mazie? That would be a very easy thing to
do; and to stick was fearfully hard. Yet the words of his long time
friend, "Get that man, or it will be worse for your country and mine,"
still rang in his ears. Was it his patriotic duty to stick?