Directly the newcomers seemed to forget to keep their hands up, for they gripped their waists with them and roared.  There was something about the laughter, too, which was not at all like the Orient.

“Go it!” Jack exclaimed.

“Have your fun before we come to settlement with you,” Frank threatened.

“Let me soak heem!” Hans pleaded.

Sandy stood by with wonder showing in his face.

“What kind of a play house is this?” he asked.  And still the others laughed, bending over, now, and covering their faces with their hands.  The change from tragedy to comedy had been so sudden that for a time the boys did nothing at all to solve the mystery of the sudden outbreak of laughter.

Then Frank stepped closer and peered down at the larger of the two figures.  Then he turned his searchlight on the bowed head.

Then a smile came over his face and he reached out a hand and took the bobbing pigtail into his hand and gave it a quick jerk.  The result was amazing.

The pigtail came away in his hand, and with it a bunch of coarse hair and an odor!

“Look here, kids!” Frank cried.  “Look who’s here!”

It was Ned, and the shaking figure by his side was that of Jimmie.  In a moment both were out of their disguises and making an inspection of the tunnels and the underground chamber.

“You’ve got Herlock Sholmes beaten to a frazzle,” said Jack, as Ned stooped over to examine the knocked-out Chinamen.

“How did you do it?” demanded Frank.  “We thought you were on the road to Peking until we heard some of the Chinks talking, not long after daybreak, then we thought you might be in trouble.”

“It was long after daybreak when we mixed with the bunch,” Jimmie answered.  “Anythin’ you heard before eight o’clock was fright an’ not fact.”

Sandy was now presented and his share in the adventures of the night given proper recognition.

“I thought he was a sneak at first,” Jack explained, “but he showed us the way out in the end.”

“What did you go an’ sit down there an’ wait for?” asked Jimmie.  “Why didn’t you get a move on?”

“They did the very thing they should have done,” Ned remarked.  “If they had tried to fight their way out they might have been killed,’ as there was, I am told, a strong guard here at daybreak.”

“But how did you get here?” asked Frank.

“When we got out of the old temple,” Ned replied, “we had no motorcycles to go on with, so we came back to hunt up more.  There was little use in going on by any way other than the one mapped out for us.

“The scamp we almost captured had been kind enough to tell us that you boys were in trouble and perhaps that had something to do with our coming back.”

“But how did you get here?”

“Easy,” laughed Ned.  “We knew that you boys had been captured, and it was easy to see who had had a hand in it.  The people at the telegraph office would know more about the matter than any one else.