They had finished with Wu and one of the doctors moved over to the doorway to call the sergeant.  For the moment the rest had left Wu alone, his eyes apparently half closed through weakness.  Each was busy about his own especial task.

From behind the screen which was only a few feet from the operating table, the secreted Chinaman stepped out.  Quickly he placed his own hat on Wu and took Wu’s, then took Wu’s place on the table while Wu slipped behind the screen.

The doctor turned to the supposed Wu.  “Come now,” he ordered, handing him over to the police.  “Here he is at last.”

The sergeant started to lead the prisoner out.  As he did so, he looked sharply at him.  He could scarcely believe his eyes.  There was something wrong.  All Chinaman might look alike to some people but not to him.

“That’s not Wu Fang!” he exclaimed.

Instantly there was the greatest excitement.  The doctors were astounded as all rushed into the emergency room again.  One of them looked behind the screen.  There was an open window.

“That’s how he got away,” he cried.

Meanwhile, several blocks from the hospital, Wu, still weak but more than ever nerved up, came out of his place of concealment, gazed up and down the street, and, seeing no one following, hurried away from the hospital as fast as his shaky legs would bear him.

. . . . . . .

Confident that at last our arch enemy was safely landed in the hands of the police, Kennedy and I had left the hospital and were hastening to Elaine with the news.  We stopped at the laboratory only long enough to get the torpedo from the safe and at a toy store where Craig bought a fine little clockwork battleship.

We found Elaine and Aunt Josephine in the conservatory and quickly Kennedy related how we had captured Wu.

But, like all inventors, his pet was the torpedo and soon we were absorbed in his description of it.  As he unwrapped it, Elaine drew back, timidly, from the fearful engine of destruction.

Kennedy smiled.  “No, it isn’t dangerous,” he said reassuringly.  “I’ve removed its charge and put in a percussion cap.  Let me show you, on a small scale, how it works,” he added, winding up the battleship and placing it in the fountain.

Next he placed the torpedo in the water at the other end of the tank.  “Come over here,” he said, indicating to us to follow him into the palms.

There he had placed the strange wireless apparatus which controlled the torpedo.  He pressed a lever.  We peered out through the fronds of the palms.  That uncanny little cigar-shaped thing actually started to move over the surface of the water.

“Of course I could make it dive,” explained Craig, “but I want you to see it work.”

Around the tank it went, turned, cut a figure eight, as Kennedy manipulated the levers.  Then it headed straight toward the battleship.  It struck.  There was a loud report, a spurt of water.  One of the skeleton masts fell over.  The battleship heeled over, and slowly sank, bow first.