Very incidentally, I have two more arcane comments about this short, which I wouldn't bother to raise if this weren't one of my favorites: first, Graves is never referred to as a Mad Scientist, as someone has quoted; he is referred to, I think without irony, as "the great inventor", and Ted Lorch certainly plays the part in that dignified way. This would be irrelevant, except that if he is a great inventor and not a Mad Scientist, his annihilation bomb may well be workable, which obviously would add tension, even if as it happens the ultimate extent of the devastation is only to blow the bad guys through the back wall. And second, a round of snaps for actor Stanley Brown, on paper just another pretty face, who plays the reporter Wallace. He elevates nicely from professionalism to hysteria. Between him and Lew Kelly ( Dunkfeather ), two-count-'em-two one-hit wonders, the detective office scenes are way better than one might expect, even before Dunkfeather takes the major-league pie.
