CHAPTER II
IN A DILEMMA
There was a moment of stupor and paralysis as the meaning of the crash dawned upon the radio boys.
Buck and his crowd had vanished and were footing it up the fast-darkening street at the top of their speed.
The first impulse of the radio boys was to follow their example. They knew that none of them was responsible for the disaster, and they were of no mind to be sacrificed on behalf of the gang that had attacked them. And they knew that in affairs of that kind the ones on the ground were apt to suffer the more severely.
They actually started to run away, but had got only a few feet from the scene of the smash when Bob, who had been thinking quickly, called a halt.
“None of this stuff for us, fellows,” he declared. “We’ve got to face the music. I’m not going to have a hunted feeling, even if we succeeded in getting away. We know we didn’t do it and we’ll tell the plain truth. If that doesn’t serve, why so much the worse for us. But at any rate we won’t be despising ourselves as cowards.”
As usual, his comrades accorded him the leadership and fell in with his plan, although it was not without many misgivings that they awaited the coming of the angry proprietor of the place, who had already started in pursuit of them, accompanied by many others who had been attracted by the crash and whose numbers were being rapidly augmented.