“Were the fellows who held up your father’s truck masked?” asked Jimmy with interest.
Herb nodded.
“From all I can hear,” he said. “It was a regular highway robbery affair—masks, guns, and all complete. The driver of the truck said there were only two of them, but since they had guns and he was unarmed, there wasn’t anything he could do.
“They made him get down off the truck, and then they bound his hands behind him and hid him behind some bushes that bordered the road. He would probably be there yet if he hadn’t managed to get the gag out of his mouth and hail some people passing in an automobile. Poor fellow!” he added. “Any one might have thought he had robbed the truck from the way he looked. He was afraid to face dad.”
“Well, it wasn’t his fault,” said Joe. “No man without a weapon is a match for two armed rascals.”
“Didn’t he say what the robbers looked like?” insisted Jimmy. “He must have known whether they were short or tall or fat or skinny.”
“He said they were about medium height, both of them,” returned Herb. “He said they were both about the same build—rather thin, if anything. But their faces were so well covered—the upper part by a mask and the lower by bandana handkerchiefs—that he couldn’t give any description of them at all.”
“I bet,” Bob spoke up suddenly, “that whoever is at the head of that rascally gang knows the danger of radio to him and his plans. That’s why his men are so careful to escape recognition.”
The boys stared at him for a minute and then suddenly the full force of what he intimated struck them.
At the same instant the name of the same man came into their minds—the name of a man who used radio for the exchange of criminal codes, a man who stuttered painfully.