“Not very much,” replied Tim. “They got away. We found their car, wrecked and on fire, along a little used road. Thought they might have been caught in the wreckage and we landed nearby and went to have a look. It was only a ruse to throw us off the trail and slow up the chase. They might have had another car hidden nearby. At least we couldn’t find any definite trace of them.”
“I’ve checked up on the descriptions of the men who robbed the Citizens National,” said the state policeman, “and I’m sure that Shanghai Sam and Pierre Petard did the job. Find them and we’ll rid the middle west of a real menace.”
“Find them is right,” said Ralph. “Looks to me like that is about the hardest thing anyone around here ever tackled.”
“I think it is the hardest,” said Captain Raymond grimly, as he got up to leave the office.
“Thanks a lot boys,” he said. “Too bad you couldn’t have been in the air sooner or you might have traced them from the time they left the city.”
“That’s an idea,” said Tim. “We could arrange to have one or the other of us at the field all the time. When an alarm comes in flash it to us there and the Good News could be in the air in less than five minutes.”
“Good suggestion,” said Captain Raymond. “I’ll see Mr. Carson at once.”
The lanky figure of the state officer disappeared into the managing editor’s office and Tim and Ralph looked at each other and smiled.
“If Carson will agree to a plan like that, we’ll get somewhere,” promised Tim.
“Why didn’t you tell him about the strange marks we found?” asked Ralph.