“Mighty lucky thing for us that you saw us,” said the other, who was older in appearance. “We shouted and shouted. At least a dozen cars must have passed along the road and no one saw us.”
They got to their feet.
“What happened?” asked Frank. “How on earth do you come to be down here, tied up like this?”
“Holdup!” said the older man briefly. He looked up toward the road, an anxious expression on his face. “I don’t suppose you met a truck along the road anywhere?”
The boys shook their heads.
“It’s gone, then,” said the younger man with a gesture of resignation. “Six thousand dollars’ worth of goods!”
“We’ll have to get back to town and report this.”
“We can take you back,” said Frank quickly. “We have motorcycles up on the road.”
“Fine. Let’s hurry!”
The two men started back toward the path at a rapid gait and the three boys hurried along. As they ascended the slope, the plump young chap explained what had happened.
“We’re truck drivers for the Eastern Importing Company, and we were bringing a load of silk into Bayport,” he said. “Right at the top of the embankment we were held up by those two men.”
“How long ago?” Joe asked.
“A little over an hour ago. They stepped out of the bushes, each man masked and carrying a revolver. Bill was at the wheel and I was on the seat beside him. They made him stop the truck and then they made us get down into the road. When we did that, one of the holdup men covered us with his revolver while the other tied us up. He made a good job of it, too, I’ll tell the world. We couldn’t move hand or foot.”
“How did they get you down onto the beach?”
“They rolled us down the embankment! Don’t we look it?”
The clothes of both men had been badly tattered and torn, while their arms and faces also gave evidence of the bruises and lacerations they had suffered in their descent.
“I thought we’d roll clean into the bay,” said the other man. “If we had, it would have been all up with us.”
“We’d have been drowned, without a chance to save ourselves,” his companion agreed. “As it was, we came pretty close to the water’s edge, banged and battered from that toboggan slide, and then we just had to lie there until somebody came along and set us free. At first we thought someone would surely see us from the road, but as car after car went by we began to lose hope.
“I was afraid it would get dark and then no one would be able to see us, even if they did chance to look down this way. It wouldn’t have been very pleasant, staying out on that beach all night.”
“Did you see where the truck went to?” asked Frank.
The men shook their heads.
“The holdup men drove away in it—that’s all we know,” said one.
“It took us a few minutes to recover our senses after the slide down the embankment, and by that time the truck was gone. Whether it went on toward Bayport, or turned around, we can’t tell,” added the other.
“It certainly didn’t pass in the other direction,” said Chet.
But Frank was dubious.
“We were down in the woods quite a while, remember,” he pointed out. “It might have gone by during that time.”
They regained the road.
“Perhaps we can find the marks of the tires,” suggested Joe.
Assisted by the two men, the lads searched about in the dust of the roadway, but so many cars had passed in the intervening time that all trace of the truck had been obliterated.
“No use searching now,” said the driver. “If you lads will get us into Bayport we’ll report the case to the police.”
They abandoned the quest and in a short time the party had arrived in the city, Frank and Joe taking the two men as passengers on their motorcycles. At the police station, the holdup was duly reported and immediately word was flashed to the police in other cities and to officers out in the country.
But to no avail.
By nine o’clock that night there had been no report on the missing truck. It had not passed through any of the three cities at the other end of the Shore Road, and Bayport police were positive it had never entered the city. The truck, with its six thousand dollar cargo, had utterly disappeared.
IX
Following Clues
This new sensation soon had Bayport by the ears.
Although the owners of private cars had been content to leave the matter of their stolen property in the hands of the police, the Eastern Importing Company went a step farther. They not only demanded the fullest official investigation, but they retained Fenton Hardy to take up the case, as well. They were by no means resigned to losing a valuable load of silk without a struggle.
In his study, next day, Mr. Hardy called in his sons and told them the importing company had asked him to do what he could toward recovering the stolen goods.
“Aside from my fee,” he said, “they are offering a reward of five hundred dollars if the silk is returned to them. What I want to ask you is this—do you think there is any chance that the truck driver and his assistant may have been lying?”
The boys scouted this theory.
“I don’t think so, Dad,” returned Frank. “They told a perfectly straight story. As a matter of fact, they were so anxious to get to Bayport and report the robbery that it was some time before we could get them to tell us what actually happened.”
“And they could never have tied themselves up as thoroughly as they were tied,” Joe declared.
“Men have been known to rob their employers before this,” said Mr. Hardy. “We can’t afford to overlook any possibilities.”
“I think you can afford to overlook that one, sir. These men were honest, I’m sure of that.”
“Well, Frank, I’ll trust
