put the words in
different orders, read them forward and backward. But the ideas conveyed
by the separate words were so utterly dissimilar that they could frame
nothing that had the slightest glimmering of sense and they were finally
compelled to give it up.

"If time were money, we'd spend enough on this stuff to make us
bankrupt," Joe remarked, in vast disgust, as he rose to get his cap.
"Dan Cassey was foxy when he made this up. We'll have to give the rascal
credit for that."

"Yes," admitted Herb, "it's the best kind of a code. Any one of those
words might mean any one of a hundred thousand things. A man might spend
a lifetime on it and be no nearer success at the end than he was when he
started. The only way it can be unraveled is by finding the key that
tells what the words stand for. And even that may not exist in written
form. The fellows may simply have committed them to memory.

"I'll tell you what I'll do!" Bob exclaimed. "I'll get the prison
to-morrow on the long distance 'phone and ask them about Cassey. I'll
tell them all about this radio message, and it may be a valuable tip to
them. They may be able to locate the station from which the messages
come, if there are any more of them. You remember how Mr. Brandon
located Cassey's sending station the first time."

Bob was as good as his word, and got in communication with the prison
just before school time. The warden was gruff and inclined to be
uncommunicative at first, but his manner changed remarkably after he
heard of the radio message and he inquired eagerly for the slightest
details.

"Yes, Cassey has escaped," he told Bob. "He got away about two months
ago. He had behaved himself well for the first six months of his
imprisonment, and we made him a trusty. In that capacity he had access
to various parts of the prison and occasionally to my own quarters,
which are in a wing connected with the prison. In some way that hasn't
yet been discovered he got possession of clothes to cover his prison
uniform and got away one day from the yard in which he was working.
Probably with his help, two others got away at the same time. Their
names are Jake Raff and Toppy Gillen, both of them desperate criminals
and in for long terms. Likely enough the three of them are operating
together somewhere. We made a careful search for them and have sent out
descriptions of them to the police of all the important cities in the
United States. But this clue of yours is the