This argument seemed to him so overpowering that he swelled out his chest and looked triumphantly at his two companions, whose faces instantly took on the same expression.
"You made a ten strike that time, Buck," declared Lutz, clapping him on the shoulder.
"Hit the target right in the bull's-eye," chimed in Terry, with a smirk.
Bob and Joe and Jimmy looked at each other, and, despite their resentment, had all they could do to keep from breaking into laughter.
Buck noticed their amused expression, and his coarse face grew red and mottled.
"Well," he demanded, "what have you got to say to that? Am I right or ain't I?"
"You're wrong," replied Joe promptly. "Dead wrong. You're so far from the truth that you couldn't see it with a telescope. You're talking like a ham sandwich."
"Look out what you're saying, Joe Atwood, or I'll make you sorry for it," threatened Buck, as he clinched his fist, an ugly look coming into his eyes.
"I apologize," said Joe. "That is, I apologize to the ham sandwich."
Bob laid a restraining hand on his friend's arm.
"Easy, Joe," he counseled. "Listen, Buck," he went on. "Did you ever hear of Marconi?"
"Sure, I did," replied Buck. "He's the fellow that had the fight with Julius Caesar. The one that Cleopatra was dippy about."
"No," said Bob patiently. "You're thinking of Mark Antony. He's been dead for more than eighteen hundred years. The man I mean is a very live one. He's the inventor of wireless telegraphy."
"Never heard of him," muttered Buck sullenly.
"Well, since you never heard of him, we'll mention some one else," continued Bob. "I was only going to say that he's a pretty brainy fellow, and he believes in the wireless telephone. Then there's Edison. Perhaps you've heard of him?"
"Of course I have," blurted Buck furiously. "Say, what are you trying to do? Make a fool of me?"
"Nature's done that already," Joe put in, but Bob checked him.
"I'm simply trying to show," Bob explained, "that if we're 'easy,' as you call it, in 'falling for that stuff,' there are a lot of able men in the United States who are in the same boat with us. In fact there isn't a man of brains and education in the country who doesn't believe in it."
"Do you mean to say that I haven't any brains?" cried Buck in a fury.