“Queer,” he commented. “Why should it be published in the ‘Diario’? I think it means mischief. Do you know Chalkley?”
Dick shook his head.
“No,” he replied, “but it sounds like an English name. And yet I have a feeling that I must have heard it somewhere. It sounds familiar, but I cannot place it. In the meantime I will run home and see if the English papers will tell me anything.”
Dick found Jules and Yvette eager for news; he had telegraphed them that he was returning. Dick, Jules, and Yvette had become the most formidable combination in the French Secret Service. They always insisted on working together, they would accept no assistance except that which they chose themselves, and they would work only under the direction of Regnier, who was astute enough to realise their abilities. Yvette had been prevented by a slight illness from accompanying Dick to Barcelona, and both she and Jules, who had stayed with her, hated inaction. There had been a slump in international crime of the kind in which they specialised, and they were suffering from ennui. Anything which promised excitement and adventure was welcome.
They listened eagerly while Dick told his story.
“And now,” said Dick, half ruefully, as he concluded, “I don’t know whether we are on the track of something or whether I have been an idiot.”
Yvette’s eyes were dancing with merriment.
“Well, Dick,” she said, “you are certainly a pretty Englishman not to know one of the most famous places in your own country. Don’t you really know Chalkley?”
“No,” replied Dick in bewilderment. “What do you know about it?”
For answer Yvette rummaged among a pile of newspapers and produced a copy of the “Times” dated a week before.