“Perfect—perfect,” he said to himself. “Fortune itself will supply me with the missing facts. Henceforward she will enter my service, and all the details of the affair are going to come at my call and range themselves in order before me in the full light of day.” At eight o’clock in the morning the caretaker of the villa made his Sunday round of the ground floor and satisfied himself that the seals were unbroken. At nine Ralph went down into the dining-room, and opened a window, leaving the shutters closed, just above the spot on which Jodot was accustomed to sit. Jodot arrived punctually. He came with his sack, which he set against the wall. Then he sat down and began his meal. Over it he talked to himself, but in so low a voice that Ralph could not catch his words. His meal consisted of sausages and cheese washed down by a jug of red wine; and after it he lit a pipe, the smoke of which rose to Ralph’s nostrils. This first pipe was followed by a second, then by a third. So two hours passed, without Ralph’s being able to understand the reason of this long stay. Through a hole in the shutter he could see Jodot’s ragged trouser-legs and his boots down at heel. Beyond them flowed the river. Passers-by came and went. Bregeac must be on the watch in one of the arbors of the restaurant. At last, a few minutes before noon, Jodot uttered these words: “Hang it all! Nothing fresh? But it’s pretty stiff, dammit!” He seemed to be speaking not to himself, but to some one close at hand. But no one had joined him: there was no one near him. “Hell and blazes!” he growled on. “I tell you the bottle’s there! I’ve had it in my hand and seen it with my own eyes not once but a hundred times. Have you done exactly what I told you? The whole of the right side of the cellar, as you went over the left the other day? Well, well—you ought to have found it.” He was silent for a little while; then he went on. “It might be as well to try somewhere else and move on to the waste ground at the back of the house, in case they threw the bottle there, before the coup on the express. It’s an open-air hiding-place, and just as good as any other. If Bregeac has searched the cellar, he mayn’t have thought of outside. Go there and look. I’ll wait for you.” Ralph did not wait to hear any more. He began to understand as soon as Jodot spoke of the cellar. That cellar must run from the front to the back of the house, with an air-hole into the street and another at the back. Access to it through the air-hole at the back would be easy.