Quickly he ran upstairs to the first floor and into a back bedroom from which he could look down on the waste ground, to find that he had guessed right. In the middle of the unused building plot, in which stood a board with “For Sale” on it, among a heap of old iron, empty barrels, and broken bottles, a small boy of seven or eight, tiny, incredibly thin in his tightly fitting gray jersey, was searching hard, darting about with the agility of a squirrel. The circle he was searching with the object of finding a bottle, was of very small circumference. If Jodot had been right, the search should not take him long. It did not. In about ten minutes after moving the broken barrels and boxes, the small boy rose and, without wasting time, ran towards the villa, carrying a bottle gray with dust. Ralph ran down the stairs to the ground floor with the intention of relieving the small boy of his prize. But he could not get the door at the head of the stairs to the basement open, and he hurried to his peep-hole at the dining-room window. He was just in time to hear Jodot say: “That’s it! You’ve got it! Splendid! Now I’m ‘armed’. Bregeac’s friend won’t be able to give me any more trouble. Hurry up! Get out of sight!” The small boy got out of sight. He squeezed himself through the opening made by a broken bar in the grating and the air-hole and slipped like a ferret into the sack. Jodot at once rose, hoisted the sack on to his shoulder, and went off. Ralph gave him a minute or two’s grace, then drew the bolts of the front door, opened it, breaking the seals, and started in pursuit. Jodot was walking briskly along two hundred yards ahead, carrying the confederate who had first explored for him the basement of Bregeac’s house, and then the cellar of the villa of the brothers Loubeaux. Fifty yards behind him Bregeac was winding in and out among the trees which bordered the road. Fifty yards behind him an angler was rowing along under the bank of the Seine in pursuit of Bregeac. It was Marescal. So Jodot was followed by Bregeac, Bregeac and Jodot by Marescal, and all three of them by Ralph. And the stake for which all four of them were playing was the possession of a bottle. “This is growing exciting,” said Ralph to himself. “Jodot is in possession of the bottle it is true. But he does not know that other people are after it. Who will be cleverest of the other three? If there was no Lupin in it, I should back Marescal. But Lupin is in it.” Jodot stopped. Bregeac stopped also, so did Marescal in his boat. Ralph stopped too. Jodot laid his sack on the ground, stretched out so that the small boy should be comfortable, and sitting on a bench, he began to examine the bottle, shaking it and holding it up to the light. The time had come for Bregeac to act; at any rate that was his opinion; and he came up very quietly.