“To the right!” Marcello called out a second later from under the hood.

“You seem to know the way,” said the cabman to Ercole.  “Why don’t you give me the address of the house at once and be done with it?”

“I know the house, but not the street, nor the number.”

“I understand.  Does your dog also know the house?”

To this question Ercole made no answer, for he considered that it was none of the cabman’s business, and, moreover, he regretted having shown that he knew where his master was going.  Marcello now gave the final direction to the cabman, who drew up before a door in a wall, in a narrow lane, where the walls were high and the doors were few.  It was the garden entrance to the little house in Trastevere.

Marcello got out, opened the door with the key he carried, and went in.  It was raining hard, and he disappeared into the darkness, shutting the door behind him.  It had a small modern lock with a spring latch that clicked sharply as it shut.  The cab had stopped with the door on the left, and therefore on the side on which Ercole was sitting.  Nino, the dog, came up from behind, with his tongue hanging out, blood-red in the feeble light of the cab’s lamp; he put his head up above the low front wheel to have a look at Ercole.  Being satisfied, he at once lay down on the wet stones, with his muzzle towards the door.

Two or three minutes passed thus, in total silence.  The cab-horse hung his head patiently under the driving rain, but neither stamped on the paving stones nor shook himself, nor panted audibly, for he was a pretty good horse, as cab-horses go, and was not tired.

Suddenly Nino growled without moving, the ominous low growl of a dog that can kill, and Ercole growled at him in turn, making a sound intended to impose silence.  There was no reason why Nino should growl at Marcello.  But Nino rose slowly upon his quarters, as if he were about to spring at the door, and his rough coat bristled along his back.  Then Ercole distinctly heard the latch click as it had done when Marcello went in, and Nino put his muzzle to the crack of the closed door and sniffed up and down it, and then along the stone step.  To Ercole it was clear that some person within had opened the door noiselessly a little way and had shut it again rather hurriedly, on hearing the dog and seeing the cab.  Whoever it was had wished to see if there were any one outside, without being seen, or perhaps had meant to slip out without being heard by any one in the house.

Kalmon, leaning back inside, had not heard the sound of the latch, and paid no attention to Nino’s growl.  It was natural that such an animal should growl and snarl for nothing, he thought, especially on a rainy night, when the lamps of a cab throw strange patches of light on the glistening pavement.