“Is he dead?” she repeated, putting the question directly to him as he was nearest.

Still he looked at her in silence, with his deep-set, unwinking eyes.  Marcello and Kalmon were bending over Corbario, Marcello holding the lantern, while the Professor listened for the beating of the heart and felt the pulse.  They paid no attention to Regina for the moment.

“Why don’t you speak?” she asked, surprised by Ercole’s silent stare.

“You don’t know me,” he said slowly, “but I know you.”

The rain was beating upon her lamp, and at that moment the shade cracked under the cold drops and fell to pieces, and the wind instantly extinguished the flame of the flaring wick.  Regina withdrew into the room to get another light, and Ercole stared after her into the gloom.

“He is alive,” said Kalmon, looking up to see why the light had gone out.  “We must get him inside at once, or he will die here.  Come, Ercole!  Make that dog lie down and keep quiet.”

Between them they carried Corbario into the house.  Nino watched on the step in the rain, but when the door was shut behind him, he crawled down to the wet grass and lapped the blood and water in the dark.  They carried Corbario upstairs to an empty room there was, and as they went Regina tried to tell Marcello what she had done.  They opened Settimia’s door, which was still locked, and they found her quite dead, and the window was wide open; then Regina understood that Corbario had been hidden within hearing, and had killed the woman because she had confessed.

The men who had been sent from the central police station at Kalmon’s request arrived a few minutes later.  One was at once sent for a surgeon and for more men; the other remained.  Soon the little house was full of officials, in uniform and in plain clothes.  They examined everything, they wrote rapidly on big sheets of stamped paper; their chief took the first deposition of Regina, and of the three men, and of the surgeon.  At dawn a man came with a rough pine coffin.  Officials came and went, and were gravely busy.  One man spoke of coffee when it was day, and went and made some in the little kitchen, for the two young women who cooked and did the work of the house did not sleep there, and would not come till past seven o’clock.

During the long hours, when Regina and Marcello were not wanted, they were together in the sitting-room downstairs.  Regina told Marcello in detail everything she knew about the events of the night, and much which she had found out earlier about Settimia but had never told him.  Kalmon came in from time to time and told them what was going on, and that Corbario was still alive; but they saw no more of Ercole.  He had made his first deposition, to the effect that he had been set to watch the house, that the murderer had jumped from an upper window, and that the dog had pulled him down.  The officials looked nervously at the dog, produced by Ercole in evidence, and were glad when the beast was out of their sight.  There were dark stains about the bristles on his jaws, and his eyes were bloodshot; but Ercole laid one hand on his uncouth head, and he was very quiet, and did not even snarl at the policemen.