d out," Kalmon answered.

"I have found out many things," said Ercole gloomily.

His voice was very harsh just then, as if speaking so much had made him
hoarse.

"He took some of his things away because he meant to spend the night in
Rome," Kalmon said thoughtfully. "He means to leave to-morrow, perhaps
by an early train. If we do not find him to-night, we shall not catch
him in Rome at all."

"Surely," said Ercole, "but Rome is very big, and it is late."

CHAPTER XVIII

It was still raining when the three men left the villa, and the night
was very dark, for the young moon had already set. The wind howled round
San Pietro in Montorio and the Spanish Academy, and whistled through the
branches of the plane-trees along the winding descent, and furiously
tore the withering leaves. They struck Ercole's weather-beaten face as
he sat beside the coachman with bent head, with his soft hat pulled down
over his eyes, and the rain dripped from his coarse moustache. Kalmon
and Marcello leaned as far back as they could, under the deep hood and
behind the high leathern apron.

"There is some animal following us," the cabman said to Ercole as they
turned a corner.

"It is my dog," Ercole answered.

"It sounds like a calf," said the cabman, turning his head to listen
through the storm.

"It is not a calf," answered Ercole gruffly. "It is my dog. Or if you
wish it to be the were-wolf, it will be the were-wolf."

The cabman glanced uneasily at his companion on the box, for the
were-wolf is a thing of terror to Romans. But he could not see the
countryman's features in the gloom, and he hastened his horse's pace
down the hill, for he did not like the sound of those galloping feet
behind his cab, in that lonely road, in the dark and the rain.

"Where am I to go?" he asked, as he came near the place where a turn to
the right leads out of the Via Garibaldi down to the Via Luciano Manara.

But Kalmon knew where they were, even better than Marcello, to whom the
road was familiar by day and night, in all weathers.

"We must leave that message first," said the Professor to Marcello. "We
are coming to the turning."

"To Santa Cecilia," Marcello called out to the cabman, thrusting his
head forward into the rain, "then I will tell you where to go."

"Santa Cecilia," echoed the cabman.

Ercole growled something quite unintelligible, to which his companion
paid no attention, and the cab rattled on through the rain down the