If the reader has ever passed along the Calle de los Millones, the Street of Millions, in that district of Mexico City known as the Colonia Roma, he may have observed that it is composed of no less than twenty houses all nearly identical. He may have seen the gardens that surround each of them on all four sides. And he may have noticed that only one of these homes violates the uniformity of gardens and façades — one house which has, instead of the railings that surround the others, a very high and thick wall which hides it almost completely from the street. He may have been astonished, not so much because this house is protected by such a wall but because the others, all belonging to millionaires, are surrounded only by easily climbed railings. And most of all he may have been startled to learn that the house with the wall is perhaps the only one on the Calle de los Millones which is not inhabited by a millionaire.
But it is unlikely that the reader knows the street at all. It is reserved exclusively for millionaires (always excepting the house with the wall), and millionaires avoid social intercourse with anyone below their financial level. And the reader, so far as I know, has something less than a million on hand at the moment.
Thus when the crime in the Calle de los Millones became the talk of the town, there were few men who had a clear idea of the locale or of the circumstances in which it was committed. You had to be content with the details which the afternoon papers brought out on the very day of the crime. And these were hardly detailed enough.
This is roughly what the papers said:
That was all.
But among these facts were two items which aroused Máximo Roldán’s attention as soon as he had read the details. Two items which caused him to seize the telephone, call the victim’s home, ask for the Chief of the Security Commission, and say (at the risk of being taken for a madman):
“Hello?...The Chief of the Security Commission?... If you please, sir, do they have a dog in the house?... I said, is there in the dog in the house where the murder took place?... Yes, a dog... No, this is
The Chief had hung up. Máximo Roldán called back.
“Chief of the Commission?... Please listen, sir; if I am to discover the murderer, you must tell me if there is a dog in the house... No, you don’t know me... Indeed, you don’t... Please! It all depends on this. Because