Dogs

The dogs guarding Lexa’s house are an unseen danger that becomes Mike Milo’s first clear warning that Howard Polk’s break-in plan is incomplete. Their sudden bite, followed by a noisy response to a car horn, changes the risks of entering the house: Mike must reckon not only with the animals but also with the attention their barking attracts.

Appearance and First Encounter

Mike first encounters the dogs in the narrow private alley behind the house, while checking the rear gate described in Howard Polk’s directions. The gate is made of closely spaced iron rods and cannot be opened from outside. Mike peers through it, looking for the electric intercom button shown on Howard’s diagram, but sees no dogs. Instead, he discovers them when one bites his hand against the metal bar. He pulls away with a bleeding hand before the two animals bark, growl, leap at the gate, and snap at him through the bars.

The delayed noise is part of what makes the encounter so unnerving. Mike has known dogs that bark before they bite, but these hounds reverse that familiar sequence: injury comes first, warning second. He describes them as huge, with wide, ugly heads, heavy jowls, and long, lean bodies. Their appearance brings to mind a ferocious mastiff and, uncertainly, The Hound of the Baskervilles, whether remembered from a dream or a book. The literary association does not make the animals less threatening; Mike recognizes that these are real dogs he may have to face again that night.

An Omission in the Plan

The dogs matter tactically because they are absent from Howard’s otherwise detailed account of the property. Mike has followed the diagram closely, checking the alley, the gate, and the wall, and has come to trust its measurements. The hounds expose the limit of that confidence. Howard may not have known about a change at the house, Mike reasons, and the omission makes him question what other security measures Lexa might have added and how accurately Howard can remember a place he last saw long ago.

After hearing someone call from the house and footsteps running, Mike retreats from the alley and catches a taxi to the busy Paseo de la Reforma. The escape prevents the immediate encounter from becoming a direct fight with the dogs, but it does not settle the problem. Their presence remains an unresolved obstacle when he considers how to continue the attempt. In this way, they do more than guard a gate: they make the reliability of Howard’s knowledge itself part of the danger.

The Horn and the Police

Mike’s next attempt uses the dogs’ response to sound against them. At an old car parked on the side street, he opens the hood, briefly checks the wiring with a flashlight, and works with pliers, a pocketknife, and a screwdriver. When the horn begins blaring, he runs up the incline toward the wall. At first, nothing seems to happen; then he hears the dogs rushing in the opposite direction, barking as they race toward the front gate. The noise has redirected them, giving Mike a chance to approach the wall while they are occupied.

The diversion also creates a new hazard. A police siren sounds, and a police car turns toward the blaring horn and barking dogs. Mike presses himself against the wall, outside the streetlamp’s circle of light, as the car passes. Two policemen get out and run toward the horn, trying to shout over the sound and the dogs while spectators gather. Mike then slips into the light, uses a foothold in the wall, and climbs over. The evidence records the dogs as the cause of the commotion that draws the officers and crowd; it does not show the dogs attacking anyone outside the gate.

Narrative Role and Limits

Inside the grounds, Mike sees two dog runs among the gardens and utility yard, details absent from Howard’s sketch. By then, the dogs are getting quieter, and Mike anticipates that they may soon return from the front gate. That expectation keeps the reprieve temporary: the horn has shifted their attention, not removed them from the property. Mike proceeds while aware that the advantage could end at any moment.

The dogs’ role is therefore defined by a chain of consequences rather than by a later confrontation. Their unannounced bite reveals the plan’s first significant omission; their movement toward the horn gives Mike an opening; and the resulting noise summons the police, increasing the danger even as it distracts the animals. When a second discrepancy—the missing trellis Howard had described—also forces Mike to improvise, he has begun to treat surprises as problems he can solve. The dogs help produce that reversal, but the account does not establish how they were acquired, whether they returned to the rear of the house, or what ultimately happened to them.