She fluttered back, and I took the bowl of water from her hands. Lessing was stretched on the divan just as I had left him, waiting my return. There was no chair near, and I looked about me impatiently for something on which to set the bowl, while the woman stood by in a sort of helpless indecision. Just as I was about to put it on the floor someone pushed Mrs. Lessing gently but promptly aside and came forward. It was the girl whose voice I had heard in the kitchen, and I saw in the second's glance I gave her that it was she whom I had seen on the road the first morning I came down. "Give me the bowl," she said. "You can manage better if I hold it." I stripped Lessing's jacket off as gently as I could, sponging the sleeve where it adhered to the torn flesh. He must have been lying untended there for some considerable time before my arrival. When I had laid bare his chest and shoulder to the light I set my lips to an involuntary whistle. The man looked as if he had been fighting with some wild animal. No dog had made those wounds. They were not bites; they were long raking cuts, as if the flesh had been torn by heavy blunt-pointed claws. A bear might have done it, but there was no sign of bruising or tooth-prints. The scratch on the shoulder was a good half-inch deep in one place--it nearly laid bare the bone. He had bled freely; the jacket sleeve was soaked and stiff. I set to work to cleanse the blood from his chest, and as I did so I saw other wounds of the same order, some old cicatrices, others newly healed scars of perhaps a month old, but none so deep as the present ones. I glanced sharply at the man's hands. They were well kept, the fingers stained a little with acids as though in photography, the nails smooth and closely trimmed. The scratches were ugly. I had slipped an emergency case of tabloids into my pocket on starting, and asking for fresh water, I dissolved two in it. The girl watched me steadily, holding the bowl of solution while I cleansed the cuts carefully, bit by bit, and I fancied that in her presence Lessing was at particular pains not to flinch. The man's endurance was extraordinary. I had noticed something else on his arm, but of that I did not immediately speak. "You want iodoform?" said the girl. "There is some in the house." She fetched it, with diachylon and a roll of sterilized gauze such as is used in hospitals, from the drawer of a Japanese cabinet. I dressed the cuts--it took some little time--and helped him into the clean shirt she brought me. When I straightened my back at last we were alone. "Do you mind," said Lessing, "going to the cabinet there and getting me a bottle that's in the top left-hand cupboard? There's a glass with it." I found both. I drew the glass stopper from the bottle and smelled it. It contained a familiar cardiac stimulant. "It's all right. It's the stuff Lennox gave me."