The man looked at his questioner for a moment, as though he were on the point of speaking. Then he seemed to change his mind, and, reaching for a pencil and pad that lay close at hand, he wrote:
"I am shot in the chest."
"Who—I mean how——" began Cabot, and then, realising that his curiosity could well wait, he added: "But, with your permission, I will examine the wound and see if there is anything I can do."
With this he sought and gently removed a blood-soaked bandage, thereby disclosing a sight so ghastly that it almost unnerved him. The wound was so terrible, and the loss of blood from it had evidently been so great, that how even the giant frame of the man-wolf could have survived it was amazing. Having no knowledge of surgery, Cabot could only bathe and rebandage it. Then he said:
"Now, I am going to be your nurse, and you must lie perfectly still without attempting to get up again until I give you leave."
Seeing an expression of dissent in the man's face, he continued:
"It's all right. I am under the greatest of obligations to you, and am only too glad of a chance to pay some of it back. So I shall stay right here just as long as you need me. Fortunately I know something about both electricity and machinery, having been educated at a technical institute, so that I shall be able to manage very well with your plant. But I do wish you could explain a few things to me. Is your name really 'Homolupus'?"
The sufferer smiled and wrote on his pad:
"My name is Watson Balfour."