A kind of communal whisper of astonishment and hostility ran round the apartment. The man's whole face--save for eyeholes through which dark pupils looked strangely out--was covered by a close-fitting, flesh-colored celluloid mask. This mask reached from the roots of his hair to his mouth. It sloped away down the left jaw, and somewhat up the cheekbone of the right side. The mask was firmly strapped in place around the head and neck. "What does all this mean, sir?" demanded the Master, sharply. "Why the mask?" "Is that a necessary question, sir?" replied the aviator, while a buzz of curiosity and suspicion rose. "You have seen many such during the war and since its close." "Badly disfigured, are you?" "That word, 'disfigured,' does not describe it, sir. Others have wounds, but my whole face is nothing but a wound. No, let me put it more accurately--there is, practically speaking, no face at all. The gaping cavity that exists under this mask would certainly sicken the strongest men among you, and turn you against me. "We can't tolerate what disgusts, even if its qualities be excellent. In exposing myself to you, sir, I should certainly be insuring my rejection. But what you cannot see, what you can only imagine, will not make you refuse me." The Master pondered a moment, then nodded and asked: "Is it so very bad, sir?" "It's a thing of horror, incredible, awful, unreal! In the hospital at Rouen, they called me 'The Kaiser's Masterpiece.' Some of the most hardened surgeons couldn't look at me, or dress my--wound, let us call it--without a shudder. Ordinary men would find me intolerable, if they could see me. "Unmasked, I bear no resemblance whatever to a man, but rather to some ghastly, drug-inspired dream or nightmare of an Oriental Dante. The fact that I have sacrificed my human appearance in the Great Cause cannot overcome the shrinking aversion that normal men would feel, if they could see me. I say only this, that my mutilation is indescribable. As the officer and gentleman I know you to be, you won't ask me to expose this horror!" CHAPTER IV THE MASKED RECRUIT A little silence lengthened, while the strange aviator continued to peer out with strangely shining eyes through the holes of his mask. The effect of that human intelligence, sheltered in there behind that expressionless celluloid, whose frail thinness they all knew covered unspeakable frightfulness, became uncanny. Some of the men eased the tension by blowing ribbons of smoke or by relighting tobacco that had gone out while the stranger had been talking. Others shifted, a bit uneasily. Voices began to mutter, pro and con. The Master suddenly knocked again, for silence. "I am going to accept this man," said he, sharply. "You notice I do not put this to a vote, or consult you about it. Nor shall I, in anything. The prime condition of this whole undertaking, as I was saying when Captain Alden here arrived, is unquestioning obedience to my authority.