"Here is my reason, sir," said he very quietly, "for not permitting
Lombardo, or any other man here, to dress my wound."
"Good God!" exclaimed the Master, shaken clean out of his aplomb. The shock he had expected had come to him, but in far other guise than he had counted on. With clenched fists and widening eyes he peered at Alden.
The face he now suddenly beheld, under the clear white light of the cabin, was not the hideous, mangled wreck of humanity—The Kaiser's Masterpiece—he had expected to see.
No—far, and very far from that!
It was the face of a woman. One of the most beautiful women his eyes ever had rested on.
CHAPTER XII
THE WOMAN OF ADVENTURE
A moment's utter silence followed. The woman, with another gesture, drew off the aviator's cap she had worn; she pulled away the tight-fitting toupee that had been drawn over her head and that had masked her hair under its masculine disguise. With deft fingers she shook out the masses of that hair—fine, dark masses that flowed down over her shoulders in streams of silken glory.
"Now you see me as I am!" said she, her voice low and just a little trembling, but wholly brave. "Now, perhaps, you understand!"
"I—but you—" stammered the Master, for the first time in all his life completely at a loss, dazed, staggered.