"That will excite comment."

"It may," the Master answered, "but there is no other way. I will manage everything privately, myself. Then I will let it transpire that there was some injury to the face, as well, and that the mask had to be removed. I can let the impression get about that you refused to allow anyone but me see your mutilated face.

"I can also hint that I have helped you with the dressing, and have ordered you to keep your stateroom for a while. When it comes time to leave _Nissr_, I will dispatch you as a messenger. Thus your secret will remain intact. Besides, no one will dare inquire into anything.

No one ventures to discuss or question any decision of mine."

Something of hard arrogance sounded in the Master's voice. The woman thanked him, her eyes penetrant, keenly intelligent, even a trifle mocking. One would have said she was weighing this strange man in the balance of judgment, was finding him of sterling stuff, yet was perhaps cherishing a hope, not untinged with malice, that some day a turn of fate might humble him. The Master seemed to sense a little of this, and took a milder tone.

"I must compliment you on one thing, madam," said he, with just the wraith of a smile. "Your acting has been perfection itself. And the fort.i.tude with which you have borne the discomfort of that mask for more than a week, to achieve your ends, cannot be too highly praised."

"Thank you," she replied. "I would have stood _that_ a year, to be one of your Legion! But now--tell me! Isn't there any possibility of your reversing your decision?"

"None, madam."

"Isn't there anything I can say or do to--"

"Remember, you told me just a minute ago you were not the type of woman who entreats!"

CHAPTER XIII

THE ENMESHING OF THE MASTER

She fell silent, biting her full lip. Something in her eyes shamed the man. Not for all his inflexible sternness could he feel that he had come out a winner in this, their first encounter. A woman--one of the despised, ignored creatures--had deceived him. She had disobeyed his orders. She had flatly thrown down the gage of battle to him, that she would never leave _Nissr_ alive. And last, she had forced him into planning to disseminate falsehoods among his crew--falsehoods the secret of which only she shared with him.

Unwilling as this man was to have anything in common with her, he had been obliged to have something in common--to have much. Something existed; a bond, even if an unpleasant one, had already stretched itself between these two--the first secret this man ever had shared with any woman.

"Captain Alden" smiled a little. The honors of war, so far, lay all in her camp.

The Master, feeling this to the inner marrows, humiliated, shaken, yet through it all not quite able to suppress a kind of grudging and unwilling tribute of admiration, sought to conceal his perturbation with a stern command:

"Now, madam, I will call my orderly and have you escorted to a stateroom; have you provided with everything needful for your injury.

I trust it is not causing you any severe pain?"

"Pray don't waste any time or thought on any injury of mine, sir!" the woman returned.

"Very well, madam! Resume your disguise!"

She tried to sweep up her magnificent hair and secure it upon her head. But with only one hand available this proved impossible. They both saw there was no way for her to put on the toupee again.

She smiled oddly, with a half-whimsical, wholly feminine bit of malice. Her eyes seemed dancing.

"I'm afraid I can't obey you, sir," she proffered. "You can see for yourself, it can't be done."

A dull, angry flush crept over the Master's rather pale face, and lost itself in the roots of his thick, black hair. Perfectly well he saw that he was being cornered in an untenable position of half-command, half-intimacy. Without apparently exercising any wiles, this woman was none the less involving him in bonds like those the Lilliputians threw round sleeping Gulliver.

Anger welled up in his proud heart that anyone--much less a woman--should thus lower his dignity. But still his manhood dictated courtesy. He came a few steps nearer, and said:

"I must admit this seems rather an embarra.s.sing situation. Frankly, it does not tend to ameliorate the relation between us. You have placed yourself--and me--in a peculiarly compromising position. I must try to meet it.

"Obviously you cannot expect one so unskilled as I, in things feminine, to help you in the capacity of lady's maid Therefore only one thing remains to do. Instead of calling my orderly, and having him show you your stateroom, I must in some way arrange to get you there, myself."

"That's kind of you, I'm sure," she answered, half in mockery, half in grat.i.tude.

"There I will supply you with medical supplies. In some manner or other you can manage to do up your hair and resume your disguise. You will remain in your stateroom--under arrest--until such time as you are cast loose, tomorrow, in your plane."

"Tomorrow?"

"I should say, sometime before night of the day that has already begun. Food and drink will be brought you, of course."

"That's very good of you, sir." Her smile tantalized. The curt laconicism of her manner, in the masculine role, had changed to the softer ways of womankind. Despite himself, the Master was constrained to admire her ability as an actress.

"Of course you realize," she continued, "that to cast me loose in a plane, with only one serviceable arm, will be equivalent to committing cold-blooded murder."

"A mere detail!"

"A mere detail--to murder a woman?"

"Pardon me, you misunderstand. I mean, the manner in which you are to leave Nissr matters little, so long as you leave. I will see that you are safely landed--that no harm arrives to you.

"But you--shall not remain with us. Now, kindly stay here. Lock the cabin door after I have gone, and admit no one until I return. I will signal you with two triple knocks, thus."

He ill.u.s.trated the knocks, on the table, and, unlocking the door, left the cabin in a black humor. The sound of the woman locking the door after him, the knowledge that he had been obliged to make up a little code for readmission, angered him as he rarely had been angered.

Self-protection, however, demanded these subterfuges. To let the secret escape, and to be obliged to admit having been deceived by a woman, would fatally lower his prestige with the Legionaries. How could he, if known to be the dupe of a woman, command those hard, bold men?

Humiliated, yet in his heart thankful that no one had yet penetrated the secret--as Dr. Lombardo easily might have done, had he laid forcible hands on "Captain Alden"--the Master set about the necessary task of himself preparing a stateroom and providing the requisite medical supplies.

Lombardo asked no questions. His eyes, however, had grown quizzical.

No one else seemed to notice what the Master was about. Each was busy in his own place, at his own task.

Twenty minutes had pa.s.sed before all was ready and the Master could return to his cabin. He rapped as agreed, and was admitted, feeling his cheeks burn at even the a.n.a.logy between this clandestine entrance and some vulgar liaison--a thing he scrupulously had avoided all his life.

"Come!" he directed. She followed him. Silently he ushered her into her appointed place. No one had seen them. He followed her into the little stateroom, closed the door, folded his arms and confronted her with a grim face.

"Before leaving you, madam," said he, "I wish to repeat that only your s.e.x has saved you from summary execution. You are guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors, in the code of this expedition--guilty of falsehood and deception that might have introduced fatal complications into my most carefully evolved plan.

"Nevertheless, my code as an officer prohibits any punishment other than this merely nominal arrest. I must offer you temporary hospitality. Moreover, if you need any a.s.sistance in dressing your wound, I will give it. Common humanity demands that."

"I don't need anything, thank you," she answered. "I don't ask for anything, but to stay with the Legion."

"That's a point I must positively decline to argue, madam," he informed her, shaking his head. "And, since there is nothing more to say, I wish you a very good night!"

Bowing, he left the stateroom. He heard the door-catch snap. Somehow, in some way as yet inexplicable to him, that sound caused him another discomfort. For the first time in his life he had been having private conversation with a woman--conversation that might almost have been construed as intimate, since it had held secrets. For the first time he had felt himself outwitted by a woman, beaten, made mock of. Now he was being shut away from her.