the unknown. And Hell is liable to be no name for it, I
tell you that!"

The Celt's eyes were alight with swift, eager enthusiasm. He laid his
hand on the other's, and gripped it hard in hot anticipation.

"Tell me more!" he commanded. "What are we going to do?"

"Going to see the stuff that's in us, and in twenty-five or thirty
more of our kind. The stuff, the backbone, the heart that's in you,
Bohannan! That's in me! In all of us!"

"Great, great! That's me!" Bohannan's cigarette smoldered, unheeded,
in his fingers. The soul of him was thrilling with great visions. "I'm
with you! Whither bound?"

The Master smiled oddly, as he answered in a low, even tone:

"To Paradise--or Hell!"

CHAPTER III

THE GATHERING OF THE LEGIONARIES

One week from that night, twenty-seven other men assembled in the
strange eyrie of _Niss'rosh_, nearly a thousand feet above the city's
turmoil. They came singly or in pairs, their arrival spaced in such a
manner as not to make the gathering obvious to anyone in the building
below.

Rrisa, the silent and discreet, brought them up in the private
elevator from the forty-first floor to the Master's apartment on the
top story of the building, then up the stairway to the observatory,
and thus ushered them into the presence of the Master and Bohannan.
Each man was personally known to one or the other, who vouched
absolutely for his secrecy, valor, and good faith.

This story would resolve itself into a catalogue were each man to be
named, with his title, his war-exploits, his decorations. We shall
have to touch but lightly on this matter of personnel. Six of the
men were Americans--eight, including the Master and Bohannan; four
English; five French; two Serbian; three Italian; and the others
represented New Zealand, Canada, Russia, Cuba, Poland, Montenegro, and
Japan.

Not one of these men but bore a wound or more, from the Great
Conflict. This matter of having a scar had been made one prime
requisite for admission to the Legion. Each had anywhere from one to
half a dozen decorations, whether the Congressional Medal, the V.C.,
the Croix de Guerre, the Order of the Rising Sun, or what-not.

Not one was in uniform. That would have made their arrival far too
conspicuous. Dressed as they were, in mufti, even had anyone noted
their coming, it could not have been interpreted as anything but an
ordinary social affair.

Twenty-nine men, all told, gathered in the observatory, clearl