- Francis Carvel visits a plastic surgeon to erase a lifetime of ugliness from his face. Now handsome, he returns to the French inn where, a year earlier, an lovely woman had spurned his affection. Complicating Carvel's plans is a new traveling companion, a disfigured man in bandages who knows everything about him.—Jay Phelps <jaynashvil@aol.com>
- Carvel, a young man (played by Robert Sterling) who had been born facially disfigured has cut short his holiday abroad to travel back to London for cosmetic surgery which he hopes will drastically alter his appearance. His expectations are met when he discovers a new, handsome face under the surgical bandages. After being shown his grotesque "before" photograph filed away in the doctor's safe, Carvel insists that it be destroyed. The doctor refuses, explaining he must not only keep a record of his work but occasionally such photographs are requested by the police. When Carvel becomes insistent, describing how he had confessed his love to a beautiful French girl only to have her fiance confront and laugh at him, the doctor becomes suspicious. When the doctor turns his back to return the photo to the safe, Carvel picks up a scalpel and stabs him, killing him. He then pockets the old photo of himself and also takes a jewelry box containing a diamond necklace. Leaving the office, Carvel is met by a mysterious man with a bandaged face. Carvel tells him the doctor isn't in. "I had hoped to get here in time," the man says, then departs silently after Carvel asks, "Do I know you?"
In a cliffside inn called The Silent Man somewhere in France overlooking the ocean, the innkeeper greets the newly-arrived Carvel (who claims his name is Crane). Although the name is different, the voice seems strangely familiar to the innkeeper's daughter. When "Crane" asks if she is married, she responds that her fiance was killed. She confides that a man with a voice similar to his - "a monster" - had recently been a guest at the inn. With Carvel/Crane on his way to his room that overlooks the sea, the innkeeper encourages his daughter to forget Rene, her dead fiance, and perhaps open her heart to a charming, well-to-do and handsome gentleman, such as their new guest.
Waiting to greet Carvel in his room is the man in bandages who had been outside the doctor's office in London. The arrogant stranger seems to know everything about Carvel and the two murders he committed (Rene and the doctor) and has no intention of leaving Carvel's side. He demands that, since the cosmetic surgeon was killed before he had the opportunity to be helped by him, he is owed protection, support and companionship from Carvel. Carvel's "disfigured mind" concludes that he is being blackmailed.
Although somewhat wary of their guest's strangeness - such as apparently talking to himself while alone in his room - the innkeeper continues to consider Carvel/Crane a proper suitor for his daughter and agrees to allow the handsome young man to present her with a necklace that he claims belonged to his mother. As he gives her the jewelry box, Carvel tells the pretty maiden he wants to marry her, then departs to his room. In front of her father, she opens the box and discovers not a necklace but a cord - the same cord that had been found around her dead fiance's neck. She is now convinced that the attractive stranger with the familiar voice is indeed the monster who murdered her fiance.
Back in his room, Carvel is told by his bandaged companion that his intention is obvious: he plans to marry the girl and then torment her the rest of her life for having rejected his advances previously. Carvel is furious and tries to unmask his roommate, but is interrupted by the angry innkeeper demanding to know the meaning of his "gift" - the cord that strangled Rene. Shocked, Carvel apologizes, stating that a terrible mistake had been made, which he will explain later. After closing the door on the innkeeper, he turns to the bandaged man and rips off his mask of gauze ... only to reveal his own disfigured self staring back at him. When he attempts to kill the specter of his previous self, it disappears and then reappears behind the knocking door. Lunging at his laughing former self, Carvel crashes through the window and falls to the jagged rocks below.
The young woman and her father reach the body, which lies face down on the rocks. "He is dead," the innkeeper says, then slowly turns over the body -- the body that has been transformed back into the ugly, disfigured visage of Carvel, "the monster."
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