During World War I, criminal Dakin Barrolles, fleeing a bank robbery gone awry, has a chance meeting with a rich, drunken banker and his wife. Fascinated by the kind of people he would ordinarily never get to meet, he steals a locket with the banker’s picture. Later, in an attempt to elude the police, he joins the army and is sent to the front. Wounded in battle, his face is severely disfigured and a plastic surgeon, finding the locket with the banker’s picture, assumes that is what Barrolles looks like and reshapes his face to that of the banker’s (who, coincidentally, also joined the army and is now missing in action). After the war Barrolles, now with the banker’s face, decides to pretend to be the banker in order to gain enough knowledge to rob the bank—and, as an additional perk, get the banker’s beautiful wife.