even when he had first arrived , looking like a war victim fresh from the battlefield , dark blood still congealed on his forehead and matted into his hair , his recent close proximity to a high-speed bullet only too apparent by the scars on his facial features , its passage of flight marked by a wide , dark groove which started at the corner of his face where his left eyebrow stopped and then furrowed across the surface of the side of his head , the missing top of his left ear revealing the pellets eventual point of farewell ; when he had been anaemic through loss of blood , and gibbering with shock , he had still impressed with the gusto with which he had been prepared to carry out his paid employment .