Let B n denote the centralizer of a fixed-point free involution in the symmetric group S 2n. Each of the four one-dimensional representations of B n induces a multiplicity-free representation of S 2n , and thus the corresponding Hecke algebra is commutative in each case. We prove that in two of the cases, the primitive idempotents can be obtained from the power-sum expansion of Schur's Q-functions, from which follows the surprising corollary that the character tables of these two Hecke algebras are, aside from scalar multiples, the same as the nontrivial part of the character table of the spin representations of S n. Schur's Q-functions are a family of symmetric polynomials Q L (x 1 , x 2 ,...) indexed by partitions A with distinct parts. They were originally defined in Schur's 1911 paper [16] as the Pfaffians of certain skew-symmetric matrices. The main point of Schur's paper was to prove that the Q-functions "encode" the characters of the irreducible projective representations of symmetric groups, in the same sense that Schur's S-functions encode the ordinary irreducible characters of symmetric groups. In the past 10 years, there have been a number of developments showing that Schur's Q-functions arise naturally in several seemingly unrelated areas, just as Schur's S-functions arise as the answer to a number of natural algebraic and geometric questions. In particular, (1) Sergeev [17] has proved that the Q-functions Q L (x 1 ,...,x m) are (aside from scalar factors) the characters of the irreducible tensor representations of a certain Lie superalgebra Q(m); (2) Pragacz [15] has proved that the cohomology ring of the isotropic Grassmanian Sp 2n /U n is a homomorphic image of the ring generated by Q-functions, and furthermore, this homomorphism maps Q-functions to Schubert cycles; and (3) You [22] has proved that the Q-functions are the polynomial solutions of the BKP hierarchy *Partially supported by NSF Grants DMS-8807279 and DMS-9057192.