“I myself have no doubt of the fate of the poor girl. When the papers were full of rumors and hypotheses about her, I repeatedly wrote my theory to her father. When he ignored my letters, I gave the |Gynanders Love Androgynes.| police my theory. They likewise thought it absurd and refused to investigate along the lines I suggested.
“When some mannish women find it impossible to marry an effeminate man, they adopt some petite cry-baby woman as their soul-mate. The papers stated that the last trace of Mollie Dale was her carrying away from O’Neil’s several purchases. The latter immediately struck me as such alone as a gallant would buy to present his lady-love. When I told the police, they said: ‘Absurd! Who ever heard of one woman being in love with another!’
“On leaving O’Neil’s, Mollie Dale absolutely dropped out of sight for all time. It was as if the earth had suddenly yawned for her body and closed again so rapidly as to be unseen by the people nearby. Or as if she, absent-minded, had stepped into an open sewer man-hole and no one happened at the moment to have his eyes on the spot.
“My theory, hermaphroditoi, is that Mollie went right from O’Neil’s to her cry-baby chum’s. Probably within walking distance, because every soul in New York was asked through the newspapers over and over again if they had met on any public conveyance the morning of Mollie’s dropping out of sight a young lady of her description, so detailed as to give even the pattern of her shoes, besides her much published photographs. Her disappearance was at the time the seven-days wonder of New York and every one was discussing it.
“The rule with men-women[[40]]—as with us women-men—is |Solution of Mollie’s Disappearance.| never to breathe to any one of their every-day circle a word about their sweethearts because of the misunderstanding and horror evidenced by people ignorant of psychology. As a rule the soul-mates of us better-class bisexuals belong to a much lower social stratum. Very likely Mollie’s lived in one of the thousands of tumbledown tenements within walking distance of O’Neil’s.
“According to my theory, hermaphroditoi—and I have seen a hundred times more of life than the average man, and possess some sense notwithstanding people not knowing me well set me down as only a high-grade idiot because of my outward frivolousness and an unfortunate infantile carriage—the cry-baby’s husband or father had only just learned of what he, as well as ninety-nine out of every hundred men, mistakenly regarded as the horribly corrupting influence of the poor martyr Mollie on the hare-brained cry-baby. Ignorant that men-women are victims of birth and that their so-called ‘depravity’ brings not the least harm to any one, and insanely angry with Mollie into the bargain, he that very morning bludgeoned her in his apartment. And he happened to succeed in disposing of the corpse.
“I thought of Mollie when last week the papers told about an unrecognizable female body, bent double, having been found in a trunk filled with salt that for two years had rested unclaimed in the trunk-room of the third-class Hotel X—just the type that a tenement-dweller would select to harbor such a trunk. The murderer was evidently a meat-packer, familiar with the processes of salting down.
“In such strange ways a continuous string of both |Man’s Prudery Causes Many Murders.| men-women and women-men are being struck down in New York for no other reason than loathing for those born bisexual. And public opinion forbids the publication of the facts of bisexuality, which, if generally known, would put an end to these mysterious murders of innocents.”
“Hello, Mith Nighty!” several called as one of the tallest, oldest, and most brunette of the hermaphroditoi entered the Cercle’s dressing-room. The androgyne who had adopted the name of a romantic woman had, during his twenties, before becoming thick-set, been a female-impersonator on the vaudeville stage.