Discovery of the Murder
It was not discovered until many hours after commission. At noon of [date omitted by author of The Female-Impersonators] the Q janitor saw a light shining out of a transom of X’s. He was immediately convinced such a methodical man would not have gone away leaving the light turned on. He tried X’s entrance and found it unlocked. He went to the room where the light was burning. Stretched on the floor beside a divan, with a couch pillow resting on the face, was X. A few feet away was the sabre with which he had been murdered.
The divan covers were half ripped off where the falling man had clutched them as he was repeatedly felled—repeatedly, for it was evident X had fought hard for his life against the sabre-armed assassin. The sabre had been ripped off the wall of the hall-way of the apartment. The retaining wires were strong and the hand must have been strong that snapped them. [Androgynes cultivate only the best physically developed.]
The deduction was made that the assassin had not entered X’s home with the intent to murder. He was pictured as having, in all probability, left his host in the “den” and started down the hall to make his exit from the flat when the resolution to attack and kill—a resolution which the weapons on the wall may have suggested—came suddenly upon him. Ripping the weapon from the wall, he is pictured as having dashed back to the “den” and surprised X with a fury of murderous |Prudery Gone Insane.| attack. [X probably entertained at his home for the first time that night his well dressed and apparently trustworthy assassin. Only when the two adjourned to the “den” did X probably disclose his desire, so nauseating to the unsophisticated and those ignorant of abnormal psychology. Doubtless a minute after the disclosure, the prude left X’s side in insane disgust, and on passing through the hall entertained his first thought to do his “duty by society and put this monster where he could corrupt no more young men”—an absolutely unfounded way of looking at the matter. I have myself scraped acquaintance with a youthful Hercules, who would lead me on hypocritically, and when he got me where there could be no witnesses, has half-murdered me because of disgust at androgynism. My adventure with Harvey Green is an example.]
Physical examination disclosed that despite his fifty-six years, X possessed the preservation of a man of thirty-five. [Perennial youth is an earmark of ultra-androgynism.]
The autopsy showed that every character of blow had been inflicted—deep stab wounds, slashes, and fracturing strokes on the skull either with the broad side or dull back of the sabre. The coat of X, who was fully clothed when killed, had been slashed to tatters. [The assassin wished not merely to kill, but to hack X to pieces because of his loathing of androgynism. I myself have not alone been half-murdered, but mutilation has been practiced for its own sake. See page 132 of my Autobiography of an Androgyne.]
Murdered by a Guest.
A Midnight Caller
X’s condition of being fully clothed proves of course that he had not yet retired. [It also indicates that his assassin had repulsed his amorous advances immediately after the pair entered the “den.” On such occasions, androgynes usually undress.] Further evidence was that his web system of alarms had not been set. It was his invariable custom, on retiring or when he went out, to do this. There was no sign of forcible entrance of the ground-floor apartment. Therefore X is believed to have freely admitted the man who was to murder him—probably such a chance acquaintance as he appears frequently to have made in his saunterings through the city’s streets and visits to its resorts.
The examination of medical experts resulted in the hour of the crime being placed between nine and eleven of the evening previous.