crimes were alike bizarre. The characters of both victims were most peculiar, yet alike. And the men had been friends. [Androgynes, in all large cities, form little cliques like the Cercle Hermaphroditos.]
X was a bachelor of fifty-six, an electrical expert, an art connoisseur, and collector of jewels and weapons. Though in more than comfortable financial circumstances, he resided entirely alone, doing his own housework [common manner of life of androgynes] in a 6-room flat on the ground-floor of the Q Apartments. [I know one androgyne who purposely chose a ground-floor apartment in a house without hall-boy so he could go and come in his disguise with less chance of encountering other tenants.] He had made it his home for ten years. [This proves his outward decency, as well, as liberality to blackmailers.] The artistic luxury of its furnishings was striking. The walls were galleries of fine old prints, original oils, and copies of masters, and displayed a strange collection of swords, sabres, and barbarian spears. [Well-to-do androgynes possess the most highly ornamented homes of any class of society. While congenitally too "yellow" themselves to handle the weapons of warfare, such are generally sexual fetishes with them, being symbols of the highest function of the true man.]
In this handsome, lonely abode, the detectives made a discovery of significance: X had lived in extraordinary fear of the lawless invasion of his rooms. [Cultured androgynes, realizing how bitterly they are hated by prudes, live constantly under the sword of Damocles. Every night they fall asleep in the fear of being murdered. They are uncommonly careful in locking themselves in. The author tries his locks twice
