Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/481

 and further dispute was an unpleasing idea to me, so under the pretext that I had to go forth, I left my lodgings; but accompanied by my two companions, with whom I strolled along several streets. I asked the friseur once more what just exactly he wanted; and when I declined again to give him the assistance he desired on any ground of our previous relations, then he declared that if I would not accord him his wishes, he would attack my character socially, and also denounce me to the police as having been guilty of a criminal offence. Therewith I demanded that the companion of the friseur (who up to that minute had not quitted us) should leave us, in as much as I had in any case nothing to do with him and did not know him. He accordingly left us, for awhile—but soon he came back. The friseur then plainly said to me that unless I would give him some money, he would "make a circus" for me, then and there—in the public street. Finally, on my further request, the third party to this dialogue left us again: and then I told the friseur that he had not any right to demand money from me and that his conduct was blackmail. He replied that it might be so or not, that was all one to him: I would be punished as a criminal, if he made revelations, or even if not ( since I insisted that what had passed between us, mutual onanism only, was not criminal) then at least I would be disgraced socially though he could manage to slip out of the affair. So after he had further threatened me thus, I gave him, to get rid of him, five Marks. He said that he must have more, and he followed me along the street, I trying to hurry off, till at last I gave him two Marks more. Then he left me."

"With what emotions I went home, who can guess? It was not the money, but the consciousness of having fallen plump into the hands of a shameless and abandoned creature, and of having had anything to do with him—if only once! Gloomy portents and fears coursed through my mind, and for weeks I went about depressed and dreading to meet my enemy again. And in fact he did not wait two months. The second time, he came with another companion who behaved with unexampled impudence and vulgarity. I shall speak of him as the "Cologner"; for by his accent he was from Cologne. They rang my bell, I opened the door, they fairly squeezed themselves in, with the "Cologner" first. On my asking what they wanted, the friseur answered "Money!" On my replying that I was not in circumstances to give him any, just as I had told him before, then the "Cologner" spoke up: "Oh, that is just all rubbish!" and added a very vulgar accusation. When I repudiated this, earnestly yet calmly, then the friseur