Page:The Female-Impersonators 1922 book scan.djvu/260

232 association with women. Both had a disposition for the society of much younger men, and had many such acquaintances.

Living in the same neighborhood, frequenting the same hotels and restaurants, visiting the same art galleries and antique shops as they were tireless in doing, it was rather to be expected that they were found to have been close friends.

The indicated motive for both murders was robbery but in both cases only the valuables used in personal adornment were stolen, while other jewels, and silver and gold objects of art and service, plainly in sight, were ignored. [Robbery being only a blind, loathing of sexual eccentricity being the true motive.]

In only two particulars did the crimes differ: X was hacked to death; Y was strangled by the bare hands of his assailant. The marks of relentless fingers were deeply imbedded in the victim's neck. The other difference was that in Y's case, there had been no struggle. He had had no chance to put up a fight for his life. He had been taken by surprise and the strangler's grip been clamped on his throat before he could make outcry.

Y was fifty-nine years old, and a native of rural Illinois. He had prospered as owner of a fashionable ladies' dress-making concern in New York. But he had retired and at the time he was murdered was renting an ex-mansion of a millionaire, where he conducted a boarding-house of the highest class. There were twenty lodgers, but scores of additional persons living in the aristocratic neighborhood took their meals at Y's. He frequently organized card parties and dances for his guests, and to these were always invited freely