The Complete Simon Iff by Aleister Crowley

Author:Aleister Crowley [Crowley, Aleister]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi

The Biter Bit

"Evidence of Identity", by Dolores Cass, was the Book of the season. It was as dry as a treatise on trigonometry, but people read it and discussed it as if it were a novel. The Washington Square group all tried to look like each other so as to deceive the very elect, and succeeded perfectly, as there was not one with an ounce of individuality in the whole gang.

But what annoyed everybody was that the mystery was nowhere disclosed. How Dolores had managed the affair was still perfectly obscure... if she had managed it. All that she revealed was that a Second Girl existed. Simon Iff had contributed a powerful preface, in which he explained nothing at all but his theories on love. "Amor omnia vincit", he concluded furiously, "Love is 'inimicus humani generis'... the enemy of the human race."

For before Miss Mollie Madison had reached her office after her interview with him, Simon had been rung up from Boston. It was Dolores, and she begged him, in the interests of science, to suppress the story. There was nothing for him to do but to follow the beacon of Miss Mollie Madison's little red head, and put an extinguisher upon it.

They compensated her by making her chief bridesmaid at the wedding of Dolores to Geoffrey Travis, which was the most fashionable affair that even Boston had known in a long while.

The presents were wonderful. Simon Iff had given the bridegroom an alabaster image of Ganesha, very glorious with gold and vermilion; but he had apologized to Dolores with empty hands, saying that he hadn't been able to think of anything suitable so far; he hoped to repair the omission a little later.

She was snowed under with jewelry; also she had a pair of piebald ponies, and a hydroplane, and a twelve-inch reflector telescope in case she wanted to study astronomy. Publicity has its points, even in Beacon Street.

People thought it all rather remarkable; but if Mrs. Cass and Mr. Travis had nothing to say, why, nobody else had. One couldn't attach any importance to newspaper reports, could one, or where would one be?

So everything went off splendidly. Travis took the usual month from his business, and it was decided to cruise down the coast in his steam yacht, the Opossum, a magnificant trubine boat of two thousand tons.

Simon Iff, having done his duty as best man, returned to New York. Miss Mollie Madison was in the chair car, and, the train being due in New York at seven o'clock, he asked her to come and have dinner with him. "Do take me to Chinatown!" she begged. "It will be so wonderful, as you can speak and read Chinese so marvellously. You spent years there, didn't you?"

"Young woman," replied Iff, sternly, "consider yourself suspected. You wish to find yourself in a labyrinth of secret passages, with gambling halls, opium joints, and Even Worse Things in full blast. You want tong wars and unspeakable tortures. You have been reading cheap fiction.

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