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“The eyes are very big and wide open,” a physician named John L. Capen later observed. “They are blue. Great murderers, like great men in other walks of activity, have blue eyes.”
She was on the verge of accepting the offer when Holmes said to her, softly, “Don’t be afraid of me.” Which terrified her.
At first alienists described this condition as “moral insanity” and those who exhibited the disorder as “moral imbeciles.” They later adopted the term “psychopath,” used in the lay press as early as 1885 in William Stead’s Pall Mall
Immediately Holmes deployed his tools of seduction, his soothing voice and touch and frank blue gaze.
Anna was skeptical. The romance was advancing too quickly and with a degree of intimacy that violated all the intricate rules of courtship. Minnie was sweet, Anna knew, but certainly no beauty. If Harry Gordon was such a paragon of looks and enterprise, why had he selected her?
The Algerian version of the danse du ventre had proven a particularly powerful draw, once people realized the phrase meant “belly dance.” Rumors spread of half-clad women jiggling away, when in fact the dance was elegant, stylized, and rather chaste.
They saw the first moving pictures on Edison’s Kinetoscope, and they watched, stunned, as lightning chattered from Nikola Tesla’s body. They saw even more ungodly things—the first zipper; the first-ever all-electric kitchen, which included an automatic dishwasher; and a box purporting to contain everything a cook would need to make pancakes, under the brand name Aunt Jemima’s. They sampled a new, oddly flavored gum called Juicy Fruit, and caramel-coated popcorn called Cracker Jack. A new cereal, Shredded Wheat, seemed unlikely to succeed—“shredded doormat,” some called it—but a new beer did
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This was the time he most craved. It brought him a period of sexual release that seemed to last for hours, even though in fact the screams and pleading faded rather quickly. He filled the vault with gas, just to be sure.
