GOLDEN-SPOON COUNTESS

Greymouth Evening Star, 26 February 1927, Page 5

GOLDEN-SPOON COUNTESS

AN ADVENTURESOME LIFE

The Countess Paul Keglevich is one of those' people who cannot understand life without tons of money.) She was. born with a silver, one may say a golden, spoon in her mouth, and started life as the Baroness Alice daughter of an immensely rich banker who 'had been given the title of baron by the Emperor Francis Joseph. At the age of twenty the Baroness Alice married Herr Von Lederer, who had great estates in Hungary. Fifteen years later the couple agreed to get a divorce, and, as her portion of the estate, the baroness got the tidy sum of £300,000. x

One chapter of her life was over and another was opened in Vienna. She lived in princely style and devoted herself to the difficult, but ex ; citing, business of escaping from the mere aristocracy of finance to the charmed circle of the aristocracy of the most exclusive court in Europe. She secured, however, nothing better than an ordinary count, who lived on his estate and manufactured brandy. Then came the war, and money in Austria melted like snow in the sun. Perhaps it was case of love flying out of the window when poverty comes in at the door; but whatever iL was the countess decided to close the second chapter of matrimonial life, and she went through her second divorce.

There was not much to be got out of her count, and when she retired to Budapest, she had little more than the small income allowed her by the banking dynasty of Kohner, from which she sprang. Suddenly she appeared to have plenty of money, and people wondered what lucky windfall she had had. Suspicions were raised when a short while ago the newspapers stated that bills of exchange amounting to £lB,OOO, with the forged signature of Herr Von Lederer, the first husband pf the countess, were in circulation. The countess immediately went to the police to defend her honor. She

stated that she had been-empowered by her former husband to sign his name on bills amounting to six milliards of crowns. She brought witnesses to prove that her statement was true, and that the arrangement with Herr Von Lederer had been made in the Royftl Hotel at Budapest. There had been, it was stated, a meeting between the two in a private room, and the quarrel between them was so violent that every word of their conversation was heard in the halbof the hotel. The countess had demanded the payment of money which had been owing to her ever since she and Her Von Lederer were divorced. The ex-husband had declared that he would not give her a halfpenny, and finally told her that she could make out bills of exchange in his name, and try to get them discounted. A When this statement appeared fn the newspapers several persons who did not know the countes came to confirm the story. A general, a banker, x a colonel and a diplomat declared that they had heard the conversation in the hotel. They recognised the countess as the woman who had come from the private room, and their description of her companion made it clear that he certainly was the ex-husband. , The lawyer of the ex-husband declared that his client had been a year abroad, and therefore could not possibly have been in a Budapest hotel and have made the arrangment which the counters ahd her witnesses alleged that he had made. Here was a pretty riddle for the police to Solve. It chanced, however, that a few days latet they learnt that the bills of exchange had been brought to a Budapest bank by a Herr Stefan Lenz, whom they happened to know. -They had, in point of fact, once had him under lock ttad key for two years for stealing jewels. A glance in their album of criminal photographs showed them that HerrLenz was the image of Herr Von Lederer. He and the countess had played together that pretty comedy in the Royal Hotel. An now, at the age of fifty, the countess is beginning a newchapter of her life in a Budapest prison.