CARD SCANDAL.

Mataura Ensign, 25 January 1911, Page 3

CARD SCANDAL.

ARREST OF A COUNT. | CHARGE OF SWINDLING. High play at rouge et noir in a London hotel lias led to the arrest in Vienna of ill'? young Count Gisbert Wolff Metternicii, aged 24, a nephew of the German . Ambassador in London. Count Metternicii, who is 2at present engaged as secretary ta a motor-car- l;;<tory, three months ago married a favorite Viennese musical-comedy actress. He was arrested in bed at eight o'clock on December 15, and, as a Prussian subject, will shortly be transferred into the charge of the German police. The- charge against him is alleged complicity in a gambling swindle, and is laid by a German artillery lieutenant stationed at Met/,, named Backhaus. Lieutenant Backhaus alleges that while on leave in London last summer he made the acquaintance of the count together with two other men. Accompanied by his new friends, Lieutenant Backhaus visited the "sights" of London. They dined at an hotel, and after dinner played at rouge et noir, using matches as counters. At first the lieutenant won. Tt was then agreed, he says, that he and Count Metternicii should hold the hank together. They lost £7OO. Lieutenant Backhaus, having no money to pay his share, the count handed a cheque for the whole sum to their opponents. Lieutenant Backhaus saw little more of his companions, and shortly afterwards returned to his garrison afc Metz. On receiving later an emphatic request from Count Metternich for the repayment of the £350 advanced to him, lie conceived certain suspicions and informed the police. It is stated that further allegations arj made against Count MettennVh—that he obtained a valuable pin on credit from a London jeweller by falsely representing himself to he a member of the German Embassy, and that he fraudulently withheld the proceeds of the sale of a horse belonging to a lady in Berlin. The count's own statement with reference to the rouge et noir affair is that both ho and Lieutenant Backhaus were duped by the other two players. The apprehension of Count Wolff Metternich has been followed by the arrest in Berlin of an alleged associate of the count's calling himself Baton CorffKonig, whose real name is said by the newspapers to be Julius Steinmani'i.