A BOGUS MARQUIS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 14508, 24 October 1910, Page 9

A BOGUS MARQUIS.

AMAZING CAREER OF FRAUD.

IMPOSTURE ON A GRAND SCALE.

[from our own correspondent]

London, September 16. From Berlin comes an amazing story of a bogus marquis. During the past few weeks visitors to the Hotel Danville, at The Hague, have been impressed by a tall, handsome man, who went by the name of the Marquis de la Rame, and the visitors were still more impressed on Wednesday when the alleged marquis was arrested at the request of the German police.

The marquis in real character is Bela Ivlimm, son of a. professor at the Buda Peeth University. From his boyhood he showed more aptitude for questionable adventure than for application to the humdrum details of civic life, and when the death of his father placed him in possession of £4000 he determined that this should be the knife with which ho would open the world, his oyster. His search for adventure led him to Italy, where he made an acquaintance which seems to have settled the further trend of his talents for imposture on a grand scale. This was a man named Howard, who is described as the head of a gang of international sharpers. To him Klimm lost £1500 in a, single evening. But Howard had taken the measure of his opponent at the tables, and decided that his personal services would bo more profitable than his money. Tho band of which he was chief was in need of a confederate of aristocratic demeanour, who would act as a. decoy for its victims, so the debt was allowed to stand over, and the young Hungarian was enrolled in the brotherhood. The members of the fraternity included, it. is stated, a " Count Festetics," two brothers named Schwalbe, said to be Englishmen, and Koenig, a notorious card-sharper. It was decided that Klimm's utility would be greatly enhanced by a sonorous title of familiar sound, and the name of de la Rame, that of a family which has been extinct for nearly a century and ahalf, was pitched upon as a suitable patronymic. Armed with this name Klimm set out to find victims. In Egypt, Ivj captivated a lady of the Court —some accounts say a princess and a niece of the Khedive whom he persuaded to elope with him to London. He then married a rich widow in Berlin, and this was followed by the most extraordinary part of the history. Klimm had previously contracted a haison here with a woman of questionable reputation, who was so passionately devoted to him that she financed him in his moments of impecuniositv, and actually pawned her jewellery, to the value of several thousand pounds, in order to extricate him from his pecuniary fixes. His wife's relatives got wind of * this connection, and managed to bring her face to face with this discarded inamorata, hoping that the latter would reveal the unworthy part he. had. played in living on her resources. But the " marquis' 1 brought his influence to bear on his still infatuated ex-mistress, and induced her to say that the largesse had been exercised only on his side. Out of this confrontation, however, sprang up a brisk correspondence between the two women. The wife had learnt that a Large number of letters by her husband, gravely incriminating him in frauds and swindles of various kinds, were still in the hands of his former paramour. These she wished to secure in order to be able to destroy some, at any rate, of the traces of his guilty past, so she offered £500 for their surrender. The price was refused, as was also a double sum bid bv the " marquis's" mother. Still the correspondence between the two women continued, and, as a result of their common infatuation, became even of a more intimate character. It culminated in a letter written from The Hague on Mondav. in which the wife announced her husband's arrest and implored his former favourite to hasten to her assistance. Meanwhile the police had been keeping their eves on the "marquis's" Berlin acquaintances, and it was this correspondence which came to their knowledge that led to Klimm being taken into custody.