A FOREICN GAMBLER.

Colonist, Volume LIi, Issue 12804, 27 May 1910, Page 1

A FOREICN GAMBLER.

A curious example of the tyran.uty a case that came before the Berlin courts on April 4. The defendant, l'.nte Klngo, defrauded the bi K engineering firm of Arthur Koppel, i ™~ m l)rnnch lie managed -of nearly £20,000, and lost practically the entire .sum at the gaming table. It was. Ins custom to travel all -the war to I B ns for the sake of three hours' baccarat. He spent the water part ol the eighteen hour journey worlrin.' pub the possibilities pf a "system" ho had invented. Like so many incurable gamblers, Kluge is exceedingly superstitious. AH his peculations were earned out in sums divisible by tn.'W^ aiu^he^mfornied tlio jud«e that to him Ho Hovoi- wont manay that lie had won, as iio bclievod that it uro tight luck in play, and on one Occasion lie and a lady companion travelled 3'l-thc-..!i]Mvill.ou t -featins i-atlier'thnn imich a suau;f-£IOOO which oue'of his thrcn hour spells at the baccarat table had brought him in. All the time that lie was robbing' lijs employers lie carried a prayer-book in his pocket, and prayed regularly three times a day. Klugo, who is now only 34* years of age, was a very backward scholar, bufc was promoted with extraordinary rapidity by Koppels, and enjoyed tho complete confidence of the. firm, which regarded him as a brilliant man of business. He is utterly broken by his fall, and seems to have shrivelled up to an old man since he was arrested eighteen months ago. In the dock ho burst into floods of hysterical tears, and it was only the exertions of half-a-dozen doctors who plied him with stimulants which made it possible to proceed with the case.