CAFE DRAMA.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20274, 7 April 1934, Page 26 (Supplement)

CAFE DRAMA.

TWO FRENCHMEN AND A GIRL. Nearly three years ago two young Frenchmen of the ‘’gigolo" class sat in a clingy Soho cafe playing a game of cards with a girl named “Louisette la Marseillaise” as stakes. One of the two, Antoine Grisoni, member of a highly respectable Corsican family, was the lover of the girl. But the second man, Rene Piat, had appeared on the scene and secured such a hold over her that she had followed him to .London, where they had been traced by Grisoni. It was the girl herself who suggested that the men should prove themselves “sportive” by playing their favourite card game for her ownership. The suggestion was accepted and the men settled down to play the game with the girl as an onlooker. Piat won three of the five games making the rubber, and thus became the owner of the girl, Grisoni talcing his defeat badly. Piat and the girl ned to Paris that same night and buried themselves in the underworld. Grisoni followed in their track, but it was not until many months later that he ran them to earth in the Saint Denis quarter of Paris. Challenged. One day Piat was called to the telephone or Ins favourite cafe nod told that tlie other wonted an explanation in a near-by boulevard. In the underworld such requests cannot be refused, and some minutes later the two men were glaring at each other from opposite sides of the boulevard, each lingering nervously his revolver and watching his chance of getting m the first shot. Grisoni was quicker at the draw” than his rival; and dashing across the road he tired two shots before the other could get his revolver out. But in their own way the authorities learned the name of the assassin and felt sure that sooner or later he would make his appearance to claim the girl he had lost at cards and won at the more deadly game. They were not wrong, and when' Grisoni was seen in the company of Louisette” lie was invited to an interview at the police station, where he was taxed with the crime and ultimately admitted his guilt, pleading, however, that he had fired first Decause he knew that the other man had made up his mind to kill him. The jury in the Assize Court rendered the verdict in such fashion that the judges could only award the nominal sentence of five years ‘avec sursis,” which means that, the sentence is only served if the accused falls into police hands on a similar charge within ten years.