TRAGIC LAST JOURNEY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 76, Issue 109, 11 May 1933, Page 5

TRAGIC LAST JOURNEY

WOMAN POISONS HERSELF alleged dangerous spy. followed by fbench police. ln/? Ilo h' ln “ ? “' arch of papers left behind when She hurriedly quitted Pans sV,T n « herBClf h ‘ Londo "’ i’reneb h’eerct Service has made amazing VnS against Mad » n ’0 Zeinap Hora, tho mysterious Albanian beauty who was found dying near the Cenotaph. It was declared that her hectic love aftairs were a blind to her real tin™i~ that a da “S erous international spy—and that she took her life when she found arrest was imminent. A Cr L aSt ■>° urne y s he was followed by the French police, and steps were taken to intercept her if she should try to return to France. J Madamo V lora had an unhappy lovo affair that in part accounted for her suicide, but since investigating the documents she left in Paris the French secret service police assert that she was a dangerous spy working on behalf of two European Powers. Her love affairs, they allege, wer e turned to account in her espionage, and both Britain and Franco had grounds for thinking her activities were harmful to their respective interests. Since Madame Vlora first went to France, according to the story of the police, she had gont out of her way to cultivate acquaintances in diplomatic and official as well as in naval and military circles. Her communications with the two countries she was serving were carried on through the agency of a diplomatic courier, whom she duped into believing that they were lovo letters to a man of whose existence she desired her husband to be kept in ignorance. Shortly before Madame Vlora’■ death, certainly, she was deeply distressed over a broken love affair. It is now declared that thc reason the man in question broke with her was that he discovered ho had been seriously compromised by various uses she had made of his position in the diplomatic service to further her ends, notably in obtaining facilities for approach to officers. whom she afterwards “vamped” into helping her. On the night thc woman left Paris, the police allege, one of the young diplomats she had compromised told her that her ruse had boon discovered, and that unless she left France at once her arrest was only a matter of time. She had also boon advised that one of the Powers employing her had found that she was attempting to double-crosz them. When Madame Vlora left Paris for London she was followed by the agent of the French political police in charge | of the surveillance over her. In London, it is said, she hoped to see thc one man in a position to get her back her (lover and reinstate her in favour with her employers. This man, however, refused to see her. To add to her distress, the police allege, she learned that her activities as a spy had been revealed completely. At the same time the French detective who had followed the woman to London learned something that caused him to advise her arrest immediately she returned to France. Steps were also taken to intercept her should she try to return to thc Continent via Belgium. For some time after Madame Vlora’a death, which was kept secret in both France and Britain, police officers wero in constant attendance at certain telephone numbers she was in the habit of using in the hope that agents of another Power, with whom she was in communication would try to get in touch with her.