ROUGE ET NOIR.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1104, 18 April 1911, Page 5

ROUGE ET NOIR.

CHARGE AGAINST A COUNT. MENTAL CONDITION TO BE ASCERTAINED. By Telegraph—Prqss Association-Oopyricht Bsrlin, April 16. Count Wolfi'-Metternich, arrested in December in connection with alleged cardswindling ' while, playing rouge et noir, has been sent to a hospital witli a view to ascertaining his mental condition. ALLEGED GAMBLING SWINDLE. High play at rouge et noir in a London hotel led to the arrest in Vienna of th'e young Count Gisbert Wolff Metternich, aged 21, a nephew of the German Ambassador in London. Count Metternich, who was engaged as secretary to a- motorcar factory, recently married a favourite Viennese musical-comedy actress. He was arrested in bed at 8 o'clock on the morning of December 15, and, as a Prussian subject, was 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 Mctz, named Backhaus. Lieutenant Backhaus alleges that while on leave in Lond6n ho 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. It was then agreed, he says, that he and Count Metternich should hold the bank together. They lost £700. Lieutenant Backhaus, having no money to pay his share, tho count handed a cheque for tho whole sum to their opponents. Lieutenant Backhaus saw little more of his companions, and shortly afterwards returned to his. garrison at Mctz. On receiving later an emphatic request from Count Metternich for the repayment of the .£350 advanced to him, lie conceived certain suspicions and informed tho police. It is stated that further allegations are made against Count Metternich—that lie obtained a valuable pin on credit from a London jeweller by falsely representing himself to bo a member of the German Embassy, and that he fraudulently withheld the proceeds of the sale nf a.horse belonging to a ladv in Berlin. The count's own statement with reference to thcTouge et noir affair is that both he and Lieutenant Backhaus were duped by the other two players.

Tho apprehension of Count Metternich was followed by the arrest in Berlin of an alleged associate of the count's calling himself Baron Corff-Konig, whose real name vras said by the newspapers to bo Julius Steinmann.