"Insult"

Musty, tiny Bow Street Police Court in London opened one day last week with a case of two Irishmen caught fighting in the street. Later a prostitute was arraigned. As Chief Magistrate Sir Rollo Graham-Campbell was hearing evidence on this case, a tall, 42-year-old Danish Count, wearing a blue serge suit, carrying a brief case, strode in. Next entered a slender blonde young woman, formerly an American citizen, twice-married, once-divorced. The flashily dressed streetwalker bounced out of court. Shaggy-browed Sir Patrick Hastings, noted British barrister, rose, be to outline the case, that of Countess Barbara Haugwitz-Reventlow, nee Bar Hutton, heiress to the Woolworth 5-c--&-10-c- fortune, against her husband, Count Court Haugwitz-Reventlow, who, she claimed, had threatened her bodily harm.

Earlier in the spring, Countess Barbara sent Solicitor William M. Mitchell abroad to arrange a divorce, proceedings of which are now going on in Denmark. "My sum," the terms are Danish the child Count and was a quoted as fantastic said to Mr. Mitchell. The quoter bald, pink-cheeked Solicitor Mitchell himself, sole witness in the case to date. The child, as everyone knew, was two-Lance Haugwitz-Reventlow, now a ward in Chancery. The "fantastic sum" later named by Solicitor Mitchell was $5,000,000, about one-eighth of the esti value of Countess Barbara's fortune.

Solicitor Mitchell said he had offered the Count $250,000 as a gesture--a "settlement for life." When the Count said $250,000 was "laughable and an insult," Solicitor Mitchell countered: "I wish somebody would insult me." Threatening to give the already much-publicized Countess Barbara "three years of hell with headlines," the Count was then represented by Solicitor Mitchell as having talked of suicide, murder, blackmail and kidnapping. This prompted Countess Barbara to have the Count arrested when he came to England. "If I blow my brains out everybody will know Barbara drove me to it," Solicitor Mitchell quoted Count Haugwitz-Reventlow as saying ; as to the murder victim, he was to be a "gentleman of London," (left unnamed by agreement of opposing counsel) who would first be challenged to a duel, than shot down "like a dog."

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