1961-03-04 — Page 9

AGRICULTURAL

COLLEGE

ERICK

WOOL

SHEEP

FARMING

*Please. sir, what do they cross sheep with to get wool that is 50 per cent.

nylon?"

HALT)

Yousre

THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, MARCH 4, 1961.

When a wife The JUDGES and

betrays: very very to hang

the husband.

By EDGAR LUSTGARTEN

hard

together surprisingly unan- swered. A crucial letter certain- ly arrived but from his wife. Its purpose was to say sho could not give up de Borch, and .to ask her adoring husband for

a divorce.

Somehow or other Malcolm got a further grant of leave, and on August 11 he was back again in London. At frat be could find neither his wife nor her squalid cavalier. Even Scotland Yard could not help in this regard, though they could and did assure him that Baumberg (alias do Borch) thorough-geing villain--a White Slave tramcker and possibly a apy.

Wan

a

Three solid days of close investigation rasped reward. On August 14, at quàricè to eight in the morning, Malcolm rang the bell at a Bayswater lodging

VERYBODY wanted the prisoner to get house. Under his orm was skill-

off.

that the The privileged and breathless learned

was staying company in court; the unlucky with a friend named Mrs Brett and disappointed throng outalde; at the latter's cottage in a rural the unseen multitude devour part of Hampshire. Unheralded, ing each edition of the papers and entirely unsuspecting, Mal- colm dashed there as quickly as he could.

One and all devoutly Wished Lieutenant Malcolm to go free,

Even that granite prosecutor, Richard Muir, whose thankless tasit it was to present this mur- der churge, momentarily dis- closed the trend of his own feel- inga when he warned the jury; "Beware of sympathy."

ON LEAVE

For what exactly had he done, this stalwart fighting soldier, to be snatched from peril of death in the Flanders trenches and placed under the self-same peril in the Old Bailey dock?....

In August 1914, when the First World War broke out, Douglas Malcolm seemed

a man more

than ordinarily blessed. Thirty years old, he had means, he had good looks, he had social posi- tion, he had a beautiful young bride.

He found Mrs Brett down- stairs in a sitting-room, alone. Hla sudden entrance appeared to disconcert her, and his "Inquiries drew uninformative replies.

*

Eventually, exploring the cottage on his own, he came upon his wife upstairs, in a bed- room. She wore dressing gown. With her was a Run Malcolm had never seen before. He looked about his own age and, wore only underclothes.

The time was half past two or three o'clock in the afternoon.

It was the kind of situation that is described as compromising.

THRASHING

There and then Malcolm soundly thrashed the Count de Borch (for such was the title falsely assumed by the man in underclothes). Next he removed his wife from Mrs Brett's over indulgently hospitable abode. Finally he challenged the phony noble to a duel.

There was no conscription at that stage. But without delay Malcolm gallantly volunteered.

In the July of 1917, Malcolm unexpectedly obtained a spell of leave and hurried from This challenge, though renew France, unheralded, to London. ed from France after Malcolm His wite was not at home; he had returned, passed-not al-

fully concealed a hunting crop. In one pocket of his civilian ault he carried a pistol; in an- other, a letter addressed to his absent wife.

"My dear, very own, darling