Word: koutiepoff
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Dates: during 1930-1930
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...weeks ago General Alexander Paul Koutiepoff, head of all Russian royalist military organizations in Europe, kissed his wife perfunctorily goodbye, put his bowler hat on his head and strolled off down the Rue Rousselet in Paris to attend a staff meeting at the Russian Officers' Club. As instantly and completely as a conjuror's rabbit, he disappeared. An hour later Mme Koutiepoff was in hysterics...
Within a week I'Afiaire Koutiepoff was a serious international incident. Menacing crowds gathered in front of the Soviet Embassy in Paris, French Conservatives loudly demanded the breaking off of diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. Newspapers offered prizes for the most plausible solution to the mystery, reprinted long accounts of the nefarious doings of the Russian secret service (G. P. U.) in foreign countries. French agents of the Sûrete Générale complained that the number of entirely unauthorized amateur detectives was seriously interfering with their investigations. Round Paris cafes spread lurid accounts...
Last fortnight brought the first definite answer to the Koutiepoff riddle. La Liberté, Parisian evening daily, published a special edition, charged that six days earlier General Alexander Paul Koutiepoff was seen battered but still alive in a cell in Moscow's Loubianskaia prison...
Surprisingly enough, the French secret police partially verified the rumor. General Koutiepoff had been kidnapped in a red taxicab in the Rue Rousselet, they admitted. On the evening of Jan. 26 an unidentified Russian woman at Cabourg, tiny Norman fishing village, had seen the red taxicab and a mysterious grey limousine draw up by the shore. A man dressed as a gendarme and a woman in a tan coat had stepped out, carrying a limp figure which was placed in a motor boat which instantly sped off in the direction of Houlgate. Other witnesses announced that a Russian merchantman...
...juicy a scandal as I'Affaire Koutiepoff could not be laid on the shelf without a sniff and a playful poke from that irrpressible gourmet, M. Léon Daudet, editor of the flamboyant Royalist sheet Action Française. "Mark my words!" he wrote. ''War will come of this in a few months...