Blood Feuds

No ordinary murderer but the ferocious, scowling Alcibiade Bebe, who last year assassinated a brother-in-law of smart little King Ahmed Zogu of Albania, finally came to trial last week, in Prague, Czechoslovakia, where his crime was committed.

Sensation seeking Czechs and Slovaks jammed the courtroom, thrilled by scars and scowls peculiar to the malignant face of Prisoner Bebe.

Even the Czechoslovak judge seemed uneasy in the presence of a prisoner who looked as if he might spring at any convenient throat. When cross examination began all eyes were fixed upon Bebe, ears strove to catch the answers which he made in thick, ungracious tones interspersed with grunts. It was all so primitive, so fascinating, that no one noticed another Albanian, one Ziga Vuciterna, who arose pantherlike among the spectators, stealthily drew two revolvers, advanced upon Prisoner Bebe with a wild and sudden yell, and opened a murderous double fire of dum-dum bullets.

Eight ghastly dum-dum wounds sufficed to kill ferocious Alcibiade Bebe in the space of a few seconds. Even quicker was the rabbitlike dive of the judge under his bench. Jurymen fled so precipitously that one slipped and broke an arm. A stray dum-dum bullet wounded, probably fatally, the distinguished correspondent of the great Italian daily Gionale d' Italia, Signor Adriano Del Vecchio.

When Two-Gun-Man Ziga Vuciterna looked up from his work there was no other living soul to be seen in court. Wild-eyed but no longer violent the Dum-Dum Murderer reversed both his pistols in his hands, turning them upon himself, and stood in this peculiar attitude until bailiffs plucked up courage to come in and arrest him and the judge crawled out from under his bench.

To utterly shocked and totally unsympathetic Czechoslovaks, DumDum mer Vuciterna growled an explanation: "I shot him because of a blood feud. We have many in Albania. I did only what any Albanian would. Our code of honor demands a life for a life."

Despatches from the Albanian capital of Tirana, last week, extravagantly rumored that over 300 minor and major blood feuds are now pending against well guarded King Ahmed Zogu. It was also rumored that the Sovereign had broken off the engagement which has bound him since childhood to wed Lela, luscious 23-year-old daughter of the great Albanian tribal chieftain Shevket Bey Verlatzi. Such a jilt, if actually perpetrated, can scarcely fail to engender another deadly blood feud.

Reputedly the engagement was broken because His Majesty, a puppet of Signor Benito Mussolini, now aspires to wed a Royal princess. If his fanatical Moslem subjects permit him to turn Roman Catholic he may espouse Princess Giovanna of Italy. If that much mooted match proves infeasible, the Moslem King might conceivably marry one of the Moslem daughters of His Majesty Fuad I of Egypt. Unquestionably any princess who marries King Ahmed Zogu takes her life in her hands and risks the imminent possibility that her husband may turn corpse.