Frot Plot

Inspector Bony, suspended from the Surete Generale in January, was the only person to make any factual advance in the great Stavisky case last week. Fortnight ago Inspector Bony discovered the missing stubs for the checks with which Swindler Stavisky is supposed to have bribed his way to power. Last week in the municipal pawnshop of Orleans he discovered the missing jewels. After Stavisky's death no trace of them could be found. Inspector Bony discovered a bright-eyed pretty little mannikin who led him straight to the Orleans pawnshop and a cardboard box containing gems valued at $78,000 which Stavisky was in the habit of putting up from time to time for rush loans. During the week two men closely connected with the case attempted to commit suicide. Scrabbling through the Stavisky correspondence, investigators discovered a letter to Stavisky with the salutation "Cher Monsieur et Bon Ami--", supposed to have been written by Henri Hurlaux, assistant prosecuting attorney of the Court of Appeal. White-chinned old Henri Cheron, Minister of Justice, promptly removed good Friend Hurlaux who struck an attitude and attempted to swallow poison. He was rushed to a hospital where he signed a statement swearing that he had never accepted a single sou from handsome Alex. Lawyers for Stavisky's principal agent, Secretary Gilbert Romanigno, are Raymond Hubert, one of the smartest pleaders in Paris, and a M. Pinganaud. Paris papers have hinted for weeks that both know more about the case than anyone in the city. Early in the week police searched Lawyer Pinganaud's apartment, found nothing to incriminate him personally, but did uncover a jolly photograph which showed Swindler Stavisky arm in arm with one of the chief attorneys of the Court of Appeal, named Cazenavette. Lawyer Cazenavette shrilly cried that the picture was taken at a publisher's birthday party and he had no idea who the gentleman he was embracing was. All this was very depressing for Raymond Hubert. Wandering home from the Palais de Justice he jumped into the Seine. Police fished him out. Dripping wet, he got as far as the middle of the Pont de Solferino when he jumped into the Seine again. He landed in front of a large barge, whose sailors pulled him out with a boat-hook and sent him to a hospital.

In the Chamber of Deputies, a parliamentary committee of investigation began to dig into the more vital question of who was responsible for the bloody rioting of Feb. 6, who ordered the troops to fire on the mobs. Promptly came charges and counter charges to make a Frenchman's hair curl. Dapper Jean Chiappe, deposed Prefect of Police, faced his onetime Minister of the Interior, saturnine, black-bearded Eugene Frot, and baldly charged that M. Frot had been planning a coup d'etat of his own to overthrow the Government; that he had organized an armed gang; that he had approached Raymond Patenotre, U. S.-born Cabinet Under Secretary, for a subscription to help arm this private bodyguard; that he had attempted to win over a Lieut.-Colonel de la Roque, president of the semi-Fascist Crois de Feu organization; that Premier Daladier had been warned of the Frot plot and had replied: "I have not unlimited confidence in M. Frot, and I knew already what you have just told me." M. Frot brushed all this aside as "a rather amusing detective story." Called before the committee was onetime Premier Daladier to back Eugene Frot's denial. What followed was a grisly example of the value of diction. If Jean Chiappe and Ecouard Daladier had only learned to enunciate distinctly when talking to each other on the telephone, the blood of hundreds of Frenchmen might never have been shed. Before the commission the two men argued their famed telephone conversation when, according to ex-Premier Daladier, Jean Chiappe threatened to lead the rioters in person, if removed as Prefect of Police (TIME, Feb. 12). It all hinged on a preposition. Had Jean Chiappe said: "Je serai dans la rue," meaning "I will be leading the mob in the street,"? Or had he said: "Je serai `a la rue," meaning "I shall be in the street out of work."? "I still have the words in my ear." cried M. Daladier. "They were spoken in an extremely sharp and irritated tone of voice." Expostulating furiously, M. Chiappe told for the nth time his version of the famous conversation: "M. Daladier phoned me and said: 'Chiappe. I address you as a good citizen and a good Frenchman. I ask you to succeed Marshal Lyautey ' as Governor of Morocco.' "I replied, 'The idea of succeeding Marshal Lyautey fills me with pride, confu-sion--and anguish. But in the present circumstances I cannot quit my post. . . I took office rich. I leave poor. Je serai `a la rue! I will be unhappy, perhaps, but an honest man.' " The problem of the Frot plot all ranged round the meaning of the word equipe. Equipe is a football team, a squad of aviators, the crew of a ship, a Chicago gang and a group of politicians who might form a Cabinet. No one denied that Prefect Chiappe had telephoned M. Daladier and said that Eugene Frot was forming an equipe or that M. Daladier said that he knew all about it. :'But." cried Edouard Daladier, "M. Frot merely intended to organize a government. Between that and the picture of a bodyguard of professional thugs and an organized plot there is an abyss, Messieurs, there is an abyss!"

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