In daring and ingenuity this remarkable woman surpassed any man I ever knew. Crimes which the cleverest men in the underworld would have declared impossible or too foolhardy to undertake she not only attempted, but carried through to success.
For years the boldest schemes followed one another in rapid succession from Mrs. Gardner's fertile brain. Swindling was as natural to her as breathing is to normal persons. She was the most successful confidence woman who ever operated in England or on the Continent, and no rich man was safe once she got her traps set for him.
I first met Mrs. Gardner in Nice, where I was enjoying a little vacation after a long, arduous bank robbing campaign in America. She was then traveling under the name of Lady Temple.
To make a long story short, we soon became great friends. We went everywhere together and she generously shared with me the luxuries with which she was so plentifully supplied. She finally even induced me to take rooms in the hotel adjoining her own suite.
I did not know at that time that she was Mrs. Gardner, the famous English confidence swindler.
She told me little of her personal affairs except that her husband, Sir Edward Temple, had been a prominent physician in London and that she was in Nice to recover from the shock incident to his sudden death. The deep mourning she habitually wore and the heavy black band on her visiting cards bore out this story, but, to tell the truth, I didn't bother my head much about its truth or falsity.
I did not at that time happen to know that it is the custom in England for a doctor's practice to be sold when he retires from business or dies.
There was no doubt that she had money and that she was giving me a liberal share of its benefits—why should I worry about where it came from or how long it would last?
I, in turn, kept her in equal ignorance of my own past life and of my means of support.
But there was one thing about which I couldn't help being very curious—the number of doctors who were calling at the hotel to see Lady Temple. Every day there was at least one and some days there were three or four—each came alone and the same one seldom appeared a second time.