There have been many matrimonial agency swindlers, but when Madame Guerin, the plump little Frenchwoman with the pleasant and engaging manner, entered that "profession" she introduced new methods into that old form of fraud. She did not hanker after a lot of clients, preferring to find a nice, gullible man with money, scientifically relieve him of it, and then pass on to the next. Her career proved short and exciting, and only by an accident did it fail to wind up with a tragedy. But that was not her fault, for she showed that to obtain a fortune she was capable of running any risk.

It was at Versailles, in the shadow of the old palace, that Madame Guerin, with the assistance of a friend, who was known as Cesbron, but who was really her husband, started her matrimonial agency.

It was no ordinary affair worked from a cheap suite of offices with all the usual appliances of a modern business. Madame Guerin could not be as sordid as that. She was human and sympathetic, and her personality was electric. She had reached that time of life when men found her society agreeable, because a flirtation could not be taken seriously by her. She let them understand that she knew that most men wanted young and pretty wives with fortunes, and that she was in a position to help them to find their ideal.

Her "business premises" took the shape of a pleasant, secluded Villa, beautifully furnished and delightfully managed. It was an honour to be invited to an intimate little dinner at her home, and her invitations were very seldom declined. When it was tactfully whispered that the fair tenant was in the habit of bringing very eligible girls and handsome bachelors together, she quickly found the sort of clients she required.

One of her first victims was a man of good family, who held a remunerative Government post. He was just the type of man who would rather die than enter into negotiations with the average matrimonial agent, but over a recherchÉ meal at the Villa there seemed to be no loss of dignity in half-carelessly discussing his desire to marry a girl of beauty and fortune.

It was then that Madame Guerin revealed talents of a high order as a swindler. She never lost her pose of the smart society woman who was entertaining a friend and talking about his future amid the soft lights and the restful furniture.

When the Government official mentioned that he had about three hundred a year in addition to his salary of about the same amount, Madame Guerin decided that there must be a way of separating him from some of his fortune by persuading him that she was going to add to it.

"I know a very pretty girl," she said languidly, "a dear girl, too, and one who is anxious to marry. She is an orphan, and is bothered by fortune-hunters. She would like to become a gentleman's wife, and as she has five thousand a year derived from first-class securities, it seems to me, my friend, that she would just about suit you."

Five thousand a year! It made his mouth water.

"Where can I meet this delightful lady?" he asked anxiously.

"As she is my dearest friend I could invite her here," she answered, after a moment's pause. "Her name is Miss Northcliffe." "She is English then?" said the official, but there was no disapproval in his tone.

"Her mother was French," said Madame Guerin, who had all the time been watching his face. "Her father was an eminent doctor in London. Miss Northcliffe loves France, and she has often told me she would love to be married to a Frenchman and live all her life in Paris."

The bait took, for the fish rose to it greedily. Thereupon Madame Guerin, feeling she had "landed" him, dropped her pose as hostess and became a matrimonial agent. Of course her expenses would be heavy in connection with the visit of Miss Northcliffe. She would have to furnish a suite of rooms specially for the great English heiress. Then, as he would gain five thousand pounds a year by the introduction, it would not be out of place if he paid something in advance. Madame Guerin guaranteed success, and so forth. He believed every word.

"You and my dear girl friend will be thrown together for days," she said, in a confidential tone. "I'll invite no one else here, and it'll be your own fault if you don't win her. But you must send me one of your photographs to-night, and I will show it to her the moment she arrives. She is a very impressionable, impulsive girl, and I am certain she will fall in love with your picture."

Most men will believe a woman's flattery, and in the case of this French official he swallowed Madame Guerin's with avidity. It seemed to him he was on the road to riches, and he scarcely hesitated to send not only the photograph but a preliminary fee of a hundred pounds.

If he was disturbed by doubts during the succeeding days, they were set at rest when an invitation arrived to meet Miss Northcliffe at dinner at the cosy Villa. He was, as he admitted afterwards, almost crazy with delight. The heiress was a reality. Madame Guerin had not been "pulling his leg" after all. Had she asked him for a thousand pounds there and then he would probably have paid it without a murmur.

The dinner was a brilliant success from start to finish. Never before had he met such a charming, unaffected girl. A typical English beauty with fair hair, a peach-like skin and dark grey eyes, who dressed exquisitely, and spoke French with a fascinating accent. Her reserve, too, was perfectly enchanting. She did not gush or chatter, and during the greater part of the dinner she hardly uttered a word, but towards the end she became animated.

"She said she would wait until she had made up her mind about you before becoming friendly," whispered Madame Guerin at the first opportunity.

He thrilled with pleasure and turned to resume his conversation with Miss Northcliffe; and when he left the Villa close on midnight his brain was in a whirl.

Miss Northcliffe had plainly shown her preference for him, and he was in love with her. He was an expert on old engravings and modern poetry, and she had, wonderful to relate, revealed a knowledge of those two subjects which, though not profound, proved that she would be an ideal collaborator when they were married.

And then her dress! It was a dream, an exquisite creation that might have been made out of angels' wings. The pearl necklace the English heiress had worn was worth twenty thousand pounds. At least, Madame Guerin said so, and she ought to know, because she had some famous pearls herself. He lay awake most of the night exulting over his good fortune, and early the following morning rushed off to Versailles to take Miss Northcliffe for a motor drive.

A week later Madame Guerin suggested that he should propose, but she warned him that the girl was suspicious of fortune-hunters and that he must prove to her that he was not a needy vagabond marrying to be kept.

He laughed at the notion, but he took it seriously all the same, and when Miss Northcliffe modestly and blushingly accepted his offer of marriage he impulsively asked to be tested as to his means.

But Miss Northcliffe preferred to leave that to her dear friend and guardian, Madame Guerin, and the latter thereupon suggested that he should realize a couple of thousand pounds and settle it right away on Miss Northcliffe, who was, of course, equally willing to supply evidence that her fortune was not a myth.

The infatuated man declined to doubt his fiancÉe for a moment, and the two thousand pounds were in the possession of Madame Guerin two days later. She received the money with a congratulatory smile, and told him to call again the following Sunday and fix the date for the wedding.

There were four days to Sunday, and how he passed them he never knew. Certainly he was a very inefficient public servant during that time, for his mind was concentrated on the beauty and fortune of the lovely English girl who was about to become his wife. When Sunday came round he was up at dawn, and two hours before he was due to start for Versailles he was hatted and gloved.

The Villa looked very inviting as he walked up to it and pulled the old-fashioned bell. A long pause ensued, and then the fat cook opened the door and breathlessly informed him that Madame was resting in her room but would be down in a few minutes. He expressed his regrets, but when he was in the drawing-room he began to feel that there was something wrong. The atmosphere depressed him, and he had to reprove himself audibly for being morbid to prevent a fit of pessimism overwhelming him.

He was staring through the window when Madame Guerin entered, very pale and dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. In great alarm he rushed to her side. What had happened? Where was Miss Northcliffe? Was she ill? A dozen questions tumbled over one another, and all the time the plump little widow tried to control her sobs.

"Oh, monsieur," she exclaimed, with a piteous expression, "how shall I break the news? I am distracted, desolate! Miss Northcliffe—she has gone—disappeared. I know not where. She may be kidnapped or she may have run away. I am too distracted to be able to think. It is all dreadful and—" A flood of tears completed the sentence.

In vain he implored her to tell him plainly what had happened. The result was that he left the Villa aware that he had lost his two thousand pounds and dimly suspicious of Madame Guerin, although she had sworn that Miss Northcliffe had taken away every penny of it, and, indeed, owed a goodly sum to her.

Further reflection convinced him that he had been swindled, and he began to think of appealing to the police, but at forty-five one does not do things in a hurry, and he was not the person to court ridicule. He had walked into the trap open-eyed, and if his colleagues in the Government service heard the story of the "English heiress" they would make his life a misery with their vulgar chaff. So beyond another visit to the Versailles Villa to inquire if Miss Northcliffe had returned he took no steps to recover his losses.

The next exploit was even more subtle. Some one introduced a well-to-do Parisian of the name of LalÈre to Madame Guerin along with the information that he was on the look-out for a wealthy wife. As Monsieur LalÈre had a comfortable bank balance of his own she enthusiastically agreed to provide him with a bride, and when she learnt that he was partial to an English girl her delight was boundless. On this occasion the Versailles Villa was not utilized as the stage for the little comedy. She decided to vary her methods, and she started by going to London and putting up at a fashionable hotel. The two thousand pounds extracted from the Government official came in very handy, as even in London one can live quite a long time in an expensive hotel on that amount.

Shortly after her arrival LalÈre came at her invitation. Madame Guerin was, of course, fashionably dressed and apparently busy all day calling upon the leading members of the English aristocracy. She could not give him more than a few minutes one afternoon, and when he expressed disappointment she promised to do her best when she had fulfilled her social obligations. She mentioned glibly that she was dining that night with Mrs. Asquith, whose husband was then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and that the day after she was lunching with "the Crewes."

The Frenchman was greatly impressed by these lies, and he therefore appreciated all the more her spontaneous invitation to him to accompany her to the opera the following Monday evening. It seemed that a friend of hers had been called out of town and that her stall was vacant. Madame Guerin added that she hoped to be able to introduce LalÈre to some English heiresses between the acts.

Monday night found Madame Guerin and Monsieur LalÈre seated in the stalls at the Covent Garden Theatre. Just before the curtain went up the woman indicated a private box wherein three young ladies, beautifully dressed, were sitting.

"Three friends of mine and all rich, monsieur," she said confidentially. "You can have your choice. Let me know the one you prefer. They will be guided entirely by my advice."

Of course after that LalÈre had no eyes for the stage, and some of the greatest singers in the world failed to engage his attention. His eyes were always wandering to the box where the three English beauties were, and he studied their appearances carefully. Eventually his choice alighted upon the girl in the centre, whose name was, Madame Guerin informed him, Miss Northcliffe.

Thus once more the mysterious Miss Northcliffe appeared on the scene, and again she found a Frenchman who was mesmerized by her beauty and her reputed fortune. All the acting that night at Covent Garden was not behind the footlights. Both Madame Guerin and Miss Northcliffe could have given points to many of the professionals.

That the girl who acted as the matrimonial agent's decoy was clever and educated there can be no doubt. She could speak French fluently, and she had a first-rate knowledge of the world. She had been able to talk intelligently to the authority on old engravings and modern poetry, and now she charmed LalÈre by her acquaintance with the subjects that interested him.

The sequel was that LalÈre paid Madame Guerin fifteen hundred pounds on the understanding that she was to bring about a match between himself and Miss Northcliffe. But no sooner had he parted with the money than the "heiress" vanished, greatly to Madame Guerin's distress and LalÈre's annoyance; and all he had to show for his expenditure was a cynical and bitter contempt for women-folk in general.

Success made Madame Guerin avaricious. She began to crave for a large fortune, and she believed that she was clever enough to gain it at one stroke. Experience had proved that it was easy enough to open a man's purse with a story of a rich bride, and her victims took their disappointment so calmly that there was no danger of retribution. Perhaps the sight of wealthy London fired her imagination. Anyhow, she immediately began to look round for a suitable dupe there. It was, however, necessary to have her husband's help. As she pretended to be a widow, she called him her friend, and it was as Monsieur Cesbron that she introduced him to her friends and acquaintances. Hitherto Cesbron had wisely kept in the background, an admiring spectator from afar of his wife's astuteness, and no doubt he shared in the little windfalls from the Government official and LalÈre.

He was not averse to taking a leading part in the next big swindle, and it was Cesbron who found the very man for their purpose. Through a friend he had heard that in the West End of London there was a doctor who had saved a considerable sum of money, and who was in every way a very eligible bachelor.

The initial difficulty was how to make themselves known to him, but Madame Guerin solved the problem by planning a pretty little scheme. She might have called on the doctor in the guise of a patient, but she decided not to do this lest he discovered there was nothing the matter with her.

Her final plan was to pretend that she had invented a new method of sterilizing milk, and that she wished to have a doctor's opinion of its merits.

Madame Guerin underrated her abilities, for, as events proved, she need not have bothered about the "invention." The doctor was pleased to make the acquaintance of the charming widow, and she soon had every opportunity for dragging in references to her rich young lady friends who were anxious to find husbands.

The medical man was incredulous at first, then curious, and eventually impressed. Madame Guerin did not look like a swindler or talk in the manner of a professional matrimonial agent. She was too human for that, and there was nothing of the hard-headed business woman about her.

The doctor readily agreed to join her at a dinner-party and meet the young heiresses, and choose which of them he would care to marry.

The meeting took place at an hotel, and on this occasion Miss Northcliffe failed to win his approval. A young lady whose name was given as Miss Smith gained his vote.

Miss Smith was a beauty, vivacious, clever, and fascinating. When he was persuaded to believe that she had a large fortune, the doctor considered himself the luckiest man in the world.

The girl, one of Madame Guerin's cutest confederates, was equally as good an actress as Miss Northcliffe, and, shrewd man of the world as the doctor was, she had no difficulty in persuading him that he had captured her maiden fancy.

Now, as I have said, the doctor was not a penniless adventurer. He was a prosperous professional man, with a good position and a consoling balance at his bankers, the CrÉdit Lyonnais. Apart from the somewhat unconventional means by which they had become acquainted, the engagement was, on the surface, nothing remarkable. Miss Smith was obviously well educated, and fit to preside over the doctor's home. They were, therefore, of equal social position.

Madame Guerin was, of course, the brains of the affair, and only the "spade work" was left to her husband. It was she who decided when she and Miss Smith should leave London on the plea that they had to keep engagements in France, and it was she who instructed Miss Smith to agree to her fiancÉ's request that she should name the day.

The two women left for Paris the day before Cesbron, but they only stopped a day at the capital before they proceeded to the Villa the swindler had rented in the vicinity of Fontainebleau. It was situated in a very lonely spot, and Madame Guerin and Cesbron had taken it because they had decided to murder the doctor and obtain his fortune. They had already endeavoured to get the doctor to transfer his account to the Paris bank which they said looked after Miss Smith's immense fortune; but he declined to effect the change. However, they were not disheartened. If they were equal to killing the doctor they were also capable of forging a claim to his money at the CrÉdit Lyonnais.

The marriage was fixed to take place in the second week in November, 1906, and early in the same month Madame Guerin invited the doctor to spend a few days at her Villa before he became the husband of the heiress. He was very busy just then, but, of course, he was most anxious to see his friends, and he accepted the invitation, and in due course arrived at the isolated house.

If he had not been absorbed in his forthcoming marriage, the doctor would hardly have found the place attractive at that time of the year. Of course, Madame Guerin was always interesting, and she was a perfect hostess. There were good points about her friend Cesbron, too, and, with the excitement of the engagement, the flattery of his hostess, and the attentions of Cesbron, the doctor was never dull.

He could never be expected to believe that the woman with the plump, smiling face and the sympathetic eyes had planned his murder, or that Cesbron, her husband, was merely waiting for the proper moment to "remove" him.

One afternoon Madame Guerin and the doctor were chatting in the front room, when Cesbron drove up in a cart with a huge, iron-bound trunk.

"Is our friend going to be married too?" he asked jocularly.

Madame Guerin's eyes glinted, but her lips parted in a smile.

"Oh, he is always buying clothes," she said indifferently, "and he likes to keep them clean and dry when travelling. He told me yesterday he had ordered a new trunk. It is a hobby of his." The truth was that that trunk had been purchased to hold the doctor's corpse!

There was quite a little party at the Villa that night, and all the time the huge box was waiting in the next room for its victim. The visitor had no suspicion that anything was wrong. He knew by now that Madame Guerin would expect a commission for having introduced him to the great heiress, but he thought none the less of her for that. Cesbron, too, was respectful and attentive, and all appeared to be looking forward with intense satisfaction to the marriage celebration. Miss Smith was not, of course, at the Villa. She was now in Paris selecting her trousseau, and her fiancÉ had to be content with a charming little love-letter which came to him every morning.

The day before the one fixed for the tragedy Cesbron and the doctor happened to be in the little garden, when the former playfully started a discussion as to their respective physical conditions, and before long the two men had agreed to a friendly wrestling match to see which of them was the stronger.

To Cesbron's surprise and annoyance, he discovered that the doctor was by far the better of the two. This put him out, for it meant that he would have to resort to fire-arms to achieve his object—the murder of the guest.

Cesbron did not like using a revolver. It made a lot of noise, and, lonely as the Villa was, there was always the danger that some one might be passing at the moment of the crime. However, the risk had to be taken. He knew now for certain that he was quite incapable of seizing the doctor by the throat and strangling him, and that if it came to a fight he would be no match for his opponent.

On November 9, 1906, the doctor was alone writing a letter in the drawing-room. The house was very quiet, and he was under the impression that Madame Guerin and Cesbron had gone out. At this time of the year it was dark at half-past four, and the doctor wrote leisurely, pausing occasionally to improve a phrase before committing it to writing.

Suddenly an explosion seemed to take place in the room, and simultaneously he felt something sting him. The next moment he knew that a bullet had passed into his neck behind his left ear, cutting through the tongue and soft palate, and breaking several teeth.

But the wound was not sufficient to prevent his rising and confronting Cesbron, who was standing near the door with a smoking revolver in his hand. Only for a fraction of a second did the two men pause. Then the injured man made a dash at Cesbron, who, recalling his playful encounter of the day before, took to flight, well aware that he would be helpless if the doctor got his fingers round his throat.

When Cesbron sped into the darkness the doctor made his way out of the house and into the garden, stumbling towards the gate. To his surprise this was locked. Evidently the conspirators had not forgotten anything.

There was nothing for him to do now but to try and climb over the wall, and he succeeded in getting his head above the top, but immediately it was silhouetted against the sky another shot was fired, and for the second time he was hit. He fell back into the garden, where, thanks to the darkness and the shelter of the bushes, he was able to remain concealed until the morning, when he crawled to the police station at Fontainebleau, and told the story of the attack on him at the Villa.

The police took the doctor to the local hospital, and then went in search of Madame Guerin who, when arrested, thought to avenge herself by swearing that the doctor was her accomplice. She lied so skilfully that she persuaded the police to detain him for a time, but in the long run the truth was discovered, and it was proved that the doctor was merely another of her dupes.

A strange feature of the case was the disappearance of Cesbron. The police and detective force of France searched for him everywhere, but he was never seen, and the same lack of success was experienced when the authorities became anxious to make the acquaintance of the English heiresses, Miss Smith and Miss Northcliffe. Not a trace of them could be found, and this was very fortunate for Madame Guerin, because, when she was brought up for trial in July, 1907, she could pose as a poor woman who was being prosecuted whilst her partners were allowed to go free owing to the incompetence of the authorities.

The jury took a lenient view of her swindles, ignoring the charge of attempted murder, because it was undoubtedly Cesbron who had fired the two shots at the doctor, and without his presence in the dock it was impossible to tell exactly what part the female prisoner took in the final tragedy. But that she was a very dangerous adventuress and swindler was obvious, and everybody was surprised when the judge passed sentence of three years' imprisonment only.

Her face lit up with joy. She had been afraid that it would have been at least ten years. Three years! Why, it was worth running such a bogus matrimonial agency if that was the only punishment.

It is the French custom to sentence any accused person who fails to answer the charge in person, and Cesbron was ordered two years' hard labour. He did not, however, oblige the prosecution by appearing and undergoing his punishment, and from that day to this nothing has been seen or heard of him.