'Thank you, Michael,' he said. 'First of all I want to assure you that I am not, as you may be thinking, your enemy in any way.'
'Well,' I said, 'I'm glad to hear that.' I didn't sound very sure about it.
'Let me speak frankly,' said Mr. Lippincott, 'more frankly than I could do before that dear child to whom I am guardian and of whom I am very fond. You may not yet appreciate it fully, Michael, but Ellie is a most unusually sweet and lovable girl.'
'Don't you worry. I'm in love with her all right.'
'That is not at all the same thing,' said Mr. Lippincott in his dry manner. 'I hope that as well as being in love with her you can also appreciate what a really dear and in some ways very vulnerable person she is.'
'I'll try,' I said. 'I don't think I'll have to try very hard. She's the tops, Ellie is.'
'So I will go on with what I was about to say. I shall put my cards on the table with the utmost frankness. You are not the kind of young man that I should have wished Ellie to marry. I should like her, as her family would have liked her, to marry someone of her own surroundings, of her own set -'
'A lord in other words,' I said.
'No, not only that. A similar background is, I think, to be desired as a basis for matrimony. And I am not referring to the snob attitude. After all, Herman Guteman, her grandfather, started life as a dock hand. He ended up as one of the richest men in America.'
'For all you know I might do the same,' I said. 'I may end up one of the richest men in England.'
'Everything is possible,' said Mr. Lippincott. 'Do you have ambitions that way?'
'It's not just the money,' I said. 'I'd like to – I'd like to get somewhere and do things and -' I hesitated, stopped.
'You have ambitions, shall we say? Well, that is a very good thing, I am sure.'
'I'm starting at long odds,' I said, 'starting from scratch. I'm nothing and nobody and I won't pretend otherwise.'
He nodded approval.
'Very frankly and handsomely said. I appreciate it. Now, Michael, I am no relation to Ellie, but I have acted as her guardian, I am a trustee, left so by her grandfather, of her affairs, I manage her fortune and her investments. And I assume therefore a certain responsibility for them. Therefore I want to know all that I can know about the husband she has chosen.'
'Well,' I said, 'you can make inquiries about me, I suppose, and find out anything you like easily enough.'
'Quite so,' said Mr. Lippincott. 'That would be one way of doing it. A wise precaution to take. But actually, Michael, I should like to know all that I can about you from your own lips. I should like to hear your own story of what your life has been up to now.'
Of course I didn't like it. I expect he knew I wouldn't. Nobody in my position would like that. It's second nature to make the best of yourself. I'd made a point of that at school and onwards, boasted about things a bit, said a few things, stretching the truth a bit. I wasn't ashamed of it. I think it's natural. I think it's the sort of thing that you've got to do if you want to get on. Make out a good case for yourself. People take you at your own valuation and I didn't want to be like that chap in Dickens. They read it out on the television, and I must say it's a good yarn on its own. Uriah something his name was, always going about being humble and rubbing his hands, and actually planning and scheming behind that humility. I didn't want to be like that.
I was ready enough to boast a bit with the chaps I met or to put up a good case to a prospective employer. After all, you've got a best side and a worst side of yourself and it's no good showing the worst side and harping on it. No, I'd always done the best for myself describing my activities up to date. But I didn't fancy doing that sort of thing with Mr. Lippincott. He'd rather pooh-poohed the idea of making private inquiries about me but I wasn't at all sure that he wouldn't do so all the same. So I gave him the truth unvarnished, as you might say.
Squalid beginnings, the fact that my father had been a drunk, but that I'd had a good mother, that she'd slaved a good bit to help me get educated. I made no secret of the fact that I'd been a rolling stone, that I'd moved from one job to another. He was a good listener, encouraging, if you know what I mean. Every now and then, though, I realised how shrewd he was. Just little questions that he slipped in, or comments, some comments that I might have rushed in unguardedly either to admit or to deny.
Yes, I had a sort of feeling that I'd better be wary and on my toes. And after ten minutes I was quite glad when he leaned back in his chair and the inquisition, if you could call it that, and it wasn't in the least like one, seemed to be over.
'You have an adventurous attitude to life, Mr. Rogers – Michael. Not a bad thing. Tell me more about this house that you and Ellie are building.'
'Well,' I said, 'it's not far from a town called Market Chadwell.'
'Yes,' he said, 'I know just where it is. As a matter of fact I ran down to see it. Yesterday, to be exact.'
That startled me a little. It showed he was a devious kind of fellow who got round to more things than you might think he would.
'It's a beautiful site,' I said defensively, 'and the house we're building is going to be a beautiful house. The architect's a chap called Santonix. Rudolf Santonix. I don't know if you've ever heard of him but -'
'Oh yes,' said Mr. Lippincott, 'he's quite a well known name among architects.'
'He's done work in the States I believe.'
'Yes, an architect of great promise and talent. Unfortunately I believe his health is not good.'
'He thinks he's a dying man,' I said, 'but I don't believe it. I believe he'll get cured, get well again. Doctors – they'll say anything.'
'I hope your optimism is justified. You are an optimist.'
'I am about Santonix.'
'I hope all you wish will come true. I may say that I think you and Ellie have made an extremely good purchase in the piece of property that you have bought.'
I thought it was nice of the old boy to use the pronoun 'you'. It wasn't rubbing it in that Ellie had done the buying on her own.
'I have had a consultation with Mr. Crawford.'
'Crawford?' I frowned slightly.
'Mr. Crawford of Reece Crawford, a firm of English solicitors. Mr. Crawford was the member of the firm who put the purchase in hand. It is a good firm of solicitors and I gather that this property was acquired at a cheap figure. I may say that I wondered slightly at that. I am familiar with the present prices of land in this country and I really felt rather at a loss to account for it. I think Mr. Crawford himself was surprised to get it at so low a figure. I wondered if you knew at all why property happened to go so cheaply. Mr. Crawford did not advance any opinion on that. In fact he seemed slightly embarrassed when I put the question to him.'
'Oh well,' I said 'it's got a curse on it.'
'I beg your pardon, Michael, what did you say?'
'A curse, sir,' I explained. 'The gipsy's warning, that sort of thing. It is known locally as Gipsy's Acre.'
'Ah. A story?'
'Yes. It seems rather confused and I don't know how much people have made up and how much is true. There was a murder or something long ago. A man and his wife and another man. Some story that the husband shot the other two and then shot himself. At least that's the verdict that was brought in. But all sorts of other stories go flying about. I don't think anyone really knows what happened. It was a good long time ago. It's changed hands about four or five times since, but nobody stays there long.'
'Ah,' said Mr. Lippincott appreciatively, 'yes, quite a piece of English folklore.' He looked at me curiously.
'And you and Ellie are not afraid of the curse?' He said it lightly, with a slight smile.
'Of course not,' I said. 'Neither Ellie nor I would believe in any rubbish of that kind. Actually it's a lucky thing since because of it we got it cheap.' When I said that a sudden thought struck me. It was lucky in one sense, but I thought that with all Ellie's money and her property and all the rest of it, it couldn't matter to her very much whether she bought a piece of land cheap or at the top price. Then I thought, no, I was wrong. After all, she'd had a grandfather who came up from being a dock labourer to a millionaire. Anyone of that kind would always wish to buy cheap and sell dear.
