The main contractor, Robert Brackenridge, had a shanty on the grounds. In it he had an unfinished table, some camp chairs, dozens of tubes containing blueprints, fire extinguishers, first aid kit, a telephone, an army cot, a 16-gauge shotgun, several kerosene lamps, a small oaken filing cabinet, a Pennsylvania Railroad and a Prudential Insurance calendar, a water cooler, a board on which hung numerous tabbed keys, and a two-burner kerosene stove. In this shanty, and nowhere else, was George Lockwood seen to sit down, and workmen in the vicinity could overhear conversations through the screened windows. They learned little except that Lockwood called the contractor Robert, and that he was thoroughly acquainted with the blueprints and the details of the specifications. When a sub-contractor was called to the shanty for a conference, Robert Brackenridge would do all the talking, while George Lockwood, smoking pipe or cigarette, nodded in approval.
For shelter from the summer showers the foremen and workmen had an army mess tent, sides removed, and there they would gather to eat their lunch, sitting on stacks of building materials that also needed protection from the rain. The workmen were from so many different places that the electricians tended to keep with electricians, carpenters with carpenters, but they were united in their baffled curiosity about the man who was footing the bills. These were men with special skills; well paid, independent, quietly proud American artisans, who could do things that George Lockwood could buy but could not do himself. They respected his understanding of their work, and they agreed among themselves that it was better to work for him than for a man who would waste their time in friendly conversation and picky suggestions. They quickly—and accurately—surmised that George Lockwood had made a study of the art of building a good house, and it did not matter to them that they did not like him. In a few months the house would be finished, and they would be off on other jobs, and they would remember him as a man who had treated them right without patronizing them. They would remember the day he killed two copperheads with his cane, the cane that they had thought was only the sign of a dude; and they would remember how he had taken charge when one of the bricklayers had a sunstroke and fell off a scaffolding. He had the bricklayer carried to the shade of the tent, showed the other bricklayers how to rub the man’s wrists and ankles, and got some turpentine from the painters and applied it to the back of the man’s neck. When the man came to, Lockwood made him stay where he was until the doctor arrived from Swedish Haven to examine him for concussion and broken bones. On that occasion there never had been any question as to who was giving orders. “Turpentine. I never heard of that before,” said one of the men. “Where would he find out a thing like that?”
“Where does he find out a lot of things?” said another. “He don’t need Bob Brackenridge. Bob Brackenridge needs him.”
Two days later, when the bricklayer returned to work, George Lockwood looked at him as though he had never seen him before, and quickly turned away as the man came forward to thank him.
In mid-October the house was finished except for certain interior woodwork that was being done by the Italians from New York. The lighting and the plumbing were functioning, and the furnace had been tested and proven satisfactory. The house was ready for occupancy, and Robert Brackenridge returned to Hagerstown with a bonus cheque in his wallet. The Italians were three in number, and their English was scanty. They had not become acquainted with the other workmen, who spoke English or Pennsylvania Dutch, and they looked down on the few Italians in Swedish Haven, who were pick-and-shovel laborers. George Lockwood’s Italian woodworkers wore leathern aprons, but beneath the aprons were waistcoat and trousers, silk shirts, collars and neckties. As soon as the last of the other workmen had departed, the Italians went to work in the room that was to be George Lockwood’s study, and even though they were alone in the house, they kept the study door locked, admitting no one but Lockwood himself.
The room as Brackenridge and his men had left it contained a large fireplace, to one side of which was a large closet door. Brackenridge had suggested another place for the closet, but Lockwood had overruled him. Now the Italians removed the door, cut away the ceiling and flooring of the closet, and installed a winding stairway that started in a closet in George Lockwood’s bedroom, directly above the study, and continued down into the cellar. It was thus possible for George Lockwood to go from his bedroom to the cellar without using the main staircase or the kitchen stairs, and if he wished he could likewise go from his bedroom to his study unseen. The bedroom closet, which Brackenridge had described as enormous, was now reduced in size. The Italians installed a new closet wall, which was a large panel that fitted into grooves and could be rolled up to allow entrance to the hidden stairway. The original closet door in the study was replaced with paneling that matched the rest of the paneling, but it was still a door, hung on invisible hinges and opened by pressing a spring that was disguised as a gargoyle, one of a row of gargoyles that were carved out of the mantelpiece. The door could not be opened accidentally by a touch or a bump; the gargoyle had to be turned like a doorknob and then firmly pushed before the spring would be released. With a few drops of oil once a year, the mechanism would last as long as the house, and George Lockwood expected the house to last two centuries. Egress from the hidden stairway in the cellar was made through a sliding panel similar to the one in George Lockwood’s bedroom. As in the bedroom, this panel was the back wall of a closet, which had been designated in the plans as storage place for old correspondence, receipted bills, cancelled cheques, and the like.
Full of compliments for the craftmanship, and with bonus cheques in their pockets, the Italians put index fingers to their lips and crossed their hearts, shook hands and grinned at George Lockwood, and went back to New York. The house was now almost ready to be shown to Geraldine Lockwood.
George Lockwood had a last look around the house, the four-car garage, and the grounds while it was still daylight on an afternoon in October 1926. Shortly after four-thirty o’clock he got into his little Packard roadster and moved toward the iron gates that now hung in place. Deegan, the temporary watchman from the detective agency, swung open the gates. “Goodnight, Mr. Lockwood,” he said. “See you tomorrow.”
“No, not tomorrow, Deegan,” said George Lockwood. “Tomorrow I’m going to sleep all morning.”
“Well, I take that for a good indication,” said Deegan. “In other words, the job is finished satisfactory?”
“Now it’s all up to Mrs. Lockwood.”
“Well, all I got to say is it’s a feast to the eye. I never seen such a beautiful house in all me life. A real residence, palatial, to my way of thinking. You’ve a right to be real proud, Mr. Lockwood. Real proud.”
“Thank you, Deegan. Goodnight.”
“A veritable dream come true,” said Deegan. “Goodnight again, sir.”
George Lockwood drove in the twilight to his old house in Swedish Haven, where he had been born; a square red brick house that seemed to rise suddenly in the center of a square lawn. He put the car in the horseless stable and walked around to the front door and let himself in. The sounds he had made brought May Freese from the kitchen.
“Any messages, May?”
“No sir, nobody called, and nothing in the afternoon mail.”
“All negative.”
“Only the papers. Where will I bring your tea to?”
“My study, and have we got anything like a piece of cake in the house?”
“We have what’s left of that angel food, you had last night with the ice cream.”