“That’s true,” said George. “A George Lockwood answered one time when I was being paged. He was quite insistent that he was as much George Lockwood as I. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘but I happen to know it’s my brother that’s paging me. Does your brother call himself Lockwood too, or did he take something fancier?’ Another time I traveled from Philadelphia to Boston, on the sleeper, with George Lockwood as my porter. Not a very unusual name, I’ve found. Not quite Smith or Brown, but not Saltonstall, either.”
“There are quite a few of them where I come from,” said Hibbard.
“But around here, you see, the only Lockwoods are my Lockwoods, our Lockwoods.” He stopped abruptly, on the verge of confiding in this young man the full details of his plans for his family, now suddenly abandoned. The young man exuded no warmth; it was not the warmth of sympathy that seemed to invite such candor as they had allowed themselves and each other in this interview. Nevertheless George Lockwood, a cerebrating man always, was busily wondering why he was attracted to Hibbard and why Hibbard was attracted to him. George Lockwood theorized, and postponed for later consideration, as to the possibility that Hibbard recognized in him a new but authentic member of the class to which Hibbards belonged.
“It seems a pity that future generations of Lockwoods aren’t going to occupy this house,” said Hibbard. “Although perhaps they will. Who knows? Bing’s son may want to live in the East. It’s of course much too early to tell, one way or the other.”
“I’m not very hopeful of that,” said George. “You’ve given me a very convincing picture of a permanent California family. I’ll have to think about what to do with this place. My brother wouldn’t take at. He’s a New Yorker now, and who else is there?”
“Yes, I see how you could be discouraged. It’s a fine piece of property, built to stay. It’ll be here two hundred years from now. Anyone with half an eye can see that a great deal of careful planning went into it, and no expense spared, inside or out.” He stood up.
“Would you care to have a look around?” said George.
“I should have been on my way before this, but yes, I would like to snoop a bit,” said Hibbard. He smiled. “Those gargoyles, on the mantelpiece, evil-looking little rascals, aren’t they? But amusing.”
“I wonder if I could trust you with a secret. I believe I can. You belong to the Porcellian Club, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“And I suppose other organizations that don’t tell everything that goes on.”
“Oh, yes.”
“Would you be interested in acquiring a secret that only two people would know—you and I?”
“If you’re sure it’d be safe with me. I’m very good at keeping secrets, but you have no way of knowing that.”
“Except my instinct,” said George Lockwood. He went to the study door and turned the key in the lock. “Now, if you’ll put your hand on the second gargoyle from the right.”
“Second from the right,” said Hibbard.
“Turn it as though you were opening a door by the knob.”
“Yes, it turns very easily,” said Hibbard. “Now what happens?”
“Nothing, unless you push the gargoyle.”
“Is that what you want me to do? Push it?”
“Yes,” said George Lockwood.
Hibbard did as instructed and the wall panel rose, revealing the entrance to the hidden stairway. “Great!” said Hibbard. “Where does this go?”
“Upstairs, to a closet in my bedroom, or down to the cellar.”
“Oh, what fun! And nobody knows about it? What about your carpenters?”
“Italians, expert craftsmen imported from New York. They had to know, but it isn’t information that will ever do them any good.”
“Ideally, of course, you would have had them murdered and their bodies sewed up in a sack and dropped in the Grand Canal.”
“Ideally, but our local canal wouldn’t be suitable.”
“And other objections, too. What do you use the stairway for?”
“I haven’t found any use for it as yet. I’m not even sure why I had it put in.”
“Your servants don’t know about it, of course?”
“Not even my wife knows about it.”
“But now I do,” said Hibbard. “Can you close the panel from the inside?”
“Oh, yes. And the gargoyle turns back to normal position.”
“Do you know what it makes me think of?” said Hibbard.
“What?”
“Our boxes at St. Bartholomew’s.”
“That’s exactly where the idea started. When I was at school, I had a box, just like everyone else. But my box was different. I had an old Pennsyvlania Dutch carpenter put a false bottom in my box. I kept money in it.”
“Against all rules,” said Hibbard.
“Yes. But I had cash all the time I was at St. Bartholomew’s. As you see, I’ve always been of a very secretive nature.”
“Well, now I’ll tell you something, Mr. Lockwood. I did the same thing. That is, I had a cache of cash all the time I was at school. Not in my box. When you were there, you weren’t allowed to have any money at all. They of course relaxed that rule somewhat, but we were never allowed more than a dollar and a half a week. I didn’t like that rule, so I disobeyed it for six years.”
“Where did you hide yours?”
“I changed hiding places. One year I had twenty one-dollar bills in old bound volumes of the Congressional Record. Another time I kept my money in a bird-house, in a tree back of the old boilerhouse. I tacked wire screen on the hole to make sure no birds would take up residence in it. Another time I put the money in a Prince Albert tobacco tin and hid it behind the bulletin board in the boathouse, but someone found it. Twenty-five dollars. Then my master stroke. The cleverest bit of deception I ever accomplished. I put the money in an envelope, sealed the envelope, no name on the outside, and just left it in my pigeonhole in the mailbox. Anybody could have taken it away, but nobody ever did. It never aroused anybody’s curiosity. Just a plain, cheap envelope. If it had had my name on it, or any name, it probably would have been a temptation. But it was so uninteresting that nobody ever took it. At least that’s the way I doped it out.”
“Was clever,” said George Lockwood. “Why do you suppose we went to so much trouble? There was nothing to spend the money on, without becoming conspicuous, even in your day.”
“Oh, I know why I did it. It may not be your reason, but mine was to outsmart everybody, the masters and my schoolmates.”
George nodded. “That was mine.”
“Our boxes satisfied our need for privacy. But some of us needed more than privacy.”
“What did we need? What did you need?” said George.
“Privacy beyond privacy. Some boys had a hard time taking a leak when other boys were present. That was never my trouble. But I always had to have something that was particularly, especially my own. At school, it was my hidden treasure.”
“And at college?”
“My flat, the same one I have now. The difference being that at Harvard my family never knew I had it. Now, of course, they do, but it’s still mine. There’s not one thing in it that belongs to anyone else or that was given me by someone else. When I go there, I can shut out the rest of the world.”
“Not that you always do,” said George.
“No. It’s had a lot of visitors, but they all have to go away. I lent it to my brother and his lady friend, and I felt they desecrated it. But then the careless young lady left a cigarette burning and somehow or other the evil spirits were exorcised. I bought the building a year or two ago and my next move will be to buy the houses on either side.”