—Allow me!
Hopping to it like a bellboy at the Ritz, I skipped over to the car and opened the trunk. Setting aside the Louisville Slugger, I took out our book bags, then followed Woolly to the narrow end of the house, where two lines of white-painted stones led to a door.
On the top of the stoop were four overturned flowerpots. No doubt when the raft was on the lake and the rowboats at the dock, they would be planted with whatever sort of flower that WASPs found to be ornamental without being showy.
After peeking under three of the pots, Woolly retrieved a key and unlocked the door. Then showing a decidedly un-Woolly presence of mind, he put the key back where he’d found it before letting us inside.
First, we entered a little room in which cubbyholes, hooks, and baskets held an orderly arrangement of everything you’d need for the great outdoors: coats and hats, rods and reels, bows and arrows. In front of a glass cabinet showcasing four rifles were several large white chairs stacked one on top of the other, having been hauled in from their picturesque spots on the lawn.
—The mudroom, Woolly said.
As if mud had ever found its way onto the shoe of a Wolcott!
Over the gun cabinet there was a big green sign like the one in the barracks at Salina, painted with its own rules and regulations. Most everywhere else on the wall—hanging right up to the ceiling—were dark-red boards in the shape of chevrons with lists painted in white.
—The winners, Woolly explained.
—Of what?
—The tournaments we used to have on the Fourth of July.
Woolly pointed from one to another.
—Riflery, archery, the swim race, the canoe race, the twenty-yard dash.
As I gazed over the boards, Woolly must have thought I was looking for his name because he volunteered that it wasn’t there.
—I’m not very good at winning, he confessed.
—It’s overrated, I assured.
Exiting the mudroom, he led me down the hall, naming rooms as we went.
—The tearoom . . . the billiard room . . . the game closet . . .
Where the hallway ended, it opened into a large living area.
—We call this the great room, said Woolly.
And they weren’t kidding. Like the lobby of a grand hotel, it had six different seating areas with couches and wing-back chairs and standing lamps. There was also a card table topped with baize, and a fireplace that looked like it belonged in a castle. Everything was in its proper place, except for the dark-green rocking chairs huddled by the outside doors.
Seeing them, Woolly seemed disappointed.
—What is it?
—Those really belong on the porch.
—No time like the present.
Setting our bags down and tossing my fedora on a chair, I helped Woolly shuttle the rockers onto the porch, being careful to arrange them, per his instructions, at equal intervals. Once they were all in place, Woolly asked if I wanted to see the rest of the house.
—Absotively, I said, which brought an even bigger smile. I want to see all of it, Woolly. But we can’t forget the reason we’re here. . . .
After looking at me with curiosity for a moment, Woolly put a finger of recognition in the air. Then he led me down the hallway on the other side of the great room and opened a door.
—My great-grandfather’s study, he said.
As we had walked through the house, it seemed laughable I had ever doubted that money could be stashed here. Given the scale of the rooms and the quality of the furnishings, there could have been fifty grand stuffed under a mattress in the maid’s room and another fifty lost among the cushions of the couches. But if the majesty of the house boosted my confidence, that was nothing compared to Great-grandpa’s study. Here was a room of a man who knew not only how to make money, but how to keep it. Which, after all, are two different things entirely.
In some ways, it was like a small version of the great room, with the same wooden chairs, and red rugs, and another fireplace. But there was also a great big desk, bookcases, and one of those little sets of steps that the bookish use to reach the volumes on upper shelves. On one wall was a painting of a bunch of colonial fellows in tight pants and white wigs gathered around a desk. But over the fireplace was a portrait of a man in his late fifties with fair coloring and a handsome, decisive-looking face.
—Your great-grandfather? I asked.
—No, said Woolly. My grandfather.
In a way, I was relieved to hear it. Hanging a portrait of oneself over the fireplace in one’s study didn’t seem a very Wolcotty thing to do.
—It was painted at the time my grandfather took over for my great-grandfather at the paper company. When he died shortly thereafter, my great-grandfather had it moved here.