He kept this fact secret, especially from his wife, and to the outside world presented a façade of implacable calm that was exhausting to maintain. He dismissed the most important men Mr. Dermont had hired, engaged new builders, watched over them closely, and summoned from Lucerne the maître d’hôtel of his establishment there who took the training of the staff in hand. A spirit of terrified industry took hold of the site at the bottom of the Central Park, but each small triumph was succeeded by a greater disaster. Ten days before the scheduled opening a fire destroyed a third of the kitchen. Forty-eight hours later, a cistern in the maids’ bedrooms on the top floor exploded, leaving seventeen rooms uninhabitable. Maarten cabled to Amsterdam for money. He promised favorable terms and deposited $500,000 in the vaults of the Knickerbocker Trust Company, from which he hoped to elicit a further million dollars in credit. His own deposits were sufficient to keep the project afloat while the trust company deliberated, but he would soon need more.
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