But as Eve came around the corner, she was startled to find the plantation desolate. Overnight, the trees had been uprooted, the grass singed, the peacocks scattered, and the stables now listed like a ship that had run ashore. Without a living soul in sight, the scene gave an irrefutable impression of abandonment. But when Eve crossed the porch and opened the front door, she found the entrance hall teeming with craftsmen.

Standing halfway up the staircase, a young man gently dented the banister with a ball-peen hammer as his colleague scuffed the treads of the steps with a pumice stone. To Eve’s left, a lanky technician with an elaborate apparatus on his back—like that of an exterminator—was spraying a tainted liquid onto the bright floral wallpaper to create the impression of water stains, while another fellow brushed sepia around a taped-off square to form the ghostly shadow of where a framed work of art once had hung.

Eve passed through the entry into the inner chamber and paused beside a vandalized portrait in order to watch a man in bifocals carefully cracking a mirror with a jeweler’s hammer.

It was all so breathtaking.

Presumably, Selznick imagined that these technicians worked for him—that they followed his instructions and fulfilled his plan like his fitters and gaffers and grips. But Eve could see in an instant that these were a different class of men. Like the archangels, these artisans had come to dismantle the utmost accomplishments of mortal men. Working with at least as much ingenuity as the finest of engineers, they were slowly undoing what pride and ambition, wealth and tradition had assembled with such self-conscious care.

As Selznick had gone on and on about his professional prowess and the artful execution of his films, Eve’s natural inclination had been to dismiss his every word. But, perhaps the megalomaniac had been onto something. Not what he thought he was onto. At least, not exactly. The notion that every little person involved in a picture could ruin it was just plain loony. But maybe there were some—a select few at large among the multitudes—who in the guise of fulfilling the Emperor’s plan could actually play an instrumental role in the grander design of the Great Bamboozler.

—We’re glad to have you on board, Selznick had said to Eve.

And maybe the feeling was mutual.