“I hate to say this, Mr. Seagram, but I think we’ve got two different men here.”

“I think perhaps you’re right,” Seagram replied. “It looks as though I might be on the wrong track.”

“If I can be of any further help, please don’t hesitate to call me.”

“I’ll do that,” Seagram grunted. “Thanks again.”

After he hung up, he dropped his head in his hands and slouched in the chair. He sat that way not moving for perhaps two full minutes. Then he laid his hands on the desk and smiled a wide, smug grin.

Two different men very well could have existed with the same surname and birth year who worked in the same state at the same occupation. That part of the puzzle might have been a coincidence. But not the connection, the glorious 365-to-l long shot connection that mysteriously tied the two men together and made them one; Hobart’s recorded death and the old newspaper found by Sid Koplin in the Bednaya Mountain mine bore the same date November 17, 1911.

He pushed the intercom switch for his secretary. “Barbara, put through a call to Mel Dormer at the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver.”

“Any message if he isn’t in?”

“Just leave word for him to call me on my private line when he returns.”

“Shall do.”

“And one more thing, book me on United’s early morning flight tomorrow to Los Angeles.”

“Yes, sir.”

He clicked the switch to off and leaned back in the chair thoughtfully. Adeline Hobart, over ninety years old. He hoped to God she wasn’t senile.

<<13>>

Donner didn’t normally stay in a downtown hotel. He preferred the more inconspicuous setting of a garden variety motel closer to the suburbs, but Seagram had insisted on the grounds that local cooperation comes more easily to an investigator when he lets it be known that he has a room in the city’s oldest and most prestigious building. Investigator, the word nauseated him. If one of his fellow professors on the University of Southern California campus had told him five years ago that his doctorate in physics would lead him to play such a clandestine role, he’d have choked laughing. Donner wasn’t laughing now. The Sicilian Project was far too vital to the country’s interests to risk a leak through outside help. He and Seagram had designed and created the project on their own, and it was agreed that they’d take it as far as they could alone.

He left his rented Plymouth with the parking attendant and walked across Tremont Place, through the hotel’s old-fashioned revolving doors, and into the pleasantly ornate lobby, where the young mustachioed assistant manager gave him a message without so much as a smile. Donner took it without so much as a thank you, then made his way to the elevators and his room.

He slammed the door and threw the room key and Seagram’s message on the desk and turned on the television. It had been a long and tiresome day, and his bodily systems were still operating on Washington, D.C. time. He dialed room service and ordered dinner, then kicked off his shoes, loosened his tie, and sagged onto the bed.