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three-hundred-pound genius was scant competition for the more conventional applicants. He drifted into the navy, his enlistment the joke of a recruiter about to be discharged. In boot camp, Roger lost weight, but not so much that he did not float successfully across the pool to qualify as a swimmer. Agility was never to be his. In the end, he was allowed to while away his days in the base library.
    On discharge, he became a partner in Phil’s detective agency. There had been wonderful years when they had worked out of Rye, New York, accepting only the most challenging and rewarding of clients. Roger had plenty of time to develop as a scholar and to enter via the Web into learned exchanges with others around the world. It was during a lull in Rye that he had written his monograph on Baron Corvo, which had known a surprising success and led to Father Carmody’s coming to Rye and offering him the Huneker Chair in Catholic Studies.
    â€œBut what would you do?” he asked Phil when his brother urged him to accept.
    â€œDo? I’ll come with you.”
    So he had. The various Notre Dame teams and their home-game schedules enthralled Phil. Or was this something of an act? Did he ever wish that they were back in Rye, considering a potential client’s plea for help?
    When Phil brought Boris Henry back to the apartment after lunch, Roger was the soul of hospitality. “Kansas City. Phil, remember the work we did for David Joseph?”
    â€œRemind me.”
    â€œDavid Joseph?” Henry said. “He’s a client of mine.”
    â€œOf yours?”
    â€œMy old firm represented him,” Henry cried.
    They sorted this out, and Boris Henry could not have been any more surprised to learn of the Knight Brothers Agency than Roger was delighted to learn that their guest was a dealer in rare books. David Joseph had been accused of a murder that Roger had demonstrated had never occurred, thus earning Joseph’s undying gratitude as well as a handsome fee.
    The initial conversation went on like that. How could they seem strangers when they shared so many tertia quid? Phil glanced at Henry, but he seemed to understand Roger.
    â€œI wonder what you have in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish literature.” Roger said.
    â€œI’ll send you my catalog.”
    â€œOne of my interests is Lope de Vega. There has never been an edition of his collected works, and I have been gathering them piecemeal.”
    â€œDo you have a computer?”
    In a trice, Henry and Roger were settled at his computer, and Henry brought up his Web site. There was a listing for the 1614 edition of the Rimas Sacras, and Roger bought it on the spot.
    Back with Phil, Roger mentioned that he was thinking of doing parallel lives of Cervantes, John of the Cross, and de Vega. “Vega was actually ordained a priest, you know.”
    Phil broke in. God only knew where all this was leading. “Boris is interested in John Zahm.”
    â€œOh, we’ve already talked of that, Phil.”
    If Phil had thought this would get them back to more everyday matters, he must have been disappointed. Boris Henry wanted to know what Roger knew of the South American travels of the Holy Cross priest.
    â€œOnly that he made them.”
    â€œI have a theory.”
    Henry’s theory seemed made out of whole cloth. He talked of the conquistadores; he spoke of Spanish gold; he reminded Roger of the anxious years during which it had been a daily effort to keep Notre Dame financially afloat. He had convinced himself that Zahm and Teddy Roosevelt had been in search of hidden Spanish gold.
    â€œThis is just a guess?” Phil asked, his voice indicating what he thought of such speculation.
    â€œMore than a guess. Think of the dome.”
    Notre Dame’s golden dome. Atop the Main Building, which had gone up in 1879, the great dome shone in the daytime sun and, in later years, in nighttime artificial light. It was coated with