"But Doris found something that did prove it?" Jane asked.

Lucky moved his hand in a "so-so" motion. "Maybe. She found some church records that seemed to be of the same family, but they were calling them-selves Romanofsky. This Romanofsky, the Tsar's cousin — if he was the Tsar's cousin at all — died in Holnagrad in 1916 or so — Spanish flu, I think. Doris pieced this together with a ship manifest dated six months later. The ship left Paris, or maybe Lisbon, I don't recall which. On it was a woman calling herself Elsa Roman and her son, Gregor. The Holnagrad princess was named Elsa and their son was named Gregor, so Doris could be right. But there's no proof at all."

"How does all this tie up with Mr. Smith?" Shelley asked, waving at a passing waiter to get some more coffee.

"The ship docked in New York. And just a few months later, in the archives of a Brooklyn, New York, court jurisdiction, a record appeared of a Gregory Ruman or Roman — the handwriting's terrible on the original document — applying for American citizenship and changing his name to Gregory Smith."

"Ah! A Smith at last," Jane said. "But there are a lot of Smiths."

Lucky nodded. "Exactly so. It wouldn't take a genius to come to this country and figure out that the best way to get 'lost' would be to call yourself Smith. And a lot of people have come here wanting or needing desperately to get lost. Anyhow, now workin' back the other way, Bill Smith's father was named Gregory. He was an old mountain man out here, turned up in the early 1920s, and was supposed to speak Russian."

He raised his forefingers and tilted them toward each other. "So Doris worked up one line and down another and figures they match up and are the same person."