there is a thread running throughout the dossier about an appearing and, apparently, disappearing “green ring.” It’s mentioned a number of times, as early as the papers of Meriwether Lewis and as late as the Nixon White House, where Doug Milford himself may have observed it on the left hand of the troubled late president. The wearer is more than a few times described as “worrying” the ring, twisting it on his or her finger, and, more often than not, its appearance presages impending peril, misfortune, or untimely death.

