"You were enemies."
"Yes, but" Mallory wiped his forehead. "You can't believe I had anything to do with this!"
"Not by your own intention, I am sure," Fraser said. "But I believe you're a Sussex man, sir? Town called Lewes?"
"Yes?"
"Seems that some scores of these pictures have been mailed from the Lewes postal office."
Mallory was stunned. "Scores of them?"
"Mailed far and wide to your Royal Society colleagues, sir. Anonymously."
"Christ in Heaven," Mallory said, "they mean to destroy me!"
Fraser said nothing.
Mallory stared at the morgue picture. Suddenly the simple human pity of the sight struck him, with terrible force. "Poor damned Rudwick! Look what they've done to him!"
Fraser watched him politely.
"He was one of us!" Mallory blurted, stung into angry sincerity. "He was no theorist, but a damned fine bone-digger. My God, think of his poor family!"
Fraser made a note. "Familymust inquire into that. Very likely they've been told you murdered him."
"But I was in Wyoming when Rudwick was killed. Everyone knows that!"
"A wealthy man might hire the business done."
"I'm not a wealthy man."
Fraser said nothing.
"I wasn't," Mallory said, "not then"
Fraser leafed deliberately through his notebook.
"I won the money gambling."
Fraser showed mild interest.
"My colleagues have noticed how I spend it," Mallory concluded, with a chill sensation. "And wondered whence the money came. And they talk about me behind my back, eh?"
"Envy does set tongues wagging, sir."
Mallory felt a sudden giddy dread. Menace filled the air like a cloud of wasps. After a moment, in Fraser's tactful silence, Mallory rallied himself. He shook his head slowly, set his jaw. He would not be mazed or driven. There was work to do. There was evidence at hand. Mallory bent forward with a scowl, and studied the picture fiercely. " 'First of a series,' this says. This is a threat, Mr. Fraser. It implies similar murders to follow. 'A catastrophic dissection.' This refers to our scientific quarrelas if he'd died because of that!"
"Savants take their quarrels very seriously," Fraser said.
"Can you mean to say that my colleagues believe I sent this? That I hire assassins like a Machiavel; that I am a dangerous maniac who boasts of murdering his rivals?"
Fraser said nothing.
"My God," Mallory said. "What am I to do?"
"My superiors have set this case within my purview," Fraser said formally. "I must ask you to trust in my discretion, Dr. Mallory."
"But what am I to do about the damage to my reputation? Am I to go to every man in this building, and beg his pardon, and tell him tell him I am not some hellish ghoul?"
"Government will not allow a prominent savant to be harassed in this manner," Fraser assured him quietly. "Tomorrow, in Bow Street, the Commissioner of Police will issue a statement to the Royal Society, declaring you a victim of malicious slander, and innocent of all suspicion in the Rudwick affair."
Mallory rubbed his beard. "Will that help, you think?"
"If necessary, we will issue a public statement to the daily newspapers, as well."
"But might not such publicity arouse more suspicion against me?"
Fraser shifted a bit in his library chair. "Dr. Mallory, my Bureau exists to destroy conspiracies. We are
not without experience. We are not without our resources. We will not be trumped by some shabby clique of dark-lanternists. We mean to have the lot of these plotters, branch and root, and we will do it sooner, sir, if you are frank with me, and tell me all you know."
Mallory sat back in his chair. "It is in my nature to be frank, Mr. Fraser. But it is a dark and scandalous story."
"You need not fear for my sensibilities."
Mallory looked about at the mahogany shelves, the bound journals, the leather-bound texts and outsized atlases. Suspicion hung in the air like a burning taint. After yesterday's street-assault, the Palace had seemed a welcome fortress to him, but now it felt like a badger's bolthole. "This ain't the place to tell it," Mallory muttered.
"No, sir," Fraser agreed. "But you should go about your scientific business, same as always. Put a bold face on matters, and likely your enemies will think their stratagems failed."
The advice seemed sound to Mallory. At the least, it was action. He rose at once to his feet. "Go about my daily business, eh? Yes, I should think so. Quite proper."
Fraser rose as well. "I will accompany you, sir, with your permission. I trust we will put a sharp end to your troubles."
"You might not think so, if you knew the whole damned business," Mallory grumbled.
"Mr. Oliphant has informed me on the matter."
"I doubt it," Mallory grunted. "He has closed his eyes to the worst of it."
"I'm no bloody politician," Fraser remarked, in his same mild tone. "Shall we be on our way, sir?"
Outside the Palace, the London sky was a canopy of yellow haze.
It hung above the city in gloomy grandeur, like some storm-fleshed jellied man-o'-war. Its tentacles, the uprising filth of the city's smokestacks, twisted and fluted like candle-smoke in utter stillness, to splash against a lidded ceiling of glowering cloud. The invisible sun cast a drowned and watery light.