"He was murdered. Deliberately, and in cold blood."
"It was done by a slow-acting but nonetheless deadly drug that took time to act, but did its job very well.
"There were several other puzzling things that happened that night. Snookums began behaving irrationally. It is the height of coincidence that a robot and a human being should both become insane at almost the same time; therefore we have to look for a common cause."
Lieutenant Commander von Liegnitz raised a tentative hand, and Mike said: "Go ahead."
"I was under the impression that the robot went mad because Mellon had filled him full of theological nonsense. It would take a madman to do anything like that to a fine machine--therefore I see no peculiar coincidence."
"That's exactly what the killer wanted us to think," Mike said. "But it wasn't Mellon that fed Snookums theology. Mellon was a devout churchman; his record shows that. He would never have tried to convert a machine to Christianity. Nor would he have tried to ruin an expensive machine.
"How do I know that someone else was involved?"
He looked at the giant Lieutenant Keku. "Do you remember when we took Mellon to his quarters after he tried to brain von Liegnitz? We found half a bottle of wine. That disappeared during the night--because it was loaded with Lysodine, and the killer didn't want it analyzed.
"But, more important, as far as Snookums is concerned, is that I looked over the books on Mellon's desk that night. There weren't many, and I knew which ones they were. When Captain Quill and I checked Mellon's books after his death, someone had returned his copy of _The Christian Religion and Symbolic Logic_. It had not been there the night before."
"Mike," said Pete Jeffers, "why would anybody here want to kill Lew thataway? What would anybody have against him?"
"That's the sad part about it, Pete. Our murderer didn't even have anything against Mellon. He wanted--and _still_ wants--to kill _me_."
"I'll give it to you piece by piece. The killer wanted no mystery connected with my death. There are reasons for that, which I'll come to in a moment. He had to put the blame on someone or something else.
"His first choice was Snookums. It occurred to him that he could take advantage of the fact that I'm called 'Mike the Angel.' He borrowed Mellon's books and began pumping theology into Snookums. He figured that would be safe enough. Mellon would certainly lend him the books if he pretended an interest in religion; if anything came out afterward, he could--he thought--claim that Snookums got hold of the books without his knowing it. And that sort of muddy thinking is typical of our killer.