Prescott followed his usual routine of a rideshare and a walk to Holly’s apartment. Her text that afternoon had been brief but to the point.

Can you come over for dinner? Exciting news!

Making sure no one was looking, he rang her doorbell and she buzzed him in. She greeted him with a cheery smile.

“You look happy,” he said. “Tell me what’s up.”

“Okay, pour us some wine and I’ll bring out dinner. I ordered Chinese. Then I’ll tell you today’s story.”

She served the food quickly, shoving the piles of books and papers to one end of the dining table to make room for plates, utensils, and half a dozen cardboard containers.

“Alright,” Holly said, “are you ready?”

Prescott used his chopsticks to choose a Peking ravioli and dip it into the ginger sauce. “Can’t wait,” he said.

“Then here goes. Pam came into the lab around three and told George and me that we needed to go to the Director’s office with her for a meeting. She wouldn’t say what it was about and neither of us had a clue what was going on. When we got there, Director DeSilva took over and told us there were rumors that our work with aneurinide couldn’t be reproduced. He said that he wanted to remove any doubts and clear our reputations, so he’d organized a special repeat of the experiments that Mary O’Connor would supervise. If it worked, DeSilva said that he himself would write a letter to Nature confirming our discovery.”

“That’s quite a plan. DeSilva’s trying to stage manage this so that he winds up looking good, whatever the outcome. He either exposes the fraud or he vindicates his faculty member. Not bad. What’d Pam have to say?”

“She didn’t say much during the meeting. Just interjected a couple of times that it was great that DeSilva was so supportive and ready to help confirm our work. But she looked really upset. George was too.”

“Well, whatever she thinks, this is perfect for us.” Prescott smiled. “Is O’Connor going to get the aneurinide directly from the chemical library people?”

Holly nodded. “That’s the plan.”

“Good. So all you have to do is go ahead and do the experiment. It won’t work for either you or George of course, and DeSilva’s plan for a simple confirmation will fall apart. And I can guarantee, he’s not going to be happy. In the meantime, I’ll give O’Connor a friendly but concerned call and let her know that people are beginning to talk about the possibility of fraud. Once DeSilva’s faced with that and the failure of his effort at a repetition, he’ll have no choice but to launch an investigation. When will the experiments be done, do you know?”

“O’Connor already has the drugs and wants us to start the experiments tomorrow. So we’ll have the results in about two weeks.”

“DeSilva’s certainly pushing this, isn’t he? Okay, I’ll call O’Connor in a week or so. That way she’ll get the suggestion of fraud first, and be all set up for when the experiment flops. In the meantime, I’ll make a couple of other calls and start circulating the rumor that DeSilva is running a special repeat of Pam’s experiments, since nobody else can reproduce the work. That’ll turn the heat up even more.”

“Sounds good,” Holly said. “I’m so ready to get out of there and move to your lab. Things are going to get really strange pretty quick.”

“I know, just hang tough a little longer. You have to speak with the investigation committee and leave Pam with the blame. Then it’ll all be done,” Prescott said.

Just not quite the way you think.