The Saudi heir and his friends in the White House evidently calculated that the outcry over the barbarous murder of Jamal Khashoggi would die out over time, and that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman would be free to continue on his autocratic way, repressing critics and dissidents with impunity. They were wrong.

More than four months have passed since Mr. Khashoggi was savagely throttled and dismembered in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul and then discarded, but the bald lies told by the Saudi government to protect the prince — including the attempt to pin the murder on 11 anonymous Saudis, of whom five are said to face execution — and the cynical argument by President Trump that Saudi largesse is more important than justice, have only intensified demands for a full reckoning.

The latest have come from American intelligence agencies, a United Nations investigator and a coalition of nongovernmental organizations, sources that in their diversity and breadth should serve notice on Prince Mohammed that all his oil wealth and powerful friends will not wash away the blood of the slain journalist.

A report in The Times on Thursday said the National Security Agency and other American spy agencies have uncovered an intercepted conversation in which Prince Mohammed tells a top aide more than a year before Mr. Khashoggi’s murder that if the self-exiled journalist cannot be enticed back to Saudi Arabia, he should be brought back by force. And if that didn’t work, the prince is heard to say, he would go after Mr. Khashoggi “with a bullet.”