The Fourth R

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  But Paul Brennan was still alive, and he had not forgotten.

  While James was, with astonishing success, building a life for himself inhiding, Brennan did everything he could to find him. That is to say, hedid everything that--under the circumstances--he could afford to do.

  The thing was, the boy had got clean away, without a trace.

  When James escaped for the third, and very successful, time, Brennan washelpless. James had planned well. He had learned from his first twoefforts. The first escape was a blind run toward a predictable objective;all right, that was a danger to be avoided. His second was entirelysuccessful--until James created his own area of danger. Another lessonlearned.

  The third was planned with as much care as Napoleon's deliverance fromthe island.

  James had started by choosing his time. He'd waited until Easter Week.He'd had a solid ten days during which he would be only one of countlessthousands of children on the streets; there would be no slight suspicionbecause he was out when others were in.

  * * * * *

  James didn't go to school that day. That was common; children in thelower grades are often absent, and no one asks a question until theyreturn, with the proper note from the parent. He was not missed anywhereuntil the school bus that should have dropped him off did not. This wasan area of weakness that Brennan could not plug; he could hardly justifythe effort of delivering and fetching the lad to and from school when thepublic school bus passed the Holden home. Brennan relied upon theMitchells to see James upon the bus and to check him off when hereturned. Whether James would have been missed earlier even with apersonal delivery is problematical; certainly James would have had toconcoct some other scheme to gain him his hours of free time.

  At any rate, the first call to the school connected the Mitchells with agrumpy-voiced janitor who growled that teachers and principals had headedfor their hills of freedom and wouldn't be back until Monday Week. Ittook some calling to locate a couple of James Holden's classmates whoasserted that he hadn't been in school that day.

  Paul Brennan knew at once what had happened, but he could not raise animmediate hue-and-cry. He fretted because of the Easter Week vacation; inany other time the sight of a school-aged boy free during school hourswould have caused suspicion. During Easter Week vacation, every schoolboywould be free. James would also be protected by his size. A youngsterwalking alone is not suspect; his folks _must_ be close by. The fact thatit was "again" placed Paul Brennan in an undesirable position. This wasnot the youthful adventure that usually ends about three blocks fromhome. This was a repeat of the first absence during which James had beenmissing for months. People smile at the parents of the child who packshis little bag with a handkerchief and a candy bar to sally forth intothe great big world, but it becomes another matter when the lad of sixleaves home with every appearance of making it stick. So Brennan had toplay it cozy, inviting newspaper reporters to the Holden home to displaywhat he had to offer young James and giving them free rein to questionBrennan's housekeeper and general factotum, the Mitchells. Withhonest-looking zeal, Paul Brennan succeeded in building up a picture thatdepicted James as ungrateful, hard to understand, wilful, and somethingof an intellectual brat.

  Then the authorities proceeded to throw out a fine-mesh dragnet. Theyquestioned and cross-questioned bus drivers and railroad men. They madecontact with the local airport even though its facilities were only usedfor a daisy-cutting feeder line. Posters were printed and sent to alltruck lines for display to the truck drivers. The roadside diners werecovered thoroughly. And knowing the boy's ability to talk convincingly,the authorities even went so far as to try the awesome project of makingcontact with passengers bound out-of-town with young male children intow.

  Had James given them no previous experience to think about, he would havebeen merely considered a missing child and not a deliberate runaway.Then, instead of dragging down all of the known avenues of standardescape, the townspeople would have organized a tree-by-tree search of thefields and woods with hundreds of men walking hand in hand to inspectevery square foot of the ground for either tracks or the child himself.But the _modus operandi_ of young James Holden had been to apply slytouches such as writing letters and forging signatures of adults tocause the unquestioned sale of railroad tickets, or the unauthorized ridein the side-door Pullman.

  Therefore, while the authorities were extending their circle of searchbased upon the velocity of modern transportation, James Holden was makinghis slow way across field and stream, guided by a Boy Scout compass and aU.S. Geodetic Survey map to keep him well out of the reach of roadway ortown. With difficulty, but with dogged determination, he carried a lightcot-blanket into which he had rolled four cans of pork and beans. He hada Boy Scout knife and a small pair of pliers to open it with. He hadmatches. He had the Boy Scout Handbook which was doubly useful; the pagesdevoted to woodsman's lore he kept for reference, the pages wasted on thequalifications for merit badges he used to start fires. He enjoyedsleeping in the open because it was spring and pleasantly warm, andbecause the Boy Scout Manual said that camping out was fun.

  A grown man with an objective can cover thirty or forty miles per daywithout tiring. James made it ten to fifteen. Thus, by the time theorganized search petered out for lack of evidence and manpower--tryasking one question of everybody within a hundred-mile radius--James wasquietly making his way, free of care, like a hardy pioneer looking for ahomestead site.

  The hint of kidnap went out early. The Federal Bureau of Investigation,of course, could not move until the waiting period was ended, but theydid collect information and set up their organization ready to moveinto high speed at the instant of legal time. But then no ransom lettercame; no evidence of the crime of kidnapping. This did not close thecase; there were other cases on record where a child was stolen by adultsfor purposes other than ransom. It was not very likely that a child ofsix would be stolen by a neurotic adult to replace a lost infant, andPaul Brennan was personally convinced that James Holden had enoughself-reliance to make such a kidnap attempt fail rather early in thegame. He could hardly say so, nor could he suggest that James had indeedrun away deliberately and skilfully, and with planned steps worthy of amuch older person. He could only hint and urge the F.B.I. into any actionthat he could coerce them into taking; he did not care how or who broughtJames back just so long as the child was returned to his custody.

  Then as the days wore into weeks with no sign, the files were placedin the inactive drawer. Paul Brennan made contact with a few privateagencies.

  He was stopped here, again, by another angle. The Holdens were by nomeans wealthy. Brennan could not justify the offer of some reward solarge that people simply could not turn down the slim chance ofcollecting. If the missing one is heir to a couple of million dollars,the trustees can justify a reward of a good many thousand dollars for hisreturn. The amount that Brennan was prepared to offer could not compelthe services of a private agency on a full-time basis. The best and themost interested of the agencies took the case on a contingent basis; ifsomething turned their way in the due course of their work they'dimmediately take steps. Solving the case of a complete disappearance onthe part of a child who virtually vanished into thin air would be goodadvertising, but their advertising budget would not allow them to put oneman on the case without the first shred of evidence to point the way.

  If Paul Brennan had been above-board, he could have evoked a lot ofinterest. The search for a six-year-old boy with the educationaldevelopment of a youth of about eighteen, informed through the servicesof an electromechanical device, would have fired public interest,Government intervention, and would also have justified Paul Brennan'sdepth of interest. But Paul Brennan could say nothing about the excellenttraining, he could only hint at James Holden's mental proficiency whichwas backed up by the boy's school record. As it was, Paul Brennan'smost frightful nightmare was one where young James was spotted by someeagle-eyed detective and then in despera
tion--anything being better thanan enforced return to Paul Brennan--James Holden pulled out all the stopsand showed everybody precisely how well educated he really was.

  In his own affairs, Paul still had to make a living, which took up histime. As guardian and trustee of the Holden Estate, he was responsible tothe State for his handling of James Holden's inheritance. The State takesa sensible view of the disbursements of the inheritance of a minor.Reasonable sums may be spent on items hardly deemed necessities to theaverage person, but the ceiling called "reasonable" is a flexible termand subject to close scrutiny by the State.

  In the long run it was Paul Brennan's own indefensible position that madeit impossible to prosecute a proper search for the missing James Holden.Brennan suspected James of building up a bank account under some falsename, but he could not saunter into banks and ask to examine theirrecords without a Court order. Brennan knew that James had not taken offwithout preparation, but the examination of the stuff that James leftbehind was not very informative. There was a small blanket missing andMrs. Mitchell said that it looked as though some cans had been removedfrom the stock but she could not be sure. And in a large collection ofboy's stuff, one would not observe the absence of a Boy Scout knife andother trivia. Had a 100% inventory been available, the list of missingitems would have pointed out James Holden's avenue of escape.

  The search for an adult would have included questioning of banks. No oneknows whether such a questioning would have uncovered the bank-by-mailroutine conducted under the name of Charles Maxwell. It is not a regularthing, but the receipt of a check drawn on a New York bank, issued by apublishing company, and endorsed to be paid to the account of so-and-so,accompanied by a request to open an account in that name might never beconnected with the manipulations of a six-year-old genius, who wasovertly just plain bright.

  And so Paul Brennan worried himself out of several pounds for fearthat James would give himself away to the right people. He cursed thenecessity of keeping up his daily work routine. The hue-and-cry he couldnot keep alive, but he knew that somewhere there was a young boy entirelycapable of reconstructing the whole machine that Paul Brennan wanted sodesperately that he had killed for it.

  Paul Brennan was blocked cold. With the F.B.I. maintaining a hands-offattitude because there was no trace of any Federal crime involved, thecase of James Holden was relegated to the missing-persons files. Itbecame the official opinion that the lad had suffered some mishap andthat it would only be a matter of time before his body was discovered.Paul Brennan could hardly prove them wrong without explaining the wholesecret of James Holden's intelligence, competence, and the certainty thatthe young man would improve upon both as soon as he succeeded inrebuilding the Holden Electromechanical Educator.

  With the F.B.I. out of the picture, the local authorities waiting for thediscovery of a small body, and the state authorities shelving the caseexcept for the routine punch-card checks, official action died. Brennan'savailable reward money was not enough to buy a private agency's interestfull-time.

  Brennan could not afford to tell anybody of his suspicion of JamesHolden's source of income, for the idea of a child's making a living bywriting would be indefensible without full explanation. However, PaulBrennan resorted to reading of magazines edited for boys. Month aftermonth he bought them and read them, comparing the styles of the manywriters against the style of the manuscript copy left behind by James.

  Brennan naturally assumed that James would use a pen name. Writers oftenused pen names to conceal their own identity for any one of severalreasons. A writer might use three or more pen names, each one identifiedwith a known style of writing, or a certain subject or establishedcharacter. But Paul Brennan did not know all there was to know about thepen-name business, such as an editor assigning a pen name to prevent thetoo-often appearance of some prolific writer, or conversely to make onewriter's name seem exclusive with his magazine; nor could Brennan knowthat a writer's literary standing can be kept high by assigning a penname to any second-rate material he may be so unfortunate as to turn out.

  Paul Brennan read many stories written by James Holden under severalnames, including the name of Charles Maxwell, but Brennan'sidentification according to literary style was no better than if he hadtossed a coin.

  And so, blocked by his own guilt and avarice from making use of the legalavenues of approach, Paul Brennan fumed and fretted away four long yearswhile James Holden grew from six to ten years old, hiding under the guiseof the Hermit of Martin's Hill and behind the pleasant adult facade ofMrs. Janet Bagley.