But Paul Brennan was still alive, and he had not forgotten.
While James was, with astonishing success, building a life for himself in
hiding, Brennan did everything he could to find him. That is to say, he
did 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 was
helpless. James had planned well. He had learned from his first two
efforts. The first escape was a blind run toward a predictable objective;
all right, that was a danger to be avoided. His second was entirely
successful--until James created his own area of danger. Another lesson
learned.
The third was planned with as much care as Napoleon's deliverance from
the 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 countless
thousands of children on the streets; there would be no slight suspicion
because he was out when others were in.
* * * * *
James didn't go to school that day. That was common; children in the
lower grades are often absent, and no one asks a question until they
return, with the proper note from the parent. He was not missed anywhere
until the school bus that should have dropped him off did not. This was
an area of weakness that Brennan could not plug; he could hardly justify
the effort of delivering and fetching the lad to and from school when the
public school bus passed the Holden home. Brennan relied upon the
Mitchells to see James upon the bus and to check him off when he
returned. Whether James would have been missed earlier even with a
personal delivery is problematical; certainly James would have had to
concoct some other scheme to gain him his hours of free time.
At any rate, the first call to the school connected the Mitchells with a
grumpy-voiced janitor who growled that teachers and principals had headed
for their hills of freedom and wouldn't be back until Monday Week. It
took some calling to locate a couple of James Holden's classmates who
asserted that he hadn't been in school that day.
Paul Brennan knew at once what had happened, but he could not raise an
immediate hue-and-cry. He fretted because of the Easter Week vacation; in
any other time the sight of a school-aged boy free during school hours
would have caused suspicion. During Easter Week vacation, every schoolboy
would be free. James would also be protected by his size. A youngster
walking alone is not suspect; his folks _must_ be close by. The fact that
it was "again" placed Paul Brennan in an undesirable position. This was
not the youthful adventure that usually ends about three blocks from
home. This was a repeat of the first absence during which James had been
missing for months. People smile at the parents of the child who packs
his little bag with a handkerchief and a candy bar to sally forth into
the great big world, but it becomes another matter when the lad of six
leaves home with every appearance of making it stick. So Brennan had to
play it cozy, inviting newspaper reporters to the Holden home to display
what he had to offer young James and giving them free rein to question
Brennan's housekeeper and general factotum, the Mitchells. With
honest-looking zeal, Paul Brennan succeeded in building up a picture that
depicted James as ungrateful, hard to understand, wilful, and something
of an intellectual brat.
Then the authorities proceeded to throw out a fine-mesh dragnet. They
questioned and cross-questioned bus drivers and railroad men. They made
contact with the local airport even though its facilities were only used
for a daisy-cutting feeder line. Posters were printed and sent to all
truck lines for display to the truck drivers. The roadside diners were
covered thoroughly. And knowing the boy's ability to talk convincingly,
the authorities even went so far as to try the awesome project of making
contact with passengers bound out-of-town with young male children in
tow.
Had James given them no previous experience to think about, he would have
been merely considered a missing child and not a deliberate runaway.
Then, instead of dragging down all of the known avenues of standard
escape, the townspeople would have organized a tree-by-tree search of the
fields and woods with hundreds of men walking hand in hand to inspect
every square foot of the ground for either tracks or the child himself.
But the _modus operandi_ of young James Holden had been to apply sly
touches such as writing letters and forging signatures of adults to
cause the unquestioned sale of railroad tickets, or the unauthorized ride
in the side-door Pullman.
Therefore, while the authorities were extending their circle of search
based upon the velocity of modern transportation, James Holden was making
his slow way across field and stream, guided by a Boy Scout compass and a
U.S. Geodetic Survey map to keep him well out of the reach of roadway or
town. With difficulty, but with dogged determination, he carried a light
cot-blanket into which he had rolled four cans of pork and beans. He had
a Boy Scout knife and a small pair of pliers to open it with. He had
matches. He had the Boy Scout Handbook which was doubly useful; the pages
devoted to woodsman's lore he kept for reference, the pages wasted on the
qualifications for merit badges he used to start fires. He enjoyed
sleeping in the open because it was spring and pleasantly warm, and
because the Boy Scout Manual said that camping out was fun.
A grown man with an objective can cover thirty or forty miles per day
without tiring. James made it ten to fifteen. Thus, by the time the
organized search petered out for lack of evidence and manpower--try
asking one question of everybody within a hundred-mile radius--James was
quietly making his way, free of care, like a hardy pioneer looking for a
homestead 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 they
did collect information and set up their organization ready to move
into high speed at the instant of legal time. But then no ransom letter
came; no evidence of the crime of kidnapping. This did not close the
case; there were other cases on record where a child was stolen by adults
for purposes other than ransom. It was not very likely that a child of
six would be stolen by a neurotic adult to replace a lost infant, and
Paul Brennan was personally convinced that James Holden had enough
self-reliance to make such a kidnap attempt fail rather early in the
game. He could hardly say so, nor could he suggest that James had indeed
run away deliberately and skilfully, and with planned steps worthy of a
much older person. He could only hint and urge the F.B.I. into any action
that he could coerce them into taking; he did not care how or who brought
James 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 placed
in the inactive drawer. Paul Brennan made contact with a few private
agencies.
He was stopped here, again, by another angle. The Holdens were by no
means wealthy. Brennan could not justify the offer of some reward so
large that people simply could not turn down the slim chance of
collecting. 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 his
return. The amount that Brennan was prepared to offer could not compel
the services of a private agency on a full-time basis. The best and the
most interested of the agencies took the case on a contingent basis; if
something turned their way in the due course of their work they'd
immediately take steps. Solving the case of a complete disappearance on
the part of a child who virtually vanished into thin air would be good
advertising, but their advertising budget would not allow them to put one
man 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 of
interest. The search for a six-year-old boy with the educational
development of a youth of about eighteen, informed through the services
of an electromechanical device, would have fired public interest,
Government intervention, and would also have justified Paul Brennan's
depth of interest. But Paul Brennan could say nothing about the excellent
training, he could only hint at James Holden's mental proficiency which
was backed up by the boy's school record. As it was, Paul Brennan's
most frightful nightmare was one where young James was spotted by some
eagle-eyed detective and then in desperation--anything being better than
an enforced return to Paul Brennan--James Holden pulled out all the stops
and showed everybody precisely how well educated he really was.
In his own affairs, Paul still had to make a living, which took up his
time. As guardian and trustee of the Holden Estate, he was responsible to
the State for his handling of James Holden's inheritance. The State takes
a sensible view of the disbursements of the inheritance of a minor.
Reasonable sums may be spent on items hardly deemed necessities to the
average person, but the ceiling called "reasonable" is a flexible term
and subject to close scrutiny by the State.
In the long run it was Paul Brennan's own indefensible position that made
it impossible to prosecute a proper search for the missing James Holden.
Brennan suspected James of building up a bank account under some false
name, but he could not saunter into banks and ask to examine their
records without a Court order. Brennan knew that James had not taken off
without preparation, but the examination of the stuff that James left
behind was not very informative. There was a small blanket missing and
Mrs. Mitchell said that it looked as though some cans had been removed
from the stock but she could not be sure. And in a large collection of
boy's stuff, one would not observe the absence of a Boy Scout knife and
other trivia. Had a 100% inventory been available, the list of missing
items would have pointed out James Holden's avenue of escape.
The search for an adult would have included questioning of banks. No one
knows whether such a questioning would have uncovered the bank-by-mail
routine conducted under the name of Charles Maxwell. It is not a regular
thing, but the receipt of a check drawn on a New York bank, issued by a
publishing 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 be
connected with the manipulations of a six-year-old genius, who was
overtly just plain bright.
And so Paul Brennan worried himself out of several pounds for fear
that James would give himself away to the right people. He cursed the
necessity of keeping up his daily work routine. The hue-and-cry he could
not keep alive, but he knew that somewhere there was a young boy entirely
capable of reconstructing the whole machine that Paul Brennan wanted so
desperately that he had killed for it.
Paul Brennan was blocked cold. With the F.B.I. maintaining a hands-off
attitude because there was no trace of any Federal crime involved, the
case of James Holden was relegated to the missing-persons files. It
became the official opinion that the lad had suffered some mishap and
that it would only be a matter of time before his body was discovered.
Paul Brennan could hardly prove them wrong without explaining the whole
secret of James Holden's intelligence, competence, and the certainty that
the young man would improve upon both as soon as he succeeded in
rebuilding the Holden Electromechanical Educator.
With the F.B.I. out of the picture, the local authorities waiting for the
discovery of a small body, and the state authorities shelving the case
except for the routine punch-card checks, official action died. Brennan's
available reward money was not enough to buy a private agency's interest
full-time.
Brennan could not afford to tell anybody of his suspicion of James
Holden's source of income, for the idea of a child's making a living by
writing would be indefensible without full explanation. However, Paul
Brennan resorted to reading of magazines edited for boys. Month after
month he bought them and read them, comparing the styles of the many
writers against the style of the manuscript copy left behind by James.
Brennan naturally assumed that James would use a pen name. Writers often
used pen names to conceal their own identity for any one of several
reasons. A writer might use three or more pen names, each one identified
with a known style of writing, or a certain subject or established
character. But Paul Brennan did not know all there was to know about the
pen-name business, such as an editor assigning a pen name to prevent the
too-often appearance of some prolific writer, or conversely to make one
writer's name seem exclusive with his magazine; nor could Brennan know
that a writer's literary standing can be kept high by assigning a pen
name to any second-rate material he may be so unfortunate as to turn out.
Paul Brennan read many stories written by James Holden under several
names, including the name of Charles Maxwell, but Brennan's
identification according to literary style was no better than if he had
tossed a coin.
And so, blocked by his own guilt and avarice from making use of the legal
avenues of approach, Paul Brennan fumed and fretted away four long years
while James Holden grew from six to ten years old, hiding under the guise
of the Hermit of Martin's Hill and behind the pleasant adult façade of
Mrs. Janet Bagley.