In his years of searching, Paul Brennan had followed eleven fruitless
leads. It had cost him over thirteen hundred dollars and he was prepared
to go on and on until he located James Holden, no matter how much it
took. He fretted under two fears, one that James had indeed suffered a
mishap, and the other that James might reveal his secret in a dramatic
announcement, or be discovered by some force or agency that would place
the whole process in hands that Paul Brennan could not reach.
The registered letter from Tim Fisher culminated this six years of
frantic search. Unlike the previous leads, this spoke with authority,
named names, gave dates, and outlined sketchily but adequately the
operations of the young man in very plausible prose. Then the letter went
on in the manner of a man with his foot in a cleft stick; the writer did
not approve of James Holden's operations since they involved his wife and
newly-adopted daughter, but since wife and daughter were fond of James
Holden, the writer could not make any overt move to rid his household of
the interfering young man. Paul Brennan was asked to move with caution
and in utter secrecy, even to sending the reward in cash to a special
post-office box.
Paul Brennan's reaction was a disappointment to himself. He neither felt
great relief nor the desire to exult. He found himself assaying his own
calmness and wondering why he lacked emotion over this culmination of so
many years of futile effort. He re-read the letter carefully to see if
there were something hidden in the words that his subconscious had
caught, but he found nothing that gave him any reason to believe that
this letter was a false lead. It rang true; Brennan could understand Tim
Fisher's stated reaction and the man's desire to collect. Brennan even
suspected that Fisher might use the reward money for his own private
purpose.
It was not until he read the letter for the third time that he saw the
suggestion to move with caution and secrecy not as its stated request to
protect the writer, but as an excellent advice for his own guidance.
And then Paul Brennan realized that for six years he had been
concentrating upon the single problem of having James Holden returned to
his custody, and in that concentration he had lost sight of the more
important problem of achieving his true purpose of gaining control of the
Holden Educator. The letter had not been the end of a long quest, but
just the signal to start.
Paul Brennan of course did not give a fig for the Holden Estate nor the
welfare of James. His only interest was in the machine, and the secret of
that machine was locked in the young man's mind and would stay that way
unless James could be coerced into revealing it. The secret indubitably
existed as hardware in the machine rebuilt in the house on Martin's Hill,
but Brennan guessed that any sight of him would cause James to repeat his
job of destruction. Brennan also envisioned a self-destructive device
that would addle the heart of the machine at the touch of a button,
perhaps booby-traps fitted like burglar alarms that would ruin the
machine at the first touch of an untrained hand.
Brennan's mind began to work. He must plan his moves carefully to acquire
the machine by stealth. He toyed with the idea of murder and rejected it
as too dangerous to chance a repeat, especially in view of the existence
of the rebuilt machine.
Brennan read the letter again. It gave him to think. James had obviously
succeeded in keeping his secret by imparting it to a few people that he
could either trust or bind to him, perhaps with the offer of education
via the machine, which James and only James maintained in hiding could
provide. Brennan could not estimate the extent of James Holden's
knowledge but it was obvious that he was capable of some extremely
intelligent planning. He was willing to grant the boy the likelihood of
being the equal of a long and experienced campaigner, and the fact that
James was in the favor of Tim Fisher's wife and daughter meant that the
lad would be able to call upon them for additional advice. Brennan
counted the daughter Martha in this planning program, most certainly
James would have given the girl an extensive education, too. Everything
added up, even to Tim Fisher's resentment.
But there was not time to ponder over the efficiency of James Holden's
operations. It was time for Paul Brennan to cope, and it seemed sensible
to face the fact that Paul Brennan alone could not plot the illegal
grab of the Holden Educator and at the same time masquerade as the
deeply-concerned loving guardian. He could label James Holden's little
group as an organization, and if he was to combat this organization he
needed one himself.
Paul Brennan began to form a mental outline of his requirements. First he
had to figure out the angle at which to make his attack. Once he knew the
legal angle, then he could find ruthless men in the proper position of
authority whose ambitions he could control. He regretted that the elder
Holden had not allowed him to study civil and criminal law along with his
courses in real estate and corporate law. As it was, Brennan was unsure
of his legal rights, and he could not plan until he had researched the
problem most thoroughly.
To his complete surprise, Paul Brennan discovered that there was no law
that would stay an infant from picking up his marbles and leaving home.
So long as the minor did not become a ward of responsibility of the
State, his freedom was as inviolable as the freedom of any adult. The
universal interest in missing-persons cases is overdrawn because of their
dramatic appeal. In every case that comes to important notice, the
missing person has left some important responsibilities that had to be
satisfied. A person with no moral, legal, or ethical anchor has every
right to pack his suitcase and catch the next conveyance for parts
unknown. If he is found by the authorities after an appeal by friends or
relatives, the missing party can tell the police that, Yes he did leave
home and, No he isn't returning and, furthermore he does not wish his
whereabouts made known; and all the authorities can report is that the
missing one is hale, happy, and hearty and wants to stay missing.
Under the law, a minor is a minor and there is no proposition that
divides one degree of minority from another. Major decisions, such as
voting, the signing of binding contracts of importance, the determination
of a course of drastic medical treatment, are deemed to be matters that
require mature judgment. The age for such decisions is arbitrarily set at
age twenty-one. Acts such as driving a car, sawing a plank, or buying
food and clothing are considered to be "skills" that do not require
judgment and therefore the age of demarcation varies with the state and
the state legislature's attitude.
James was a minor; presumably he could repudiate contracts signed while a
minor, at the time he reached the age of twenty-one. From a practical
standpoint, however, anything that James contracted for was expendable
and of vital necessity. He could not stop payment on a check for his
rent, nor claim that he had not received proper payment for his stories
and demand damages. Paul Brennan might possibly interfere with the smooth
operation by squawking to the bank that Charles Maxwell was a phantom
front for the minor child James Holden. And bankers, being bankers, might
very well clog up the operation with a lot of questions. But there was
the possibility that James Holden, operating through the agency of an
adult, would switch his method. He could even go so far as to bring
Brennan to lawsuit to have Brennan stopped from his interference. Child
or not, James Holden had been running a checking account by mail for a
number of years which could be used as evidence of his good faith and
ability.
Indeed, the position of James Holden was so solid that Brennan could only
plead personal interest and personal responsibility in the case for
securing a writ of habeas corpus to have the person of James Holden
returned to his custody and protection. And this of itself was a bit on
the dangerous side. A writ of habeas corpus will, by law, cause the
delivery of the person to the right hands, but there is no part of the
writ that can be used to guarantee that the person will remain
thereafter. If Brennan tried to repeat this program, James Holden was
very apt to suggest either the rather rare case of Barratry or
Maintenance against Brennan. Barratry consists of the constant harassment
of a citizen by the serial entry of lawsuit after lawsuit against him,
each of which he must defend to the loss of time and money--and the tying
up of courts and their officials. Maintenance is the re-opening of the
same suit and its charges time after time in court after court. One need
only be sure of the attitude of the plaintiff to strike back; if he is
interested in heckling the defendant and this can be demonstrated in
evidence, the heckler is a dead duck. Such a response would surely damage
Paul Brennan's overt position as a responsible, interested, affectionate
guardian of his best friends' orphaned child.
Then to put the top on the bottle, James Holden had crossed state lines
in his flight from home. This meant that the case was not the simple
proposition of appearing before a local magistrate and filing an
emotional appeal. It was interstate. It smacked of extradition, and James
Holden had committed no crime in either state.
To Paul Brennan's qualifications for his henchmen, he now added the need
for flouting the law if the law could not be warped to fit his need.
Finding a man with ambition, with a casual disregard for ethics, is not
hard in political circles. Paul Brennan found his man in Frank Manison,
a rising figure in the office of the District Attorney. Manison had
gubernatorial ambitions, and he was politically sharp. He personally
conducted only those cases that would give him ironclad publicity; he
preferred to lower the boom on a lighter charge than chance an acquittal.
Manison also had a fine feeling for anticipating public trends, a sense
of the drama, and an understanding of public opinion.
He granted Brennan a conference of ten minutes, and knowing from long
experience that incoming information flows faster when it is not
interrupted, he listened attentively, oiling and urging the flow by
facial expressions of interest and by leaning forward attentively
whenever a serious point was about to come forth. Brennan explained about
James Holden, his superior education, and what it had enabled the lad to
do. He explained the education not as a machine but as a "system of
study" devised by James Holden's parents, feeling that it was better to
leave a few stones lying flat and unturned for his own protection.
Manison nodded at the end of the ten-minute time-limit, used his desk
interphone to inform his secretary that he was not to be disturbed until
further notice (which also told Paul Brennan that he was indeed
interested) and then said:
"You know you haven't a legal leg to stand on, Brennan."
"So I find out. It seems incredible that there isn't any law set up to
control the activity of a child."
"Incredible? No, Brennan, not so. To now it hasn't been necessary. People
just do not see the necessity of laws passed to prevent something that
isn't being done anyway. The number of outmoded laws, ridiculous laws,
and laws passed in the heat of public emotion are always a subject for
public ridicule. If the state legislature were to pass a law stating that
any child under fourteen may not leave home without the consent of his
parents, every opposition newspaper in the state would howl about the
waste of time and money spent on ridiculous legislation passed to govern
activities that are already under excellent control. They would poll the
state and point out that for so many million children under age fourteen,
precisely zero of them have left home to set up their own housekeeping.
One might just as well waste the taxpayer's money by passing a law that
confirms the Universal Law of Gravity.
"But that's neither here nor there," he said. "Your problem is to figure
out some means of exerting the proper control over this intelligent
infant."
"My problem rises higher than that," said Brennan ruefully. "He dislikes
me to the point of blind, unreasonable hatred. He believes that I am the
party responsible for the death of his parents and furthermore that the
act was deliberate. Tantamount to a charge of first-degree murder."
"Has he made that statement recently?" asked Manison.
"I would hardly know."
"When last did you hear him say words to that effect?"
"At the time, following the accidental death of his parents, James Holden
ran off to the home of his grandparents. Puzzled and concerned, they
called me as the child's guardian. I went there to bring him back to his
home. I arrived the following morning and it was during that session that
James Holden made the accusation."
"And he has not made it since, to the best of your knowledge?"
"Not that I know of."
"Hardly make anything out of that. Seven years ago. Not a formal charge,
only a cry of rage, frustration, hysterical grief. The complaint of a
five-year-old made under strain could hardly be considered slanderous.
It is too bad that the child hasn't broken any laws. Your success in
collecting him the first time was entirely due to the associations he'd
made with this automobile thief--Caslow, you said his name was. We can't
go back to that. The responsibility has been fixed, I presume, upon Jake
Caslow in another state. Brennan, you've a real problem: How can you be
sure that this James Holden will disclose his secret system of study even
if we do succeed in cooking up some legal means of placing him and keep
him in your custody?"
Brennan considered, and came to the conclusion that now was the time to
let another snibbet of information go. "The system of study consists of
an electronic device, the exact nature of which I do not understand. The
entire machine is large and cumbersome. In it, as a sort of 'heart,' is a
special circuit. Without this special circuit the thing is no more than
an expensive aggregation of delicate devices that could be used elsewhere
in electronics. One such machine stands unused in the Holden Home because
the central circuit was destroyed beyond repair or replacement by young
James Holden. He destroyed it because he felt that this secret should
remain his own, the intellectual inheritance from his parents. There is
one other machine--undoubtedly in full function and employed daily--in
the house on Martin's Hill under James Holden's personal supervision."
"Indeed? How, may I ask?"
"It was rebuilt by James Holden from plans, specifications, and
information engraved on his brain by his parents through the use of their
first machine. Unfortunately, I have every reason to believe that this
new machine is so booby-trapped and tamper-protected that the first
interference by someone other than James Holden will cause its
destruction."
"Um. It might be possible to impound this machine as a device of high
interest to the State," mused Manison. "But if we start any proceeding
as delicate as that, it will hit every newspaper in the country and our
advantage will be lost."
"Technically," said Paul Brennan, "you don't know that such a machine
exists. But as soon as young Holden realizes that you know about his
machine, he'll also know that you got the information from me." Brennan
sat quietly and thought for a moment. "There's another distressing angle,
too," he said at last. "I don't think that there is a soul on earth who
knows how to run this machine but James Holden. Steal it or impound it or
take it away legally, you've got to know how it runs. I doubt that we'd
find a half-dozen people on the earth who'd willingly sit in a chair with
a heavy headset on, connected to a devilish aggregation of electrical
machinery purported to educate the victim, while a number of fumblers
experimented with the dials and the knobs and the switches. No sir, some
sort of pressure must be brought to bear upon the youngster."
"Um. Perhaps civic pride? Might work. Point out to him that he is in
control of a device that is essential to the security of the United
States. That he is denying the children of this country the right to
their extensive education. Et cetera?"
"Could be. But how are you going to swing it, technically in ignorance of
the existence of such a machine?"
"Were I a member of the Congressional Committee on Education, I could
investigate the matter of James Holden's apparent superiority of
intellect."
"And hit Page One of every newspaper in the country," sneered Brennan.
"Well, I'm not," snapped Manison angrily. "However, there is a way,
perhaps several ways, once we find the first entering wedge. After all,
Brennan, the existence of a method of accelerating the course of
educational training is of the utmost importance to the future of not
only the United States of America, but the entire human race. Once I can
locate some plausible reason for asking James Holden the first question
about anything, the remainder of any session can be so slanted as to
bring into the open any secret knowledge he may have. We, to make the
disclosure easier, shall hold any sessions in the strictest of secrecy.
We can quite readily agree with James Holden's concern over the
long-range effectiveness of his machine and state that secrecy is
necessary lest headstrong factions take the plunge into something that
could be very detrimental to the human race instead of beneficial.
Frankly, Mr. Brennan," said Manison with a wry smile, "I should like to
borrow that device for about a week myself. It might help me locate some
of the little legal points that would help me." He sighed. "Yes," he said
sadly, "I know the law, but no one man knows all of the finer points.
Lord knows," he went on, "if the law were a simple matter of behaving as
it states, we'd not have this tremendous burden. But the law is subject
to interpretation and change and argument and precedent--Precedent? Um,
here we may have an interesting angle, Brennan. I must look into it."
"Precedent?"
"Yes, indeed. Any ruling that we were to make covering the right of a
seven, eight, or nine year old to run his own life as he sees fit will be
a ruling that establishes precedent."
"And--?"
"Well, up to now there's no ruling about such a case; no child of ten has
ever left home to live as he prefers. But this James Holden is apparently
capable of doing just that--and any impartial judge deliberating such a
case would find it difficult to justify a decision that placed the
competent infant under the guardianship and protection of an adult who is
less competent than the infant."
Brennan's face turned dark. "You're saying that this Holden kid is
smarter than I am?"
"Sit down and stop sputtering," snapped Manison. "What were you doing at
six years old, Brennan? Did you have the brains to leave home and protect
yourself by cooking up the plausible front of a very interesting
character such as the mythical Hermit of Martin's Hill? Were you writing
boys' stories for a nationwide magazine of high circulation and
accredited quality? Could you have planned your own dinner and prepared
it, or would you have dined on chocolate bars washed down with strawberry
pop? Stop acting indignant. Start thinking. If for no other reason than
that we don't want to end up selling pencils on Halstead Street because
we're not quite bright, we've got to lay our hands on that machine. We've
got to lead, not follow. Yet at the present time I'll wager that your
James Holden is going to give everybody concerned a very rough time. Now,
let me figure out the angles and pull the wires. One thing that nobody
can learn from any electronic machine is how to manipulate the component
people that comprise a political machine. I'll be in touch with you,
Brennan."
* * * * *
The ring at the door was Chief of Police Joseph Colling and another
gentleman. Janet Fisher answered the door, "Good evening, Mr. Colling.
Come in?"
"Thank you," said Colling politely. "This is Mr. Frank Manison, from the
office of the State Department of Justice."
"Oh? Is something wrong?"
"Not that we know of," replied Manison. "We're simply after some
information. I apologize for calling at eight o'clock in the evening, but
I wanted to catch you all under one roof. Is Mr. Fisher home? And the
children?"
"Why, yes. We're all here." Janet stepped aside to let them enter the
living room, and then called upstairs. Mr. Manison was introduced around
and Tim Fisher said, cautiously, "What's the trouble here?"
"No trouble that we know of," said Manison affably. "We're just after
some information about the education of James Holden, a legal minor, who
seems never to have been enrolled in any school."
"If you don't mind," replied Tim Fisher, "I'll not answer anything
without the advice of my attorney."
Janet Fisher gasped.