st 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 th