ather into
giving him some education in radioactivity. He was old enough to learn--

Learn--?

_No more, now that his father and mother were dead._

Some of the real meaning of his loss came to him then, and the growing
knowledge that this first shocking loss meant the ultimate loss of
everything was beginning to sink in.

He broke down and cried in the misery of his loss and his helplessness;
ultimately his emotion began to cry itself out, and he began to feel
resentment against his position. The animal desire to bite back at
anything that moved did not last long, it focused properly upon the
person of his tormentor. Then for a time, Jimmy Holden's imagination
indulged in a series of little vignettes in which he scored his victory
over Paul Brennan. These little playlets went through their own
evolution, starting with physical victory reminiscent of his
Jack-and-the-Beanstalk days to a more advanced triumph of watching Paul
Brennan led away in handcuffs whilst the District Attorney scanned the
sheaf of indisputable evidence provided by James Quincy Holden.

Somewhere along about this point in his fantasy, a breath of the
practical entered, and Jimmy began to consider the more sensible problem
of what sort of information this sheaf of evidence would contain.

Still identifying himself with the books he knew, Jimmy Holden had
progressed from the fairy story--where the villain was evil for no more
motive than to provide menace to the hero--to his more advanced books,
where the villain did his evil deeds for the logical motive of personal
gain.

Well, what had Paul Brennan to gain?

Money, for one thing--he would be executor of the Holden Estate. But
there wasn't enough to justify killing. Revenge? For what? Jealousy? For
whom? Hate? Envy? Jimmy Holden glossed the words quickly, for they were
no more than words that carried definitions that did not really explain
them. He could read with the facility of an adult, but a book written for
a sophisticated audience went over his head.

No, there was only one possible thing of appreciable value; the one thing
that Paul Brennan hoped to gain was the device over which they had worked
through all the long years to perfect: The Holden Electromechanical
Educator! Brennan wanted it badly enough to murder for its possession!

And with a mind and ingenuity far beyond his years, Jimmy Holden knew
that he alone was the most active operator in this vicious drama. It was
not wit