at 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 fret