"You'd better make time for me right now," said James angrily. "I'd like to know what's going on here."
"This much I'll tell you quickly. We're planning a political campaign. Now, please—"
"I know you're planning a political campaign," replied James. "But if you're proposing to campaign on the platform of a reform in education, I suggest that you educate your henchmen in the rudimentary elements of polite speech and gentle behavior. I dislike being ordered out of my room by usurpers who have the temerity to address me as 'hey kid'."
"Relax, James. I'll send them out later."
"I'd suggest that you tell them off," snapped James. He turned on his heel and left, heading for the cellar. In the workshop he found Professor White and Jack Cowling presiding over the machine. In the chair with the headset on sat the crowning insult of all:
Paul Brennan leafing through a heavy sheaf of papers, reading and intoning the words of political oratory.
Unable to lick them, Brennan had joined them—or, wondered young Holden, was Judge Norman L. Carter paying for Brennan's silence with some plum of political patronage?
As he stood there, the years of persecution rose strong in the mind of James Holden. Brennan, the man who'd got away with murder and would continue to get away with it because there was no shred of evidence, no witness, nothing but James Holden's knowledge of Brennan's actions when he'd thought himself unseen in his calloused treatment of James Holden's dying mother; Brennan's critical inspection of the smashed body of his father, coldly checking the dead flesh to be sure beyond doubt; the cruel search about the scene of the 'accident' for James himself—interrupted only by the arrival of a Samaritan, whose name was never known to James Holden. In James rose the violent resentment of the years, the certain knowledge that any act of revenge upon Paul Brennan would be viewed as cold-blooded premeditated murder without cause or motive.
And then came the angry knowledge that simple slaughter was too good for Paul Brennan. He was not a dog to be quickly released from misery by a merciful death. Paul Brennan should suffer until he cried for death as a blessed release from daily living.