Milo Talon Read Online Free Page B

griped me. A man wants a little privacy, and nobody wants his home entered or his personal things all spread out like that. I began to feel a deep, smoldering anger. Nobody had any right to force his way into a man’s private life that way.
    Maybe … maybe if I found this girl it would be something worthwhile. After all, she stood to inherit afortune and she might be somewhere alone and in desperate need right now.
    Anyway, I started to gather my stuff and replace it, remembering that a man’s life always starts today. Every morning is a beginning, a fresh start, and a man needn’t be hog-tied to the past. Whatever went before, a man’s life can begin now, today.
    The irritation returned. What the hell were they looking for? What did I have that anybody wanted? Was somebody looking for money?
    Maybe … just maybe for that brown manila envelope? If so, why?
    Sitting down on the bed I pulled off my boots, then sat there rubbing the tiredness out of my feet. Did I really think I could find that girl? Or was this just a way to keep eating a little longer? Something a mite easier than punching cows?
    An obvious beginning was St. Louis. That had been the last known address of the Henrys. St. Louis had grown since then and such a family as the Henrys were unlikely to have attracted much notice. Finding them would not be easy, yet I had to begin somewhere. I’d taken the man’s money and I never yet had taken a job where I didn’t deliver a day’s work for a day’s pay.
    Hanging my gun belt over the chair-back close to the bed, I thought about that expression on Molly Fletcher’s face when she saw that picture. Startled she surely had been, but maybe frightened was a better word.
    Why?
    Again I returned to the question of Jefferson Henry and why he was here, in this particular place? Why had he chosen this town? And why had he selected me?
    Who was Molly Fletcher and how did she happen to be here, a girl who apparently knew the girl in the picture, at the same time Jefferson Henry was in town? Did they know each other? Or about each other?
    If she did not know the girl in the picture she might have known one of the others, or even the place itself might have been familiar.
    The pictures themselves might be a starting point. Photography was still a relatively new art but already there were a number of itinerant photographers following in the footsteps of Brady and Jackson.
    Propping a chair under the doorknob and laying my six-shooter out on the bed, I settled down to digest the material Jefferson Henry had given me. Clipped to the top of the letter was a note:
    Letters addressed to Harold & Adelaide Magoffin, deceased. The enclosed letters were not in the possession of the deceased at the time of death but in storage with to be claimed baggage. For access to the baggage the sum of $20.00 was paid to Pier Van Schendel, expressman
.
    Deceased? Both at once or separately? The cause of death? The Pinkertons must have considered the questions irrelevant. Or to be more accurate, the agent involved evidently considered it so, and agents were of all kinds. Some were imaginative and perceptive, others mere plodders. Each had his value, but in this case, had enough questions been asked?
    The term “deceased” bothered me. I wanted toknow why. How? I wanted to know when and where and if it had anything to do with the matter at hand.
    No doubt, that agent had other cases to investigate and I had but one. There was time for me to ask questions, to wonder and consider. I intended to do all of that.
    What, I wondered, had become of that unclaimed baggage? Had it been sold at auction, which is often the case? Was Van Schendel still in the employ of the company?
    Had these been the only letters? What else might the baggage contain? These were questions only to be answered in St. Louis.
    First, there were things to be done here. I must see Molly Fletcher and tell her a job awaited if she was so inclined, a job with a man who was both