"He
couldn't have gone as far as Long's Peak or Evans--nowhere nearly as
far, because the roads are so winding when you get in the hills. He
could hardly have reached Estes Park."

"Right. You'll have to check up the road distances from Denver, Cole.
Your job's like lookin' for a needle in a haystack. I'll put a
detective agency on James. He might take a notion to run out to the
cache any fine evenin'. He likely will, to make sure Esther is
contented."

"Or he'll send Jack," Rose added.

"We'll try to keep an eye on him, too."

"This is my job, is it?" Cole asked, rising.

"You an' Rose can work together on it. My job's here in town on the
murder mystery."

"If we work both of them out---finding Esther and proving who killed
your uncle--I think we'll learn that it's all the same mystery,
anyhow," Rose said, drawing on her gloves.

Cole nodded sagely. "You've said somethin', Rose."

"Say _when_, not _if_, we work 'em out. We'll be cuttin' hot trail
_poco tempo_," Kirby prophesied, smiling up at them.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE DETECTIVE GETS TWO SURPRISES

Kirby stared down at the document in front of him. He could scarcely
believe the evidence flashed by his eyes to his brain. It was the
document he had asked the county recorder at Golden to send him--and it
certified that, on July 21, _James Cunningham and Phyllis Harriman had
been united in marriage_ at Golden by the Reverend Nicodemus Rankin.

This knocked the props from under the whole theory he had built up to
account for the disappearance of Esther McLean. If Esther were not the
widow of his uncle, then the motive of James in helping her to vanish
was not apparent. Perhaps he told the truth and knew nothing about the
affair whatever.

But Kirby was puzzled. Why had his uncle, who was openly engaged to
Phyllis Harriman, married her surreptitiously and kept that marriage a
secret? It was not in character, and he could see no reason for it.
Foster had sent him to Golden on the tacit hint that there was some
clue in the license register to the mystery of James Cunningham's
death. What bearing had this marriage on it, if any?

It explained, of course, the visit of Miss Harriman to his uncle's
apartments on the night he was murdered. She had an entire right to go
there at any time, and if they were keeping their relation a secret
would naturally go at night when she could slip in unobserved.

But Kirby's mind wandered up and down blin