"Not at all. He surely would not mutilate a public record."
"We needn't go into that. He did. But that didn't keep us from getting the information we wanted."
"No?" James murmured the monosyllable with polite indifference. But he watched, lynx-eyed, the strong, brown face of his cousin.
"We know now the secret you wanted to keep hidden in the court-house at
Golden."
"I grant you energy in ferreting out other people's business, dear cousin. If you 're always so—so altruistic, let us say—I wonder how you have time to devote to your own affairs."
"We intend to see justice done Miss Esther McLean—Mrs. James
Cunningham, I should say. You can't move us from that intention or—"
The expression on the oil broker's face was either astonishment or the best counterfeit of it Kirby had ever seen.
"I beg pardon. What did you say?"
"I told you, what you already know, that Esther McLean was married to
Uncle James at Golden on the twenty-first of last month."
"Miss McLean and Uncle James married—at Golden—on the twenty-first of last month? Are you sure?"