He sought his son's
eye; but lynx-eyed, taciturn, immovable, Soames gave no answering
look. And to old Jolyon watching, divining the league of mutual defence
between them, there came an overmastering desire to have his own son at
his side, as though this visit to the dead man's body was a battle in
which otherwise he must single-handed meet those two. And the thought of
how to keep June's name out of the business kept whirring in his brain.
James had his son to support him! Why should he not send for Jo?

Taking out his card-case, he pencilled the following message:

'Come round at once. I've sent the carriage for you.'

On getting out he gave this card to his coachman, telling him to
drive--as fast as possible to the Hotch Potch Club, and if Mr. Jolyon
Forsyte were there to give him the card and bring him at once. If not
there yet, he was to wait till he came.

He followed the others slowly up the steps, leaning on his umbrella,
and stood a moment to get his breath. The Inspector said: "This is the
mortuary, sir. But take your time."

In the bare, white-walled room, empty of all but a streak of sunshine
smeared along the dustless floor, lay a form covered by a sheet. With
a huge steady hand the Inspector took the hem and turned it back. A
sightless face gazed up at them, and on either side of that sightless
defiant face the three Forsytes gazed down; in each one of them the
secret emotions, fears, and pity of his own nature rose and fell like
the rising, falling waves of life, whose wish those white walls barred
out now for ever from Bosinney. And in each one of them the trend of his
nature, the odd essential spring, which moved him in fashions minutely,
unalterably different from those of every other human being, forced him
to a different attitude of thought. Far from the others, yet inscrutably
close, each stood thus, alone with death, silent, his eyes lowered.

The Inspector asked softly:

"You identify the gentleman, sir?"

Old Jolyon raised his head and nodded. He looked at his brother
opposite, at that long lean figure brooding over the dead man, with face
dusky red, and strained grey eyes; and at the figure of Soames white and
still by his father's side. And all that he had felt against those two
was gone like smoke in the long white presence of Death. Whence comes
it, how comes it--Death? Sudden reverse of all that goes before; blind
setting forth on a path that leads to where? Dark quenching of the fi