something
about his property. It was still under Soames's control; for in the
adoption of a sleeping partnership at that painful period twenty years
back when he had divorced Irene, Soames had found himself almost
insensibly retaining control of all purely Forsyte affairs.

Hesitating for just a moment, he nodded and went in. Since the death of
his brother-in-law Montague Dartie, in Paris, which no one had quite
known what to make of, except that it was certainly not suicide--the
Iseeum Club had seemed more respectable to Soames. George, too, he
knew, had sown the last of his wild oats, and was committed definitely
to the joys of the table, eating only of the very best so as to keep
his weight down, and owning, as he said, "just one or two old screws to
give me an interest in life." He joined his cousin, therefore, in the
bay window without the embarrassing sense of indiscretion he had been
used to feel up there. George put out a well-kept hand.

"Haven't seen you since the War," he said. "How's your wife?"

"Thanks," said Soames coldly, "well enough."

Some hidden jest curved, for a moment, George's fleshy face, and
gloated from his eye.

"That Belgian chap, Profond," he said, "is a member here now. He's a
rum customer."

"Quite!" muttered Soames. "What did you want to see me about?"

"Old Timothy; he might go off the hooks at any moment. I suppose he's
made his Will."

"Yes."

"Well, you or somebody ought to give him a look up--last of the old
lot; he's a hundred, you know. They say he's like a mummy. Where are
you goin' to put him? He ought to have a pyramid by rights."

Soames shook his head. "Highgate, the family vault."

"Well, I suppose the old girls would miss him, if he was anywhere else.
They say he still takes an interest in food. He might last on, you
know. Don't we GET anything for the old Forsytes? Ten of them--average
age eighty-eight--I worked it out. That ought to be equal to triplets."

"Is that all?" said Soames. "I must be getting on."

'You unsociable devil,' George's eyes seemed to answer.

"Yes, that's all: Look him up in his mausoleum--the old chap might want
to prophesy." The grin died on the rich curves of his face, and he
added: "Haven't you attorneys invented a way yet of dodging this damned
income tax? It hits the fixed inherited income like the very deuce. I
used to have two thousand five hundred a year; now I've got a beggarly
fifteen hundred, and the price of living doub