Art must be
encouraged. He was, in fact, an accidental channel through which money
flowed, employing labour. What was there objectionable in that? In his
charge money was in quicker and more useful flux than it would be in
charge of the State and a lot of slow-fly money-sucking officials. And
as to what he saved each year--it was just as much in flux as what he
didn't save, going into Water Board or Council Stocks, or something
sound and useful. The State paid him no salary for being trustee of his
own or other people's money--HE DID ALL THAT FOR NOTHING. Therein lay
the whole case against nationalisation--owners of private property were
unpaid, and yet had every incentive to quicken up the flux. Under
nationalisation--just the opposite! In a country smarting from
officialism he felt that he had a strong case.

It particularly annoyed him, entering that backwater of perfect peace,
to think that a lot of unscrupulous Trusts and Combinations had been
cornering the market in goods of all kinds, and keeping prices at an
artificial height. Such abusers of the individualistic system were the
ruffians who caused all the trouble, and it was some satisfaction to
see them getting into a stew at last lest the whole thing might come
down with a run-and land in the soup.

The offices of Cuthcott Kingson & Forsyte occupied the ground and first
floors of a house on the right-hand side; and, ascending to his room,
Soames thought: 'Time we had a coat of paint.'

His old clerk Gradman was seated, where he always was, at a huge bureau
with countless pigeonholes. Half-the-clerk stood beside him, with a
broker's note recording investment of the proceeds from sale of the
Bryanston Square house, in Roger Forsyte's estate. Soames took it, and
said:

"Vancouver City Stock. H'm! It's down to-day!"

With a sort of grating ingratiation old Gradman answered him:

"Ye-es; but everything's down, Mr. Soames." And half-the-clerk withdrew.

Soames skewered the document onto a number of other papers and hung up
his hat.

"I want to look at my Will and Marriage Settlement, Gradman."

Old Gradman, moving to the limit of his swivel chair, drew out two
drafts from the bottom left-hand drawer. Recovering his body, he raised
his grizzle-haired face, very red from stooping.

"Copies, sir."

Soames took them. It struck him suddenly how like Gradman was to the
stout brindled yard dog they had been wont to keep on his chain at 'The
Shelter,' till one