The Man Who Killed Himself by Julian Symons Read Free Book Online Page A

anything valedictory about his tone.
    The blow fell within a week. Arthur had had several pots of Wypitklere made up from the formula given him by Tubbs, and had spent some time in making sketches for a wrapper to go round the container. He had also worked out on paper the costing of several thousand pots of the cream, the profitable retail price allowing for a handsome discount to distributors, and the likely profits. This delightful planning was disturbed by a telephone call from Payne. He asked Arthur, in a tone lacking his usual false joviality, to come and see him at home on the following morning.
    When Arthur arrived Payne led him to the garage. He said nothing, but pointed to the windscreen and other glass sections of his car.
    Arthur stared, aghast. In some places the glass was streaked as if somebody had drawn a cutting knife across it, and in others it was deeply pitted as though some glass-eating animal had been burrowing within it.
    ‘Well?’ the bank manager said.
    Arthur wanted to say that it was not his fault, but what he actually said was, ‘I can’t explain it.’
    Payne nodded grimly, as though this was what he had expected to hear. ‘You don’t deny that your invention is responsible for this.’
    ‘I suppose it must be.’
    ‘I shall have new glass put in throughout the car, and I shall charge it to you.’
    ‘Of course. Of course, yes, please do.’
    ‘Very well. I should have known better. In the meantime, I can’t use my car.’
    ‘I can’t think what’s gone wrong.’ He had hardly known what he was saying, but the full horror of his situation was borne in upon him. ‘I hope there isn’t any reason – I hope you won’t mention this to Clare.’
    As Payne said to his wife afterwards, in that moment he felt really sorry for the poor little beggar, angry as he had been when he discovered the state of the glass. That his first thought should have been not of the failure of his invention, but the need to keep that failure from his wife. It was pathetic. ‘Served me right, really,’ he said to her philosophically. ‘I should have known that anything he invented was bound to be a dud. You can’t help liking Arthur, but he hasn’t got much in the top storey.’ They both made a point of being particularly nice to Arthur afterwards, and never mentioned a word about the matter to Clare.
    Arthur went home a stricken man. He talked to the firm of wholesale chemists who had been making up Wypitklere and told them what he was using it for. They told him that the agent which cleared the windscreen had a corrosive effect upon glass. He paid a visit to Inter Commerce and saw the objectionable Jenner, but he was not really surprised to learn that no Clennery Tubbs had ever worked for them. He timidly recalled the occasion on which his dishwasher had been tested and Jenner remembered the man, who had come to show him some kind of demisting cream. Jenner had seen something similar before, and had not been taken in. Arthur saw the solicitor, who shrugged his shoulders and said that he had been approached simply to draw up an agreement and knew nothing about Tubbs. He went to the address given on the agreement and found that it was a tobacconist’s, a mere accommodation address. The man remembered Tubbs but said that he had not been in for some time. He realised that Tubbs had spotted him for a possible gull when he came out from the demonstration and had taken advantage of Arthur’s mistaken belief that he worked for Inter Commerce. He had been the victim of an obvious confidence trick.
    The effect upon him was, superficially at least, an odd one. He felt angry about Tubbs, but his bitterest feeling was reserved for Clare. At the back of his mind, as he now dimly realised, there had been a belief that one day he would be free of his thralldom to her, one day an invention would make a lot of money and the money would give him freedom. Now this would never happen. He had no faith any longer that he