The Delawarean., 1900-05-26
His Last Invention.
It Failed Like the Rest to
Do Its Work.
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Ralph Carbon strobe moodily up and
down his workshop, which was Uttered
with the odds and ends of machinery
which represented the ruins of hun
dred castles in the air. He was always
inventing, was Carbon; always spend
ing days and nights over the manufac-
ture of some wonderful machine or 9TH
er which was to reyolutionze the
world and make him famous, only to
find after all his labor some irremedia-
BILE flaw in his plan which rendered the
completion of the machine an impossi-
bility or prevented it working.
He gazed around him ON the gaunt
skeleton in wood and brass of past
hopes and clinched his hand fiercely.
"a failure! Everything in my life is
a miserable failure!' he cried aloud as
he paced the floor.
1t was not the breakdown of an ordi-
nary invention, however, that wrung
the bitter words from him. He had
grown accustomed to waking in the
morning with an idea worth millions in
his head and going to bed at night with
the knowledge that it was not worth a
million match sticks and had become
quite philosophical over the failure of
his plans for money making. But this
time it was different arrangement
that had broken down, an arrangement
by which the inventor hoped to make
himself home and children, and the
handspring, in the shape of Deborah
10
him. In his clinched hand he held the
letter she had sent him abruptly an
nouncing that she wished to break off
their engagement.
There was a revolver lying on the in
ventor's bench which had thrice had its
bright barrel pointed toward his fore
head, but three times the mans pur-
pose had failed him at the decisive mo-
ment.
The fact of his cowardice added to
the mans irritation against himself.
Il fail in everything that would make
life worth living and cannot even kill
myself" he went on in his despairing
soliloquy. "Must everything | try
prove a failure?"
He took up the revolver once more
with sudden determination and, hold
ing the barrel between his teeth, pulled
the trigger There was a click, but
nothing more. He had forgotten, after
all, to load the thing.
He had failed once more to kill him
self, and the nervous shock he had ex-
perienced had made it impossible for
him to repeat the attempt. He must
think of something, he told himself
which would make the last act easier
for him. He was determined on sui
eide and had committed himself by in
forming Deborah of his intentions, but
when the single movement of a finger
was in moment to make all the
difference between life and death his
physical courage deserted him and his
finger became powerless. He must
prepare some plan for killing himself
in which the exact moment of his
death would be decided by chance or
the action of machinery.
The idea pleased him by suggesting
the need of invention, a need which his
mind was always ready to meet, and
he set himself with a melancholy pleas
ure to think out the details of a killing
machine which should fulfill all his re-
qnirements Death must be painless
and instantaneous, Of course, but must |
act at different moment from that at |
which the victim took the decisive ac-
ton which would make his fate certain |
and Interchangeable. He drew out plan |
rapidly, making rough sketches of the |
mechanical details on the back of De
borah Dene's fatal letter.
Then he went down to his forge on |
the floor below and worked hard at the |
of the instrument he had |
invented. 1t was finished by midnight,
and in grim sort of way Ralph Gar
don was proud of his work.
The invention was in the form of a |
dynamite bomb which would explode |
by the slow action of an acid eating
through a barrier of cement. One of |
his past failures had left him with the |
dynamite on his hands. 1t was inclos-
ed in carefully welded iron case join
ed strongly, so that once the case was
closed 1t could only be opened by the
exercise Of considerable force. 1t was
connected as strongly to an iron chain
which the inventor fastened around
his waist, Joining the two ends with a
Yale paddock. When he had locked it,
he laid the key on his anvil and with a
stroke OF his hammer beat 1t out Of
shape.
To get away from his anvil and tools,
with the chance they still offered him
of changing his mind and breaking the
chain round his waist, as well as to
save the empty house from needless in
jury, the inventor put on his hat and
walked out into the country road that