[2] The story's title is a play on Death of a Salesman, the now-classic stageplay by Arthur Miller, which had won a Pulitzer Prize the previous year.
With currency restrictions forcing him to stay at Freddie's house in Long Island, Emsworth finds himself ill at ease, chafed by his son's new-found self-confidence, the result of his successes as a salesman.
This task proves more difficult than he recalled from his more active youth, and when a young girl calls at the door selling richly bound encyclopaedias of Sport, he invites her in to make them for him and join him at his lunch.
The homeowner, lumber king George Spenlow, already unnerved having seen Emsworth mooning over his flower beds earlier in the day, mistakes him for a private eye in the hire of his wife.
He takes the man's $500, and quietly slips it into Mrs Ed's handbag while she sleeps, resolving to put a stop to his son's arrogance right away.