Oh, mother of all sin!
Find green the same as shiretown's name,
Find Newgate Gaol, and win!
"Well," said Rampole, muttering over the lines, "it's very bad doggerel, and it doesn't make the slightest sense so far as I can see; but that's true of a lot of verse I've read…. What is it?"
She looked at him steadily. "Do you see the date? February 3 was father's birthday. He was born in 1870, so in 1895 he would have been―"
"Twenty-five years old," interposed Rampole, suddenly.
They were both silent, Rampole staring at the enigmatic words with a slow comprehension. All the wild surmises which he and Sir Benjamin had been making, and which Dr. Fell had so violently ridiculed, seemed to grow substantial before him.
"Now let me lead you on," he suggested. "If that's true, then the original of this paper — it says `my copy' — was in the vault in the Governor's Room. So?"
"It must be what the eldest sons were intended to see." She took the paper out of his hands as though she felt a rage against it, and would have crumpled it in her hand but that he shook his head. "I've thought about it, and thought about it, and that's the only explanation I can see. I hope it's true. I had fancied so many ghastly things that might be there. And yet this is just as bad. People still die."
He sat down on the sofa.