“Pull it down, Jimmy boy.” His voice was growing fainter. “This is a new one that I read in a book. Pull it down.”
“Why?”
“Do as I tell you,” the lips motioned, and Jimmy walked across the room and pulled over the insulated lever.
As he did there was a heavy thud overhead that shook the room, and then silence.
“What’s that?” he asked sharply.
The dying man smiled.
“That’s Massey!” said the lips.
Half an hour later Jimmy left the house with a soiled slip of paper in his waistcoat pocket, on which was written the most precious verse of doggerel that the world has known.
And the discovery of the two dead men in the upper chambers the next morning afforded the evening press the sensation of the year.