it would not be difficult for him to learn to walk about on the ceiling
with his hands--

"I can't sleep," he said.

But that was no great difficulty. It was quite possible, I pointed out,
to make a shake-up under a wire mattress, fasten the under things
on with tapes, and have a blanket, sheet, and coverlet to button
at the side. He would have to confide in his housekeeper, I said;
and after some squabbling he agreed to that. (Afterwards it was
quite delightful to see the beautifully matter-of-fact way with which
the good lady took all these amazing inversions.) He could have
a library ladder in his room, and all his meals could be laid on
the top of his bookcase. We also hit on an ingenious device by which
he could get to the floor whenever he wanted, which was simply to put
the British Encyclopaedia (tenth edition) on the top of his open
shelves. He just pulled out a couple of volumes and held on, and down
he came. And we agreed there must be iron staples along the skirting,
so that he could cling to those whenever he wanted to get about the
room on the lower level.

As we got on with the thing I found myself almost keenly interested.
It was I who called in the housekeeper and broke matters to her,
and it was I chiefly who fixed up the inverted bed. In fact, I spent
two whole days at his flat. I am a handy, interfering sort of man
with a screw-driver, and I made all sorts of ingenious adaptations
for him--ran a wire to bring his bells within reach, turned all
his electric lights up instead of down, and so on. The whole affair
was extremely curious and interesting to me, and it was delightful
to think of Pyecraft like some great, fat blow-fly, crawling about