Attend to his desperate cry of failure (5,4,2)
I believe the answer is:
thats done it
'cry of failure' is the definition.
I don't know anything about this answer so I cannot tell whether this works.
'attend to his desperate' is the wordplay.
'desperate' indicates anagramming the letters (a desperate or pathetic spelling).
'attend'+'to'+'his'='attendtohis'
'attendtohis' anagrammed gives 'THATS DONE IT'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Another definition for thats done it that I've seen is " Oh, no, it's ruined!".)