Full Version: The Adventure of the Speckled Band

The Adventure of the Speckled Band

Plot summary

A young woman named Helen Stoner consults the detective Sherlock Holmes about her ill-tempered and immensely strong stepfather, Dr. Grimesby Roylott. He has required her to move into a particular room of his heavily mortgaged ancestral home, Stoke Moran. The room has some very odd features, such as a bed bolted to the floor. It is also the room that Stoner's twin sister, Julia, had slept in when she died under suspicious circumstances. Julia had been engaged to be married and had she lived would have received a GBP 250 annuity from her late mother's income. Now Helen is engaged to be married.

A number of other details about the place are mysterious and disturbing. A low whistling sound is heard late at night, as well as a metallic clank. There is a strange bell cord over the bed, and it does not seem to work any bell. There are also Julia's dying words about a "speckled band." Stoner surmises that Julia might have been referring to the Gypsies whom Dr. Roylott permits to live on the grounds. A cheetah and a baboon also have the run of the property. Helen feels reluctant to sleep in the room.

After arranging for Helen Stoner to spend the night somewhere else, Holmes and Watson sneak in her room that night without Dr. Roylott's knowledge. Holmes says that he has already deduced the solution to the mystery, and that this test of his theory turns out to be successful. They hear the whistle, and Holmes also sees what the bell cord is really for, although Watson does not. Julia's last words about a "speckled band" was in fact describing a "swamp adder, the deadliest snake in India." The venomous snake had been sent to Julia's room by Dr. Roylott to murder her. After the swamp adder bit Julia he called off the snake with the whistling, which made the snake climb up through the bell cord, disappearing from the scene.

Now the swamp adder is sent again to kill Julia's sister Helen, and Holmes attacks the snake, sending it back up the rope. It goes back through an air ventilator connected to the next room and bites Dr. Roylott instead, killing the perpetrator.