| The Adventure Of The Speckled Band |
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| 1892 short stories | |
| adventure of the speckled band | |
| fictional snakes | |
| sherlock holmes short stories by arthur conan doyle | |
| speckled band, the adventure of the | |
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"The Adventure of the Speckled Band" is one of the 56 short Sherlock Holmes stories written by Scottish author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle . It is the eighth of the twelve stories collected in '' The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes ''. The story was first published in '' Strand Magazine '' in February 1892, with illustrations by Sidney Paget . It was published under the different title "The Spotted Band" in '' New York World '' in August 1905. Doyle later revealed that he thought this was his best Holmes story. Doyle wrote and produced a play based on the story. It premiered at the Adelphi Theatre , London on 4 June 1910 , with H. A. Saintsbury as Sherlock Holmes and Lyn Harding as Dr. Grimesby Roylott. The play, originally called ''The Stonor Case'', differs from the story in several details, such as the names of some of the characters.1 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 an annual 250 GBP 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. INSPIRATIONS Richard Lancelyn Green , the editor of the 1998 Oxford paperback edition of ''The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes'', surmises that Doyle's source for the story appears to have been the article named "Called on by a Boa Constrictor. A West African Adventure" in ''Cassell's Saturday Journal'', published in February 1891. In the article, a captain tells how he was dispatched to a remote camp in West Africa where the only house was a tumbledown cabin that belonged to a Portuguese trader. On the first night in the cabin, he is awoken by a creaking sound, and sees "a dark queer-looking thing hanging down through the ventilator above it". It turns out to be the largest '' Boa Constrictor '' he has seen. He is paralysed with fear as the serpent comes down into the room. Unable to cry out for help, the captain spots an old bell that hung from a projecting beam above one of the windows. The bell cord had rotten away, but by means of a stick he manages to ring it and raise the alarm. SWAMP ADDER '', the Indian cobra]] |
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