James Baquet

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote 56 stories and four novels about Sherlock Holmes. “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” was his personal favorite.

Helen Stoner’s twin sister Julia had died two years earlier, shortly before her wedding. The young ladies had lived with their step-father, Dr. Grimesby Roylott of Stoke Moran, a sullen man given to fits of anger.

The sisters had an annual income from their late mother adequate to support them and Roylott, but no more.

Julia slept in a bedroom next to the doctor’s; Helen’s was on the other side. Before her death Julia had told Helen that at night she sometimes heard a low whistle followed by a loud iron clang!

When she died Julia had cried out, “Oh, my God! Helen! It was the band! The speckled band!” Helen then heard the whistle and the clang! The county coroner was unable to find the cause of Julia’s death; Helen thought she may have died of fright.

Now Helen is engaged and is sleeping in Julia’s old room. Last night she had heard the low whistle and the clang and went to Sherlock Holmes.

Although her step-father threatens “Holmes, the busybody,” he and his sidekick Watson visit Stoke Moran while the doctor is out.

In the bedroom, Holmes sees that the bed is bolted to the floor. A bell rope for calling servants comes down to the bed, but it is a dummy: There is no bell. Its top is near a ventilator that passes between this room and the doctor’s. In his room there is a locked iron safe with a bowl of milk on top — but no cat.

Holmes and Watson secretly spend the night in the middle room while Helen sleeps in her old room. During the pitch-dark night the men hear a “hiss” and Holmes quickly lights a candle and starts beating on the bell-pull with his stick. He and Watson rush into the doctor’s room where they discover him dead — and a speckled snake wrapped around his forehead.

The doctor had put the snake through the ventilator where it climbed down the rope and fatally bitten Julia two years before; but Holmes’s methods save Helen. The doctor had trained the snake to return to the whistle, and kept it in his safe (the clang was the safe’s door).

If the girls had married, they would have taken their income with them, and the doctor needed their money.

Vocabulary:

Which word above means:

1. sour, surly

2. attached

3. fake

4. mother’s second husband

5. good enough

6. yearly

7. the area above the eyes

8. a little while

9. spotted

10. medical examiner