The Adventure of the Speckled Band – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

the editor of the 2000 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.[1] In the article, a captain tells how he was dispatched to a remote camp in West Africa to stay in 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 (more likely a python because there are no boas in Africa). 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 rotted away, but by means of a stick he manages to ring it and raise the alarm.

via The Adventure of the Speckled Band – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

 

The Adventure of the Speckled Band – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Docter Roylott has required Helen Stoner, an heiress, to move into a particular bedroom of his heavily mortgaged ancestral home, Stoke Moran. In addition to the fact that this was the room in which Helen\’s twin sister, Julia, had recently died under mysterious and dramatic circumstances, uttering the last words \”The band! The speckled band!\” A number of details about the bedroom are mysterious and disturbing. Helen has heard a low whistling sound late at night, followed by a metallic clang. There is a strange bell cord over the bed, and it does not seem to work any bell. The rope goes to a ventilator – an opening high in the wall of the room, close to the ceiling, which provides air circulation between Helen\’s room and an adjacent room of the crumbling mansion. In addition, Helen\’s bed is also clamped to the floor; this vital piece of furniture can never be moved from its position. Stoner surmises that Julia might have been murdered by the gypsies who wear speckled handkerchiefs around their necks; in order to bring in a bit of cash Dr. Roylott has rented spare rooms in Stoke Moran to them. A cheetah and a baboon also have the run of the property, for Dr. Roylott keeps exotic pets from India. Helen feels reluctant to sleep in the room.

Helen leaves, Dr. Roylott comes to visit Holmes, having traced his stepdaughter. He demands to know what Helen has said to Holmes, but Holmes refuses to say. Dr. Roylott bends an iron fireplace poker into a curve in an attempt to intimidate Holmes, but Holmes is unaffected as he maintains a rather jovial demeanor during the encounter. After Roylott leaves, Holmes straightens the poker out again.

Having arranged for Helen to spend the night in another bedroom, Holmes and Watson sneak into her bedroom without Dr. Roylott\’s knowledge. Holmes says that he has already deduced the solution to the mystery, and 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\” were in fact describing \”a swamp adder, the deadliest snake in India\”. The adjacent room was occupied by Dr. Roylott and a safe containing the venomous snake, and the ventilator and bell cord were bridges for the snake to land on the bed. 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 through the ventilator by Dr. Roylott to kill Julia\’s sister Helen. Holmes attacks the snake with a walking stick, sending it through the hole in the wall back toward its home in the physician\’s room. A shriek is heard, and the annoyed reptile is soon found to have injected its venom into the murderous physician; when Holmes and Watson enter the death scene, the swamp adder has wound its body around the head of its victim in triumph. Holmes grimly notes that he is indirectly responsible for Dr. Roylott\’s decease, but that he is unlikely to feel much guilt over the chain of events that led to his departure from this world.

via The Adventure of the Speckled Band – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

 

List of Sherlock characters – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The following is a list and description of the characters of Sherlock, a British television series that started airing on BBC One in July 2010. The series is a modern adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and was created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss.

via List of Sherlock characters – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

 

Introduction for school project

This post is to introduce my school project on the classic novel written by Canon Doyle.

The project is to make a book report about the novel “Specked band”, which was written around 1892.