with the shutter half open, throwing a brilliant beam of light upon the iron

safe, the door of which was ajar. Beside this table, on the wooden chair, sat

Dr. Grimesby Roylott clad in a long grey dressing-gown, his bare ankles

protruding beneath, and his feet thrust into red heelless Turkish slippers.

Across his lap lay the short stock with the long lash which we had noticed

during the day. His chin was cocked upward and his eyes were fixed in a

dreadful, rigid stare at the corner of the ceiling. Round his brow he had a

peculiar yellow band, with brownish speckles, which seemed to be bound tightly

round his head. As we entered he made neither sound nor motion.


“The band! the speckled band!” whispered Holmes.


I took a step forward. In an instant his strange headgear began to move, and

there reared itself from among his hair the squat diamond-shaped head and

puffed neck of a loathsome serpent.


“It is a swamp adder!” cried Holmes; “the deadliest snake in

India. He has died within ten seconds of being bitten. Violence does, in truth,

recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for

another. Let us thrust this creature back into its den, and we can then remove

Miss Stoner to some place of shelter and let the county police know what has

happened.”


As he spoke he drew the dog-whip swiftly from the dead man’s lap, and

throwing the noose round the reptile’s neck he drew it from its horrid

perch and, carrying it at arm’s length, threw it into the iron safe,

which he closed upon it.


Such are the true facts of the death of Dr. Grimesby Roylott, of Stoke Moran.

It is not necessary that I should prolong a narrative which has already run to

too great a length by telling how we broke the sad news to the terrified girl,

how we conveyed her by the morning train to the care of her good aunt at

Harrow, of how the slow process of official inquiry came to the conclusion that