Читать книгу A Study in Sherlock - Raymond G. Farney - Страница 16

The Adventure of

the Speckled Band

 Publication & Dates:Strand, February 1892The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes. (8th story) 1892Illustrations: Sidney Paget (9)Conan Doyle’s 10th storyHolmes’ 4th case

 Story Introduction:On glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I have during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend Sherlock Holmes, I find many tragic, some comic, and a large number of merely strange, but none commonplace; for, working as he did rather for the love of the art than for the acquirement of wealth, he refused to associate himself with any investigations which did not tend towards the unusual, and even the fantastic. Of all these varied cases, however, I cannot recall any which presented more singular features than that which was associated with the well-known Surrey family of the Roylotts of Stoke Moran. The events in question occurred in the early days of my association with Holmes, when we were sharing rooms as bachelors in Baker Street. It is possible that I might have placed them upon record before, but a promise of secrecy was made at the time, from which I have only been freed during the last month by the untimely death of the lady to whom the pledge was given. It is perhaps as well that the facts should now come to light, for I have reasons to know there are widespread rumours as to the death of Dr. Grimsby Roylott which tend to make the matter even more terrible than the truth.It was early in April, in the year ’83, that I woke one morning to find Sherlock Holmes standing, fully dressed, by the side of my bed. He was a late riser as a rule, and, as the clock on the mantelpiece showed me that it was only a quarter past seven, I blinked up at him in some surprise, and perhaps just a little resentment, for I was myself regular in my habits.“Very sorry to knock you up, Watson,” said he, “but it’s the common lot this morning. Mrs. Hudson has been knocked up, she retorted upon me, and I on you.”“What is it, then? A fire?”“No, a client. It seems that a young lady has arrived in a considerable state of excitement, who insists upon seeing me. She is waiting now in the sitting room. Now, when young ladies wander about the Metropolis at this hour of the morning, and knock sleeping people up out of their beds, I presume that it is something very pressing which they have to communicate. Should it prove to be an interesting case, you would, I am sure, wish to follow it from the outset. I thought at any rate that I should call you and give you the chance.”“My dear fellow, I would not miss it for anything.”I had no keener pleasure than in following Holmes in his professional investigations, and in admiring the rapid deductions, as swift as intuitions, and yet always founded on a logical basis, with which he unravelled the problems which were submitted to him. I rapidly threw on my clothes, and was ready in a few minutes to accompany my friend down to the sitting-room. A lady dressed in black and heavily veiled who had been sitting in the window, rose as we entered.“Oh my God! Helen! It was the band! The speckled band!”Case Information

 Date:“It was early in April, in the year ’83, that I woke one morning.”

 Duration:1 Day

 Crime:Murder and Attempted Murder.

 Client:Helen Stoner, “Her features and figure were those of the woman of thirty, but her hair was shot with premature gray and her expression was weary and haggard.”

 Holmes’ Observation of Client:“You have come in by train this morning, I see.”-----“I observed the second half of a return ticket in the palm of your left glove.”-----“You had a good ride in a dog-cart, along heavy roads before you reached the Station.”-----“The left arm of your jacket is spattered with mud in no less than seven places. This is no vehicle save a dog-cart which throws up mud in that way.”

 Victims:Julia Stoner, murdered two weeks before she was to be married.Helen Stoner was to be murdered.

 Crime Scene:Second Bedroom at Stoke Moran Manor House, Surrey, gray gables and high roof-tree of the very old mansion. “It was a homely little room, with a low ceiling and a gaping fireplace, after the fashion of old country-houses. A brown chest of drawers stood in one corner, a narrow white-counterpaned bed in another, and the dressing table on the left-hand side of the window. These articles, with the two small wickerwork chairs, made up all of the furniture in the room save for a square of Wilton carpet in the centre. The boards round and the paneling on the walls were of brown, worm-eaten oak, so old and discoloured that it may have dated from the original building of the house.”Holmes’ Examination of the Room“You will excuse me for a few minutes while I satisfy myself as to this floor.” He threw himself down upon his face with his lens in his hands and crawled swiftly backward and forward, examining minutely the cracks between the boards. Then he did the same with the wood-work with which the chamber was panelled. Finally he walked over to the bed and spent some time in staring at it and running his eye up and down the wall. Finally he took the bell-rope in his hands and gave it a brisk tug. “Why, it’s a dummy,” he said.“Very strange!” muttered Holmes, pulling at the rope. “There are one or two very singular points about this room. For example, what a fool a builder must be to open a ventilator into another room, when, with the same trouble, he might have communicated with the outside air!”

 Criminal:Dr. Grimesby Roylott, Helen’s stepfather.“Our door had been suddenly dashed open and that a huge man framed himself in the aperture. His costume was a peculiar mixture of the professional and the agricultural, having a black top hat, a long frock coat, and a pair of high gaiters, with the hunting crop swinging in his hand. So tall was he that his hat actually brushed the cross bar of the doorway and his breadth seemed to span it across side to side. A large face, seared with a thousand wrinkles, burned yellow with the sun.”The last survivor of one of the oldest Saxton families in England, the Roylotts of Stoke Moran, on the western border of Surrey.The family was at one time among the richest of England and the estate extended over the borders into Berkshire in the north, and Hampshire in the west. In the last century, however four successive heirs were of a dissolute and wasteful disposition, and the family ruin was eventually completed by a gambler, in the days of the Regency. Nothing was left save a few acres of ground, and the two-hundred-year-old house, which is itself crushed under a heavy mortgage.Has medical degree and established a large practice in Calcutta, India.Served a long term of imprisonment in India for beating his native butler to death.“He has a passion also for Indian animals, he has at this moment a cheetah and a baboon which wander freely over his ground.”

 Punishment:None. “Besides this table, on the wooden chair, sat Dr. Grimesby Roylott, clad in the long gray dressing-gown, his bare ankles protruding beneath it, and his feet thrust into red heeled 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.”— “The band! The speckled band!” whispered Holmes.“violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.”Official inquiry came to the conclusion that the doctor met his fate while indiscreetly playing with a dangerous pet.

 Official Police:None. “Let the county police know what has happened,” said Holmes.

 Characters:No Others Mentioned.

 Others Mentioned:Mrs. Hudson, “Mrs. Hudson has been knocked up, and she retorted upon me, and I on you.”Mrs. Farintosh, a friend of Helen Stoner who referred her to Holmes, who he had helped regarding an opal tiara.Julia Stoner, Helen’s twin sister, who died two years earlier, at the age of thirty. Murdered by her stepfather.Wandering Gypsies Roylott allowed to camp on the property.Percy Armitage, Helen Stoner’s fiancé. The second son of Mr. Armitage, of Crane Water, near Reading.Mrs. Stoner, Helen’s deceased mother who met Dr. Roylott as young widow, and they married when the girls were two years old. She was killed eight years ago in a railway accident near Crewe.Major-General Stoner of the Bengal artillery, Helen’s deceased father.Miss Honoria Westphail, Helen’s aunt, lived near Harrow, her mother’s maiden sister.Major of Marines, Julia’s fiancé, “a half-pay major of marines.” She met a few months before her death, while visiting her aunt at Christmas.

 Locations:Baker Street.Stoke Moran Manor House, Surrey. “A heavily timbered park stretched up in a gentle slope, thickening into a grove at the highest point. From amid the branches there jetted out the gray gables and high roof-tree of the very old mansion.”“The building was of gray, lichen-blotched stone, with a high central portion, and two curving wings, like the claws of a crab. In one of those wings the windows were broken and blocked up with wooden boards, while the roof was partly caved in, a picture of ruin.”

 Locations mentioned:Leatherhead, where Helen Stoner took the train to Waterloo Station. Four or five miles from Stoke Moran Manor.Crown Inn, opposite Stoke Moran, is where Helen Stoner got a dog-cart to drive to Leatherneck Station. Holmes and Watson stayed there during the investigation, and watched for Helen’s signal to enter the house.Crewe, where Helen’s mother was killed in a railway accident.

 Evidence & Clues:Helen’s mother’s will.Dummy bell-ropes, fastened to a hook just above the little ventilator (so small a rat could not pass through).Saucer of milk.Small dog leash, tied as to make a loop of whipcord.The bed, “It was clamped to the floor.”

 Motive:Continue to control the use of a 750-pound-a-year inheritance. “Loss of even a portion would cripple him to a very serious extent.”

 Timeline:Eight years Watson studies the methods of his friend Sherlock Holmes.Eight years earlier, Helen and Julia’s mother was killed in a railway accident near Crewe.Two Years Earlier, AprilHelen Stoner’s twin sister, two weeks before her wedding, dies.11:00 p.m., the night of her death, Julia leaves her sisters room after chatting about the approaching wedding, and tells Helen for the last few nights about 3:00 a.m., she would hear a low, clear whistle.A few hours later, Helen hears a wild scream of a terrified woman, her sister Julia, and goes to her. Julia collapses and dies at the bedroom doorway.1st DayHelen Stoner starts from home before 6:00 a.m. and reaches Leatherneck for the train to Waterloo at twenty past.7:15 a.m., Holmes wakes Watson; a client is waiting in their sitting-room.Helen Stoner visits Baker St. to ask Holmes for his help.12:00 train Helen Stoner will take back home to Stoke Moran.Holmes leaves Baker St. to walk down to the Doctor’s Commons to examine Helen’s mother’s will.It is nearly 1:00 p.m. when Holmes returns to Baker Street.Early afternoon, Holmes and Watson meet Helen Stoner and investigate the grounds and rooms of the Stoke Moran Manor. Holmes asks her to, after her stepfather retires for the night, open the window shutters in the bedroom, place a lantern as a signal, and sleep in her own room.About 9:00 p.m., Holmes and Watson, watching in their room at the Crown Inn across from Stoke Moran, see the light extinguished and all is dark at the manor.11:00 p.m., “a single bright light shone out right in front of us.” “It comes from the middle window” — “That’s the signal,” said Holmes.Holmes and Watson leave the Crown Inn, enter the manor grounds, and slip through the middle window into the bedroom to stand vigil.“Far away we could hear the deep tones of the parish clock, which boomed out every quarter of an hour.”— “Twelve struck, and one, and two, and three, and still we sat.” Suddenly there was a momentary gleam of a light up in the direction of the ventilator, a strong smell of burning oil and heated metal, than all was silent.”For half an hour, I sat with straining ears. Then suddenly a very soothing sound like that of a small jet of steam escaping. At that instant Holmes sprang from the bed, struck a match, and lashed furiously with his cane at the bell-pull. He ceased to strike, and from the silence came a horrible cry to which I have ever listened. It swelled up louder and louder, a hoarse yell of pain and fear and anger. “What can it mean?” I gasped. “It means that it is all over,” said Holmes. Entering Dr. Roylott’s room a singular sight met our eyes, round his brow a peculiar yellow band, with brownish specks. “The band! The speckled band!” whispered Holmes.“We broke the sad news to the terrified girl, and we conveyed her by the morning train to the care of her good aunt at Harrow.”About two months later in the spring, Helen and Percy were to be married.

 Story Conclusion: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 ran 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 the doctor met his fate while indiscreetly playing with a dangerous pet. The little which I have yet to learn of the case was told me by Sherlock Holmes as we traveled back next day.“I had,” said he, “come to an entirely erroneous conclusion, which shows, my dear Watson, how dangerous it always is to reason from insufficient data. The presence of the gypsies, and the use of the word ‘band,’ which was used by the poor girl, no doubt, to explain the appearance which she had caught a hurry glimpse of by the light of her match, were sufficient to put me upon an entirely wrong scent. I can only claim the merit that I instantly recognize my position when, however, it became clear to me that whatever danger threatened an occupant of the room could not come either from the window or the door. My intention was speedily drawn, as I have already remarked to you, to this ventilator, and to the bell rope which hung down to the bed. The discovery that this was a dummy, and that the bed was clamped to the floor, instantly gave rise to the suspicion that the rope was there as a bridge for something passing through the hole, and coming to the bed. The idea of the snake instantly occurred to me, and when I coupled it with my knowledge that the doctor was furnished with a supply of creatures from India, I felt that I was probably on the right track. The idea of using the form of poison which could not possibly be discovered by any chemical test was just such a one as would occur to a clever and ruthless man who had had an Eastern training. The rapidity with which such a poison would take effect will also, from his point of view, be an advantage. It would be a sharp-eyed coroner indeed who could distinguish the two little dark punctures which would show where the poison fangs had done their work. Then I thought of the whistle. Of course, he must recall the snake before the morning light revealed it to the victim. He had trained it, probably by the use of the milk which we saw, to return to him when summoned. He would put it through this ventilator at the hour that he thought best, with the certainty that it would crawl down the rope, and land on the bed. It might or might not bite the occupant, perhaps she might escape every night for a week, but sooner or later she must fall a victim.“I had come to these conclusions before ever I had entered his room. An inspection of his chair showed me that he had been in the habit of standing on it, which, of course, would be necessary in order that he should reach the ventilator. The sight of the safe, the saucer of milk, and the loop of the whipcord were enough to finally dispel any doubts which may have remained. The metallic clang heard by Miss Stoner was obviously caused by her father hastily closing the door of the safe upon its terrible occupant. Having once made up my mind, you know the steps which I took in order to put the matter to the proof. I heard the creature’s hiss, as I have no doubt that you did also, and I instantly lit the light and attacked it.”“With the result of driving it through the ventilator.”“And also with the result of causing it to turn upon its master at the other side. Some of the blows of my cane came home, and roused its snakish temper, so that it flew upon the first person it saw. In this way I am no doubt indirectly responsible for Dr. Grimesby Roylott’s death, and I cannot say that it is likely to weigh very heavily upon my conscience.”

 Weather:1st Day:Morning: “It is a little cold for this time of year,” said HolmesAfternoon: “it was a perfect day, with a bright sun and a few fleecy clouds in the heavens.”

 Payment:“At present it is out of my power to reward you for your services, but in a month or two I shall be married, with the control of my own income, and then at least you shall not find me ungrateful.”“As to reward, my profession is its reward; but you are at liberty to defray whatever expenses I may be put to, at the time which suits you best.”

 Quotes:Holmes“You must not fear,” said he, soothingly, bending forward and patting her forearm. “We shall soon set matters right, I have no doubt.”“These are very deep waters,” said Holmes.“This is very deep business,” Holmes said at last.“Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another.”“I had no keener pleasure than in following Holmes in his professional investigations, and in admiring the rapid deductions, as swift as intuitions and yet always founded on a logical basis, with which he unraveled the problems which were submitted to him.”“I know you, you scoundrel! I have heard of you before. You are Holmes the meddler.”—Holmes smiled.—“Holmes the busybody!”—His smile broadened. —“Holmes the Scotland-Yard Jack-in-office.”—Holmes chuckled heartily.“I had never seen my friend’s face so grim, or his brow dark, as it was when we returned from the scene of this investigation.”“My companion sat in front of the trap, his arms folded, his hat pulled down over his eyes, and his chin sunk upon his breast, buried in the deepest thought.”“You have evidently seen more in these rooms than was visible to me.” “No, but I fancy that I may have deduced a little more. I imagine that you saw all that I did.”“I am no doubt indirectly responsible for Dr. Grimesby Roylott’s death, and I cannot say that it is likely to weigh very heavily upon my conscience.”Watson“I have really some scruples as to taking you to-night. There is a distinct element of danger.”“I should be very much obliged if you would slip your revolver into your pocket. An Eley’s No.2 is excellent argument with gentlemen who can twist steel pokers into knots.”“Do not go asleep; your very life may depend on it. Have your pistol ready in case you should need it.”Crime and Deduction“You have evidently seen more in these rooms than was visible to me.”“No, but I fancy that I may have deduced a little more. I imagine that you saw all that I did.”“I had,” said Holmes, “come to an entirely erroneous conclusion which shows, my dear Watson, how dangerous it always is to reason from insufficient data.”

 Notes:alias used, “I thought it as well,” said Holmes, “that this fellow should think we came here as architects or on some defined business.”Eley’s No.2 that Holmes references when he asks Watson to slip his revolver into his pocket is the type of ammunition it used, possibly a Webley #2 revolver manufactured by the Eley Bros.The Speckled Band, round his brow a peculiar yellow band, with brownish specks, squat diamond-shaped head and puffed neck of a loathsome serpent. “It is a swamp adder!” cried Holmes, “the deadliest snake in India.”

 Holmes / Watson:Watson has been with Holmes eight years at this point and has notes on seventy-odd cases.