“Which of you is Holmes?”, the man shouted.

“That is my name, sir,” answered my friend. “Now what is yours?”

“I am Dr. Grimesby Roylott of Stoke Moran.”

“Please take a seat, Doctor,” said Holmes.

“I will not!” Dr. Roylott shouted. “My stepdaughter has been here. What did she tell you?”

“The weather has been nice this year.” Holmes calmly replied.

“You will not distract me! I know who you are. You are Holmes the meddler! Holmes the busybody!”

Holmes laughed as he said, “you are very entertaining my dear doctor. Please close the door when you leave.”

“I will leave when I have finished! Do not interfere in my affairs. I am a very dangerous man and you will regret it!” Dr. Roylott shouted as he stormed out of the room.

When that brute finally left the room, Holmes laughed. “What a delightful gentleman!” Holmes chuckled. “I just hope that Miss Stoner is safe.”

“Anyways, let’s order breakfast, Watson. Then I shall walk downtown. I’ll need some facts before we do anything else.”

It was one o’clock when Holmes got back. He had a blue paper in his hand. It had notes and numbers all over it.

“I have seen the will of Dr. Roylott’s wife,” he said. “She left a thousand pounds, all right. But each girl was to get two hundred and fifty pounds when she got married. If the girls died before getting married, Roylott would get all the money. So you see why Dr. Roylott wanted Julia and Helen dead.”

“We had better get going, Watson. And I think it would be a good idea to bring your gun.”

We went down to Waterloo Station. We caught the next train out. Then we found a horse and cart to take us to Stoke Moran.

Helen Stoner met us at Stoke Moran. “I have been waiting for you!” she cried.

“Don’t worry,” said Holmes. “We will soon get to the bottom of this. Now, please show me the house.”

Helen Stoner showed us where the bedrooms were. First Holmes walked along the outside of the house. He looked at the windows. He asked Miss Stoner to go into her own room and close the windows. Then he tried to get in but could not.

Next we went to the room where Julia Stoner had died. It was a small room with a low ceiling. Holmes sat down on one of the chairs. He looked around the whole room. He just sat in silence as he examined every small part of the room.

“Why, here is a bellpull,” he said. He pointed to a long rope on the wall. “In what part of the house does the bell ring?”

“Downstairs,” Helen Stoner said. “My stepfather put it in two years ago. The bell is for calling the servants. But we never use it.”

Holmes walked over to the bellpull. He gave it a strong tug. “Why, it is fake,” he said. “It doesn’t even ring. See? It just hangs from that wire up there. The wire above the air vent.

“And by the way—what is that air vent doing up there? An air hole should go to the outside. That one seems to go into the next room. Hmm. I think I shall have a look.”

We went into Dr. Roylott’s room. In it were only three things. A small bed. A wooden chair. And a large iron safe with a lamp on it.

Holmes tapped the safe. “What is in here?” he asked.

“My stepfather’s papers,” replied Helen Stoner.

“Are you sure there isn’t a cat in that safe?” asked Holmes. “Look at this!” He picked up a small dish of milk.

“We don’t keep a cat,” said Miss Stoner. “Just the cheetah and the baboon.”

“This milk wouldn’t be able to feed a cheetah,” said Holmes. “And what’s this?” He held up a small dog leash. The end of it had been tied in a loop.

I have never seen my friend look so nervous. Holmes knew that something evil will happen. We went outside. We walked up and down the garden several times. Then Holmes spoke to Miss Stoner.

“You must do exactly as I tell you,” he said. “It could save your life.” She nodded.

“See that pub across the street?” asked Holmes. “We will go there now. We will watch the house from there. Tonight I want you to go to bed in your sister’s room. Just as you did last night. Then wait until you hear Dr. Roylott go to bed. At that moment open and close the window. It will let Dr. Watson and me know to come back to the house. Then go to your own room and wait.”

“Watson and I will be waiting for your signal. Then we will leave the pub. We are going to spend the night in Julia’s room.”

“I think you already know what happened, Mr. Holmes,” said Helen Stoner. “Please tell me. How did my sister die?”

“We are not sure yet,” said Holmes. “We must leave you now, Miss Stoner. We must not let the doctor see us. Until tonight, then.”

Holmes and I went to the pub to wait for night. We had a room from which we could see Stoke Moran. At about seven we saw Dr. Roylott get home. We knew it was he. We could hear him going through the gates.

At about nine o’clock the lights in the house went out. It was pitch dark. A few hours passed. Then we saw a light from the middle window. Miss Stoner has given us our signal.

“That’s our signal,” said Holmes. A moment later we were outside on the dark road. A cold wind blew in our faces. We made our way over the old stone wall and across the garden. We got in through the window of Julia’s room.

We had to be very quiet. The smallest sound might wake Dr. Roylott next door. We did not dare have a light, either. Roylott might see it through the air vent. So as soon as we were safe, we blew out the candle. I had my gun ready.

“Do not go to sleep,” whispered Holmes. “You may die if you do.”

How shall I ever forget that long wait? I could not hear a sound. We were in the dark. We heard the clock strike twelve. Then one. Then two. Then three.

Suddenly I saw a flash of light through the air vent! Then all was quiet again.

In a moment I heard another sound. It was a soft hiss. It sounded like steam coming out of a kettle. Holmes jumped up. He lit a match. He began to beat at the wall with his stick.

“You see it, Watson?” he yelled. “You see it?”

But I saw nothing. At the moment Holmes lit the candle, I had heard a low whistle. But I could not see what Holmes was hitting.

I lit my candle. Holmes’s face was pale. I could see that he was scared.

I had no chance to ask what had happened. Suddenly the quiet of the night was broken by a scream. It was the most terrible sound I had ever heard. It made my heart cold. They say that people heard the cry all the way down in the village.

“What does it mean?” I asked.

“It means that it is all over,” Holmes said. “Bring your gun. We will go into Dr. Roylott’s room.”

A strange sight met our eyes. The lamp stood on the safe. The safe was open. In the chair next to the safe lay Dr. Roylott. The dog leash we had seen earlier was on his lap. His dead eyes looked up at the ceiling. And around his head there was a yellow band. It had brown spots on it.

“The band!” said Holmes. “The speckled band!”

The band began to move. It lifted its head. It was a snake!

“It is a swamp adder. The most dangerous snake in India,” said Holmes.

“Let’s put it back in its cage.”

Holmes picked up the dog leash. He put it around the snake’s head. He carried the snake to the safe and closed the door.

I will not say too much about how we told the news to poor Helen Stoner. Or about how we took her to her aunt’s house. Or about how the police said that Dr. Roylott had died by accident. They said he had been playing with a dangerous pet.

Holmes explained what happened. “As soon as I saw that bellpull, I knew,” he said. “It was there for some reason. It did not ring the bell. So it must have something to do with that air vent. Then I remembered. Helen Stoner had said that Julia could smell cigar smoke. So that the air vent must go into Dr. Roylott’s room!”

“Dr. Roylott had a cheetah and a baboon. Why not a snake too? I was sure as soon as I saw the dish of milk. Roylott had trained the snake to crawl through the vent and down the rope. The snake would come back when he whistled! The clang that Helen heard? That was the safe door closing.

“I knew the doctor would try the snake trick again. This time Helen would be killed. So I waited. When I heard the snake hiss, I hit.”

“You drove the snake back into Dr. Roylott’s room,” said I.

“Yes,” said Holmes. “I hit the snake so hard that it became furious. So it attacked its owner. In a way, I was the one who was partly responsible for Dr. Roylott’s death.”

Holmes sighed and picked up his pipe. “I cannot say that I am very sorry for his death,” he said.

A few months later, Holmes and I were sitting in our rooms in Baker Street when we read in the newspaper that Miss Stoner had married her fiancé. Now, the happy couple live in Stoke Moran with all the money from her mother coming to them and the cheetah and the baboon living happily in London Zoo.