Please go on - press the blue button.
Page 48
The adventure of the speckled band.
Such are the true facts of the death of Dr. Grimesby Roylott, of Stoke Moran. It is not necessary that I should prolong a story which has already become too long by telling how we gave the sad news to the terrified girl, how we took 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 unwisely playing with a dangerous pet. The little which I had yet to learn of the case was told to me by Sherlock Holmes as we travelled back next day.
"I had," said he, "come to an entirely wrong conclusion. This shows, my dear Watson, how dangerous it always is to reason from insufficient information. The presence of the gypsies, and the use of the word 'band,' by the poor girl, no doubt to explain the appearance which she had caught a hurried glimpse of by the light of her match, were sufficient to put me upon the wrong scent entirely. I can only claim the merit that I instantly changed my mind 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 attention was speedily drawn, as I have already told 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 made me suspect that the rope was there as a bridge for something passing through the hole and coming to the bed. The idea of a snake then occurred to me, and when I discovered that the doctor had a supply of creatures from India, I felt that I was probably on the right track."
Vocabulary
Please go on - press the blue button.
