Remembering our previous excursion to Stoke Moran, I slipped my revolver into the pocket of my coat when we departed in the morning. It was a dank autumn day, one of the first we’d had following an unusually pleasant summer. The train from Waterloo Station was on time, and we took it as far as Leatherhead, hiring a trap at the station inn just as we had done so on the previous journey, nearly six months earlier.
“The weather is not so pleasant this time,” Sherlock Holmes remarked. “But, then, spring always holds more promise than autumn. Look, Watson! There is the gypsy camp!”
We were passing the grey gables and high, pointed roof of the late Grimesby Roylott’s mansion and, off in the distance, almost to the woods, we could see the wispy smoke of a campfire.
“So it is, Holmes. I believe I can see one of those animals, the cheetah, prowling around.”
“Driver!” Holmes called out. “Please leave us off here!”
The black-hatted driver turned to us. “It’s a mile’s walk into the village.”
“That’s all right. We’ll make it on foot.”
“Straight ahead down this road.”
Holmes paid him and we scrambled out of the trap, watching while it turned in the road for the journey back to Leatherhead. Then we set out across country, through the wayside hedge and up the gently rising hill toward the gypsy camp. As we approached, the cheetah caught our scent and moved into a crouch. For a tense moment, my hand felt for the revolver in my coat pocket, but then a young gypsy wearing a colorful shirt ran up to grab the animal’s collar.
“I am looking for Ramon Dade,” Holmes said. “I am told he is the owner of this animal.”
The dark face relaxed just a bit. “I am Ramon. Who sends you here.”
“My name is Sherlock Holmes. I have come out from London at the behest of your brother Henry.”
“Henry!” he almost spat the word. “He is no longer my brother. He deserts his tribe to live in the village.”
“He is married and a blacksmith now.”
“We have horses. He could be a blacksmith to us, but that woman took him away.”
“His wife, Sarah?”
“I will not speak of her.”
“He says you threatened her with a snake and frightened her half to death.”
“Those are all lies.”
“But you do have a snake…the mate to the swamp adder that killed Dr. Roylott.”
“I bought the animals from Miss Stoner. A cheetah and a baboon.”
“And a swamp adder.”
“She told me I could have any other animals I found on the property. Her stepfather had the second snake in a cage in an old potting shed.”
“Take me to it,” Holmes said.
The gypsy hesitated. Some of the others in the camp had paused in their activities to watch our confrontation and, once again, I was glad I had brought the revolver with me. However, no one produced a knife or any other weapon. A small boy appeared with the baboon in tow and the mood lightened at once. Perhaps I was wrong to feel threatened by these people.
“You can see the snake if you want,” Ramon Dade decided with some reluctance. “Come this way.”
“We followed him to a potting shed that stood on the edge of the formal gardens, now grown over with weeds and wildflowers.
“Will Miss Stoner keep this house?” Holmes asked.
“No. It has too many bad memories for her. She has already offered it for sale. The new owner will want us out, and we will move on to another county.”
“That is why you are urging your brother to come along? So you will not be parted?”
“He must choose between that woman and his people.”
He lifted the hasp on the wooden door and we followed him inside. The place was thick with cobwebs and, in the dim, filtered light, I imagined it to be alive with spiders. The thought so unnerved me that I forgot we had entered this place to view the deadliest snake in India, a creature far more dangerous than any spider.
Ramon felt on one of the shelves for a dark lantern, which he lit
Then he announced in a hushed voice, “Behold the speckled band!”
A gasp escaped my lips as the lantern light fell upon the wire cage. At first, I saw only a rock, slightly larger than a man’s head, and the branch of a tree. Then my eyes focused on the peculiar band, the speckled band, coiled around the top of the rock. Even as Holmes and I watched, it started to move.
“My God, Holmes!”
“Steady, Watson.”
It was my first really good look at the creature whose mate had claimed two lives.
“The swamp adder,” I breathed.
“A little-known offshoot of the krait family.” Holmes turned to the gypsy. “This creature must be destroyed, or at least confined to a zoo. Its bite causes death within ten seconds. All your lives are in danger.”
“I have been milking it of its venom,” Ramon Dade answered. “We will be moving soon and the snake will travel with us.”
Even as he spoke, the creature reared up, its squat head weaving slightly as it faced us. I took a step backward, fearing it might try to strike through the wire mesh.
We stepped outside the potting shed, where Holmes offered a final word of advice.
“Let your brother and his wife live in peace,” he cautioned. “Stop frightening her with the snake.”
“I have no brother, and I do not frighten that woman.”
As Holmes and I walked back to the road, we observed one of the other gypsies watching us. I wondered who he was and if he had any special interest in our visit.
“What now, Holmes?”
“We have one other person to see who may shed some light on the matter…Sarah Dade, Henry’s new wife.”
Our lodgings at the Crown Inn, consisting of a bedroom and sitting room, were fully as good as on our first visit, although this time the view faced the village instead of looking out on the Roylott manor house. We ate a light lunch in the downstairs dining room, where Holmes asked directions to the blacksmith’s shop. It proved to be in the next block, near the little creek that bisected the village.
“No doubt that is the very parapet where Dr. Roylott and Henry Dade fought,” Holmes remarked as we passed it.
He led the way into the shop, where we could see Dade at work forming horseshoes on the anvil.
He stopped work when he saw us, plunging the steaming metal into a trough of cold water.
“Mr. Holmes! Dr. Watson! Welcome again to our little village. Did you have a pleasant journey?”
“Very pleasant,” Holmes said. “On the way, we stopped at the gypsy camp to speak with your brother Ramon.”
Henry Dade’s body went rigid. “What did he have to say? Did he admit to keeping the other snake?”
“Oh, yes! In fact, he showed it to us.”
“The man is brazen, if nothing else.”
“I would like to speak with your wife, if I may.”
“Certainly. I will call her.”
Their living quarters were upstairs over the blacksmith shop, and she quickly came down in answer to his summons. Sarah Dade was a thin woman with a pretty face and nervous hands, her dark hair drawn back from her face and arranged in a bun. She wore a knitted shawl wrapped around her shoulders and back, over a dark brown dress that reached to the floor.
“You are Mr. Sherlock Holmes?” she asked. “My husband has told me about his visit to you.”
“I thought I might speak to you about your encounter with your brother-in-law.”
“Help them in any way you can,” Henry Dade told his wife. “I will be upstairs relaxing for a few minutes. Hammering horseshoes is tiring work.”
Sarah Dade smiled after his retreating figure. “He likes his naps. The life of a blacksmith is for a younger man.”
“How old is your husband?”
“He will be forty-five in a few months. His brother Ramon is ten years younger. The family had some gold, which went to the eldest son, and Henry used that to buy thi
s shop. Ramon resents the fact that he abandoned the life of a gypsy. More than anything, he resents Henry marrying me and using the gold for this shop.”
“He has threatened you?”
“On more than one occasion. He showed me that damned creature…yes, damned by God since the beginning of time…and told me the speckled band could come for us anywhere. He reminded me of Aaron’s staff in the Bible, the one that turned into a serpent.”
“Holmes!” I said, pointing out in the street, where a figure scurried along on the opposite side.
“What is it, Watson?”
“That gypsy we saw at the camp! I think he followed us here.”
“It is Manuel,” Sarah Dade said. “He is feeble-minded, but harmless. He runs errands for us. You see, all of the gypsies are not our enemies. Only Ramon would cause us trouble.”
“Let us hope our visit today has deterred him,” Holmes said. “We will remain overnight at the Crown Inn before returning to London by the morning train. If anything unusual transpires, we are close at hand.”
“Come up to see Henry before you leave.”
“Very well.”
We followed her up the narrow staircase to the second floor living quarters. She opened the door to a comfortable parlor and I could see her husband seated in a large armchair, his head down, apparently dozing. She walked over to him, clutching the shawl about her shoulders as if to ward off a sudden chill. She bent, shook him and uttered his name.
“Henry! Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson are leaving now.”
“Is he all right?” Holmes asked, sudden alarm in his voice.
“Oh my God!” Sarah backed away, one hand to her mouth. “He’s…”
She collapsed in a faint before I could reach her. Holmes hurried to the man in the chair.
“Careful, Watson!” he warned. “We are not alone in this room!”
My revolver was in my hand as I searched the corners with my eyes.
“Holmes, do you mean…”
“Henry Dade is dead. There are the twin punctures of a serpent’s fangs on his neck. It is the speckled band again.”
I helped Sarah recover with the aid of some smelling salts, and she insisted on going for the constable, while Holmes and I searched the room for the deadly swamp adder.
“Its fangs may be empty, but it is still dangerous,” Holmes warned. “Keep your weapon in hand.”
“The window is closed, Holmes. How did that terrible creature gain access to the room?”
“When we find him, we may know the answer to that.”
But we did not find the swamp adder or any other snake in the room with Henry Dade’s body. Every inch of the room was searched without result. I was especially careful of the umbrella stand, expecting one of the canes to come alive in my hand, as it had for Aaron, but they remained merely wood.
“It is not here,” I said at last, after a half-hour’s search.
“I quite agree, Watson.”
Sarah had returned with a Constable Richards, a stout young man who had little experience with violent death.
“I will have to summon Scotland Yard,” he told us. “We have no facilities here for investigating a murder by snakebite.”
“Dr. Roylott…” I began.
“The official inquiry concluded that Dr. Roylott died accidentally while playing with a dangerous pet. But you say this is murder.”
“The victim’s wife says it is,” Holmes corrected. “I have not completed my investigation of the facts.”
“His brother killed him,” Sarah Dade insisted. “There is no other explanation.”
“There seems none,” Holmes agreed, “but, pray tell me how the deadly serpent was introduced into the room.”
“I left that window slightly ajar when I came downstairs. Henry must have closed it when he came up here to nap. The serpent had entered through the window and hidden itself somewhere.”
“But there is no snake here now,” my friend pointed out. “Your husband was hardly in a position to open the door or window for the serpent after he’d been bitten. Dr. Roylott lived only ten seconds, you remember.”
“That is true,” she agreed. “My god, is it possible Ramon has the power to change staffs into serpents?”
“Whatever his power, we need to speak with him,” Holmes decided. “And with that other gypsy, Manuel, too. He was across the street at about the time the deed was done.”
There was no doctor in the village itself, so I pronounced Henry Dade officially dead. Though I’d had little experience with death from snakebite, the symptoms seemed to bear it out. While snakebite death was rarely instantaneous, we knew from the case of Dr. Roylott that it was certainly possible.
When Ramon Dade arrived in the company of Constable Richards, he went at once to the body of his brother.
There were tears in his eyes as he turned and told us, “I did not do this thing. The snake has been in its cage in the potting shed this whole day.”
Sherlock Holmes stepped forward. “Do you deny threatening your brother’s wife with the snake?”
“I threatened her, yes,” he admitted. “She lured Henry away from the family for the gold he had. He belonged to us, not to her.”
Holmes turned to the constable. “What of the snake?”
“I have it in its cage, in my trap.”
“And the other gypsy, Manuel?”
“He is downstairs, but you will not get any information out of him.”
“We’ll see,” Holmes said.
I followed him down to speak with the gypsy named Manuel. Seeing him up close, I was struck by the ugly deformity of the man. The poor devil had suffered some childhood injury which had left the working of his brain impaired. His few words of speech were mere noise, hardly recognizable to my ears.
“Manuel,” Holmes said, “you came here earlier this afternoon.”
“Yes…”
“Did you like Henry and Sarah?”
“Yes, like.”
“Did you do errands for them?”
He nodded his head, smiling with comprehension.
“And did you bring them a snake today? The gypsy snake?”
This required a little more thought, but finally he shook his head.
“No. No snake.”
“Did you ever touch the snake in its cage?”
“No! No! Snake bad!”
Holmes sighed in exasperation and tried a different approach. “Did Ramon take the snake today? Did you see him with the snake?”
He shook his head, looking frightened.
“All right,” Holmes decided. “There is nothing more to be learned here. Let us go look at the villain in its cage. Perhaps it will tell us how the crime was committed.”
To me, the swamp adder looked much as it had a few hours earlier. Its brownish speckles seemed almost pretty at times, and I had to remind myself that it was a deadly killer.
“It’s close to three feet long, Holmes,” I observed.
“About the length of a walking stick.”
“Are you back to that again? We examined the ones in the umbrella stand.”
“So we did. And did it not strike you as odd that a gypsy turned blacksmith, a reasonably vigorous man in his forties, would possess those walking sticks? Certainly he did not need them for support, and he had no walking stick with him yesterday in London. What were they doing in his parlor? What purpose did they serve?”
“Holmes, you can’t believe the snake was hidden in one of those canes! Even if it had been, how did Ramon manage to retrieve it?”
“Let us speak to Sarah Dade about this most interesting question of the superfluous walking sticks.”
Sarah seemed surprised at Holmes’ question, but answered it immediately.
“They belonged to the previous blacksmith’s father, who died last year. When he moved out, he said he had no use for the canes, and left them for us. I decided they looked nice in the umbrella stand.”
“As simple as that,” Holmes said with a lau
gh. “Watson, you must remind of this the next time I seem too pompous and self-assured with my deductions.”
It was decided that Sarah Dade should spend the night at the Crown Inn, too, on the slim chance there might be two snakes, with one of them still loose and undiscovered in her flat above the blacksmith shop. The constable promised a more thorough search of the furniture and closets in the morning, when the Scotland Yard people would arrive to join the investigation.
We dined with Sarah on the main floor of the inn, but she was still understandably distraught at her husband’s death.
“I was the one who insisted he come to you,” she told Holmes. “I was so fearful something like this might happen. Now he is gone and I have nothing but the memory of our brief time together.”
“His killer will be brought to justice,” Holmes promised her.
I had assumed we would retire early and spend a peaceful night but, once we were alone in our room, my friend paced the floor like a caged animal, deep in thought. Finally he seemed to reach a decision.
“There are things to be done tonight, Watson. Come along now, and bring your revolver.”
“Holmes…”
But he would say no more and, before I knew it, we had left the inn under cover of darkness, carefully slipping out the back door. We headed through the alleys, approaching the blacksmith shop from the rear, and quietly Holmes opened the back door.
“I took the liberty of unbolting this earlier,” he explained in whispered tones. “Move very softly now. We’re going upstairs to the living quarters.”
“You think the serpent is still there?”
“We shall see.”
I followed him through the darkness, barely able to make out his form as he moved up the steps, testing each one first for possible squeaks.
“Step over this one, Watson,” he whispered, halfway up. “Not a sound now!”
We entered the living room where Henry Dade had been killed, and he motioned me to take up a position behind the sofa.
“My revolver, Holmes,” I said, offering it to him.
He waved it away.
“Keep it ready, Watson, but don’t use it unless I tell you to.”
It was like the night we spent in Miss Stoner’s bedroom, a dreadful vigil in the dark, and I half-expected to hear again the low, clear whistle with which Roylott had summoned the speckled band. The ticking of the mantle clock was the only sound for a long time. My leg was cramped beneath me and, at last, I tried shifting to a more comfortable position.
The Sherlock Holmes Stories of Edward D. Hoch Page 2
