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"The Adventure of the Speckled Band" is one of the 56 short Sherlock Holmes stories written by Scottish author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is the eighth of the twelve stories collected in ''The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes''. It is one of four Sherlock Holmes stories that can be classified as a locked room mystery. The story was first published in ''Strand Magazine'' in February 1892, with illustrations by Sidney Paget. It was published under the different title "The Spotted Band" in ''New York World'' in August 1905. Doyle later revealed that he thought this was his best Holmes story. Doyle wrote and produced a play based on the story. It premiered at the Adelphi Theatre, London on 4 June 1910, with H. A. Saintsbury as Sherlock Holmes and Lyn Harding as Dr. Grimesby Roylott. The play, originally called ''The Stonor Case'', differs from the story in several details, such as the names of some of the characters.〔 ==Plot summary== Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson rise unusually early one morning to meet Helen Stoner, a young woman who fears that her life is being threatened by her stepfather, Sir Grimesby Roylott, a doctor who practiced in India and who was married to Helen’s mother there. Dr. Roylott is the impoverished last survivor of what was a wealthy but violent tempered and amoral Anglo-Saxon aristocratic family and had served a jail sentence for killing his Indian butler in a rage. Helen’s sister has died almost two years earlier, shortly before she was to be married. Helen had heard her sister’s dying words, “The speckled band!” but had been unable to understand their meaning. Now Helen, too, is engaged, and she has begun to hear strange noises and to observe strange activities around Stoke Moran, the estate where she and her stepfather live. Sir Grimesby Roylott does keep strange company at the estate. He's best friends with a band of Gypsies on the property and keeps as pets a cheetah and a baboon. For some time, he has been making modifications to the house: Before Helen’s sister’s death, he had modifications made inside the house, and now he is having the outside wall repaired, forcing Helen to move into the room where her sister died. Holmes listens carefully to Helen’s story and agrees to take the case. He plans a visit to the manor later in the day. Before he can leave, however, he is visited by Roylott, who threatens him should he interfere. Undaunted, Holmes proceeds, first to the courthouse, where he examines Helen’s mother’s will, and then to the countryside. At Stoke Moran, Holmes inspects the premises carefully inside and out. Among the strange features that he discovers are a bed anchored to the floor, a bell cord that does not work, and a ventilator hole between Helen’s room and that of Roylott. Holmes and Watson arrange to spend the night in Helen’s room. In darkness they wait; suddenly, a slight metallic noise and a dim light through the ventilator prompt Holmes to action. Quickly lighting a candle, he discovers on the bell cord the “speckled band”—a venomous snake. He strikes the snake with a stick, driving it back through the ventilator; agitated, it attacks Roylott, who had been waiting for it to return after killing Helen. Holmes reveals to Watson that Roylott plotted to remove both daughters before they married because he would have lost most of the fortune he controlled when the daughters took with them the money left them by their mother. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Adventure of the Speckled Band」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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