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The first I ever discovered my dear friend was any more than he appeared to be—that, indeed, the world was more than it had appeared to be—was the night of the dreadful vigil at Stoke Moran. Though my account of the case is entirely the truth, the instrument of the unfortunate Miss Julia Stoner’s murder, and the ultimate killer of Doctor Grimesby Roylott himself, was not a swamp adder from India, as I was obliged, later, to write.
In the dark, I heard the soothing hissing sound, which I likened to a jet of steam, and my friend struck a match and beat savagely at the bell pull with his cane. “You see it, Watson? You see it?” he yelled, but I saw nothing, for the creature had already retreated through the vent and attacked Doctor Roylott. After the man’s scream had died away and silence reigned for a few moments did we go into the doctor’s room.
I remember very plainly the cast of the light on Holmes’ face, the shadows our candle threw, long and sinister, against the walls. And there, the iron safe, slightly ajar, and Doctor Grimesby Roylott, clad in his dressing-gown and Turkish slippers, in the wooden chair beside the table, his face turned upwards, eyes fixed and dreadful. Then we saw the band, the speckled band, coiled around his brow.
I wrote previously that Holmes described the beast as a swamp adder, the deadliest snake in India. This was not what met our gaze. The creature coiled around Doctor Roylott’s head was indeed snakish, and possessed a snakish temper, but, as it raised its head, as if it were some animated head-dress, I could see it had a sharp, lizard-like head and two sets of lizard-like legs.
“Be careful, Watson,” Holmes said, setting the candle down upon the table. “It is sated in its revenge but may yet strike if provoked.”
“What is it?” I asked, watching as my friend approached the doctor’s lifeless form. I expected he would pick up the leash we had discovered earlier, which lay across Roylott’s lap, but he surprised me by reaching out to the snakish creature with his bare hands.
“Holmes!” I said, but he ignored me. The speckled band let out a low hiss, glittering eyes on Holmes, but it did not strike. It seemed to me Holmes was murmuring softly, but his voice was so low I could not make out what he was saying.
The creature carefully uncoiled from around Roylott’s brow and moved towards Holmes. It stepped delicately into his hands and I could see clearly the serpentine creature was not a snake, nor any lizard I had ever heard of.
“Your eyes do not deceive you,” Holmes said, watching the creature as it coiled itself around his fingers. “This is no snake or lizard, though it shares the traits of both families. It is a rare Indian dragon, a juvenile, as you can see, by its size and markings.”
Had I not seen the creature with my own eyes, I would have thought my friend mad. It only occurred to me later how quickly I had accepted his explanation, without question, though it all should have been utterly impossible. Sherlock Holmes speaking of dragons!
“They are intelligent creatures,” Holmes continued. He did not move towards me, for which I was grateful. “They are not prone to violence, though when cornered they will fight, as this one has done. It must have been a dreadful accident that caused it to attack the unfortunate Miss Stoner. We shall never know, but I suspect she turned over in her sleep and pinned it under her, causing it to strike. That was what Doctor Roylott hoped for.”
Holmes looked at me and his eyes seemed to flash with an unearthly light. “He was a patient monster, standing each night upon his chair. He might wait weeks, months, before the creature was provoked to an attack.” He lifted the creature towards his face and looked at its loosely looped body. Indeed, it was curious the creature seemed so complacent though it was responsible for two deaths.
“But the safe, Holmes? The milk?” I asked, keeping my distance.
“The safe is where Roylott kept it, likely so that it would not escape. He has had this dragon some time, but it has grown very little, evidence that he has not properly cared for it. You can see it is hardly as long as my forearm, and only as big around as my thumb.” Holmes held the creature towards me, but I only glanced at it. “He trained it to come to him at the sound of a whistle, rewarding it with milk, which, I dare say, was the only thing this poor creature has had to eat in all its years in captivity.”
The creature writhed around Holmes’ fingers, digging its claws into the fabric of his sleeve. With alarming swiftness it darted up his arm to lie across his shoulders. Holmes looked to me and laughed. The sound was so startling, I thought he might frighten the dragon into attacking.
“My dear Watson, you are as pale as milk. Do not be afraid. It is extremely venomous, but will only strike when provoked, as would any temperate creature. And you can see, even though I struck at it with my cane, the creature bears me no ill will.” The creature, in fact, looked to have fallen asleep. “Had I known it was this sort of dragon,” he continued, “I would not have struck at all. I had feared it was a different creature, one Roylott could not have controlled so easily.”
He did not elaborate on his fears, which I suspect he did partly out of deference for my shaky nerves. “What will you do with it?” I asked. “We must tell Miss Stoner what’s happened. She’s probably terrified, sitting locked in her room after that dreadful shriek.”
“We must tell her what has befallen her step-father,” Holmes replied. “Show her the cause of her sister’s death, what Doctor Roylott had hoped would be her own. But after that…”
He trailed off in a thoughtful manner, turning his gaze to the sleeping creature sprawled across his shoulders. “We will call the county police,” he said, “but I shall not tell them of the dragon. We will close the safe and say a deadly swamp adder lies within.”
Within the hour we had explained everything to Miss Helen Stoner, who grew very pale at the sight of the dragon, recognizing it as the speckled band her sister must have seen in her last moments and yet seeming to disbelieve its existence even as she gazed upon it. Holmes told her he would take the creature away, and that she would do well to marry, as quickly as propriety could stand, and leave Stoke Moran for good. She agreed readily, as it had already been her plan to do so.
“And I shall endeavour to forget this dreadful creature ever existed,” she said.
The police were convinced just as quickly of the cause of Doctor Roylott’s death and believed without question Holmes had trapped a deadly reptile in the safe. Holmes had secreted the dragon away in his pocket and I thought it certainly must writhe to escape or bite Holmes’ hand, but it did neither of those things. The safe was taken away by the police after Holmes explained the only way to be sure the fictional adder was killed without bringing anyone into danger would be to build a fire around it and cook the snake inside.
The return to London was a tense one, as I was very aware of the dragon—by now I had come to think of it as a dragon—travelling with us. But it neither moved nor made a sound, and deigned to remain in Holmes’ pocket even as we crossed the noisy platform at Waterloo.
Once we arrived at Baker Street, Holmes retreated to his room in silence, taking the dragon with him. Though I half expected to find Holmes dead from the beast’s venom at any moment, I heard no agonized scream or frantic shouting. It was some of the quietest hours I had ever spent in 221B.
But in the quiet, I was forced to confront my thoughts, which I could not face directly. Sherlock Holmes was a man of reason, a man of science, of logic and deduction. A dragon was a creature of myth and legend. That these two disparate things should meet, and not result in Holmes rejecting the dragon or disproving its existence, I could not reconcile.
And yet I must, and in so doing, I could only conclude that there were many things about Sherlock Holmes I had yet to understand.