SOURCE: "The Phantom Death" (The Idler, August 1893-January 1894) by W. Clark Russell

DESCRIPTION: "I walked to the cabin door, and the very first thing my eye lighted upon was a small snake, leisurely coiling its way from the head to the feet of the corpse. Its middle was about the thickness of a rifle-barrel, and it then tapered to something like whipcord to its tail. It was about two feet long, snow white, and speckled with black and red spots.  This, then, was the phantom death! Yonder venomous reptile it was, then, that, creeping out of some secret hiding-place, and visiting the unhappy men one after another, had stung them in their sleep, in the darkness of the cabin, and vanished before they had struck a light and realized indeed that something desperate had come to them!" ("The Phantom Death" by W. Clark Russell)

NOTES:  Three officers on board the Lord of the Isles meet their death in a grotesque manner: a mysterious poison that kills then turns the body black. Each man dies when taking over the captain's quarters. The terror of the phantom death is upon the crew, causing them to lock the narrator in his cabin out of suspicion. In the end the culprit is found: a white snake with speckles of black and red. The serpent is instantly dispatched.

HISTORY: This monster mystery was probably inspired by A. Conan Doyle's "The Speckled Band" (The Strand, February 1892).

Sidney Paget's classic Holmes illo