Dr. Roylott is a worthy adversary to Holmes. To begin
with, Roylott is smart enough to track his stepdaughter, Helen, to Holmes' flat, so this
shows that he has the powers of deduction that Holmes himself is so famous for having.
Helen says, "He is so cunning that I never know when I am safe from him" when she learns
he has followed her to Holmes' flat.
The way that Roylott
has arranged the pull chord over the bed in which he wants Helen to sleep is clever, but
not clever enough because Holmes recognizes right away that there is a bell pull chord
but no bell. The fact that Roylott has been able to train a snake to do what it does,
however, is brilliant. The snake also is trained to come when Roylott whistles, so that,
too, is pretty brilliant and must have taken a long time to accomplish. This shows that
Roylott is not only evil and devious, but dangerously patient. Other examples of his
cleverness: he clamps Helen's bed to the floor so she cannot move it away from the vent,
from which the snake must enter the room; Dr. Roylott chose a type of snake whose poison
could not be identified.
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