The Adventure of the Speckled Band the snake wrong, a theory that the swamp adder was an artificial hybrid between the Mexican Gila monster ("Heloderma suspectum") and "Naja naja". His speculation suggests that Doyle might have hidden a double-meaning in Holmes' words. What Holmes said, reported by Watson, was "It is a swamp adder, the deadliest snake in India"; but Klauber suggested what Holmes really said was "It is a "samp-aderm", the deadliest skink in India." "Samp-aderm" can be translated "snake-Gila-monster": "Samp" is Hindi for snake, and the suffix "aderm" is derived from "heloderm", the common or vernacular name of the Gila monster generally used by
In the Doghouse (short story) In the Doghouse (short story) "In the Doghouse" is a short story by Orson Scott Card and Jay A. Parry. It appears in his short story collection "Maps in a Mirror". Card originally published this story in the December 1978 issue of "Analog Science Fiction and Fact." An entire species of aliens fleeing from a doomed planet sends an agent ahead to the planet Earth to prepare the way for the arrival of their minds, the only part of themselves they have been able to preserve. Since killing another sentient species is against their moral code, their agent decides that