Sherlock Holmes gets the clues he needs to solve a murder, and to prevent another one from occurring, when he finds out that a doctor owns a poisonous snake--the deadly swamp adder. Filmed on the expensive sets leftover from the movie Joan of Arc at Hal Roach Studios in Culver City and produced for the "Your Show Time" series, the short has been released as a solo feature on many DVDs that chronicle classic Sherlock Holmes films..

In this film without sound, a man awakes disheveled in a rooming house. He stares out the window seeing children playing and a well-dressed man sitting on a chair in the middle of the street reading a newspaper and looking up at him. A headline describes the murder of a child. The disheveled man, whose face expresses fear and despair, leaves, going through the city, alarmed when anyone looks at him. A woman invites him to look through a public telescope. He does then keeps going. He climbs a hill. Two fencers appear; so does a jester. Is flight fruitless?