It turned out that Serpents Tongue was not too effective in my
Healer's hand, despite its +6 enchantment and my Skilled dagger
proficiency; too many monsters deeper down are tough and poison
resistant. My enchanted options (+6 Staff of Aesculapius, +5
Vorpal Blade, and +5 Frostbrand) were kept in my bag as backup.
At some point during the home-run (@dlvl:39) I noticed that my
hand wasn't wielding anything any more. Doh! I think I wouldn't
need that artifact dagger but decided to return to Gehennom to
get it; it served me most of the time in that game and that
item should not get lost. I found it at Asmodeus' level where
some of those bullwhip carrying monsters obviously disarmed
me without me noticing. On the planes I switched between that
dagger and a chickatrice corpse, and the Healer even managed
to reach rank #1 (~8M) on the [point-based] highscore list.
Janis