Chapter Nine

Occasionally, events in one's life become clearer through the prism of experience, a phrase which simply means that things tend to become clearer as time goes on. For instance, when a person is just born, they usually have no idea what curtains are and spend a great deal of their first months wondering why on earth Mommy and Daddy have hung large pieces of cloth over each window in the nursery. But as the person grows older, the idea of curtains becomes clearer through the prism of experience. The person will learn the word "curtains" and notice that they are actually quite handy for keeping a room dark when it is time to sleep, and for decorating an otherwise boring window area. Eventually, they will entirely accept the idea of curtains, and may even purchase some curtains of their own, or Venetian blinds, and it is all due to the prism of experience.
Coach Genghis's S.O.R.E. program, however, was one event that didn't seem to get any clearer at all through the Baudelaire orphans' prism of experience. If anything, it grew even harder and harder to understand, because Violet, Klaus, and Sunny became so utterly exhausted as the days-and, more particularly, the nights- wore on. After the children received their second message from Carmelita Spats, they spent the rest of the afternoon wondering what Coach Genghis would make them do that evening. The Quagmire triplets wondered along with them, so everyone was surprised-the Baudelaires, who met Genghis out on the front lawn after dinner again, and the Quagmires, who tiptoed out of the recital and spied on them, in shifts, from behind the archway again-when Genghis began blowing his whistle and ordered the Baudelaire orphans to begin running. The Baudelaires and Quagmires thought that surely Genghis would do something far more sinister than more laps.
But while a second evening of running laps might have lacked in sinisterity, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny were too exhausted to notice. They could scarcely hear the shrieks of Genghis's whistle and his cries of "Keep running!" and "Another lap!" over the sound of their own desperate panting for breath. They grew so sweaty that the orphans thought they would give up the entire Baudelaire fortune for a good long shower. And their legs grew so sore that the children forgot, even with their prism of experience, what it felt like to have legs that didn't ache from thigh to toe.
Lap after lap the Baudelaires ran, hardly taking their eyes off the circle of luminous paint that still glowed brightly on the darkening lawn, and staring at this circle was somehow the worst part of all. As the evening turned to night, the luminous circle was all the Baudelaires could really see, and it imprinted itself into their eyes so they could see it even when they were staring desperately into the darkness. If you've ever had a flash photograph taken, and the blob of the flash has stayed in your view for a few moments afterward, then you are familiar with what was happening to the Baudelaires, except the glowing circle stayed in their minds for so long that it became symbolic. The word "symbolic" here means that the glowing circle felt like it stood for more than merely a track, and what it stood for was zero. The luminous zero glowed in the Baudelaire minds, and it was symbolic of what they knew of their situation. They knew zero about what Genghis was up to. They knew zero about why they were running endless laps. And they had zero energy to think about it.
Finally, the sun began to rise, and Coach Genghis dismissed his orphan track team. The Baudelaires stumbled blearily to the Orphans Shack, too tired to even see if Duncan and Isadora were sneaking back to their dormitory after their last shift of spying. Once again, the three siblings were too tired to put on their noisy shoes, so their toes were doubly sore when they awoke, just two hours later, to begin another groggy day. But-and I shudder to tell you this-this was not the last groggy day for the Baudelaire orphans. The dreadful Carmelita Spats delivered them the usual message at lunch, after they spent the morning dozing through classes and secretarial duties, and the Baudelaires put their heads on the cafeteria table in despair at the idea of another night of running. The Quagmires tried to comfort them, promising to double their research efforts, but Violet, Klaus, and Sunny were too tired for conversation, even with their closest friends. Luckily, their closest friends understood completely and didn't find the Baudelaires' silence rude or discouraging.
It seems impossible to believe that the three Baudelaires managed to survive another evening of S.O.R.E., but in times of extreme stress one can often find energy hidden in even the most exhausted areas of the body. I discovered this myself when I was woken up in the middle of the night and chased sixteen miles by an angry mob armed with torches, swords, and vicious dogs, and the Baudelaire orphans discovered it as they ran laps, not only for that night but also for six nights following. This made a grand total of nine S.O.R.E. sessions, although "grand" would seem to be the wrong word for endless evenings of desperate panting, sweaty bodies, and achy legs. For nine nights, the Baudelaire brains were plagued with the symbolic, luminous zero glowing in their minds like a giant donut of despair.
As the Baudelaire orphans suffered, their schoolwork suffered with them. As I'm sure you know, a good night's sleep helps you perform well in school, and so if you are a student you should always get a good night's sleep unless you have come to the good part of your book, and then you should stay up all night and let your schoolwork fall by the wayside, a phrase which means "flunk." In the days that followed, the Baudelaires were much more exhausted than somebody who had stayed up all night reading, and their schoolwork did more than fall by the wayside. It fell off the wayside, a phrase which here has different meanings for each child. For Violet, it meant that she was so drowsy that she did not write down a single word of Mr. Remora's stories. For Klaus, it meant that he was so weary that he didn't measure a single one of Mrs. Bass's objects. And for Sunny, it meant that she was so exhausted that she didn't do anything Vice Principal Nero assigned her to do. The Baudelaire orphans believed that doing well in school was extremely important, even if the school happened to be run by a tyrannical idiot, but they were simply too fatigued from their nightly laps to do their assigned work. Before long, the circle of luminous paint was not the only zero the Baudelaires saw. Violet saw a zero at the top of her paper when she was unable to recall any of Mr. Remora's stories for a test. Klaus saw a zero in Mrs. Bass's gradebook when he was called on to report the exact length of a tube sock he was supposed to be measuring and was discovered to be taking a nap instead. And Sunny saw a zero when she checked the staple drawer and saw that there were zero staples inside.
"This is getting ridiculous," Isadora said when Sunny updated her siblings and friends at the start of another weary lunch. "Look at you, Sunny. It was inappropriate to hire you as an administrative assistant in the first place, and it's simply absurd to have you crawl laps by night and make your own staples by day."
"Don't call my sister absurd or ridiculous!" Klaus cried.
"I'm not calling her ridiculous!" Isadora said.
"I'm calling the situation ridiculous!"
"Ridiculous means you want to laugh at it," said Klaus, who was never too tired to define words, "and I don't want you laughing at us."
"I'm not laughing at you," Isadora said. "I'm trying to help."
Klaus snatched his drinking glass from Isadora's side of the table. "Well, laughing at us doesn't help at all, you cakesniffer."
Isadora snatched her silverware from Klaus's hands. "Calling me names doesn't help either, Klaus."
"Mumdum!" Sunny shrieked.
"Oh, stop it, both of you," Duncan said. "Isadora, can't you see that Klaus is just tired? And Klaus, can't you see that Isadora is just frustrated?"
Klaus took his glasses off and returned his drinking glass to Isadora. "I'm too tired to see anything," he said. "I'm sorry, Isadora. Being tired makes me crabby. In a few days I'll turn as nasty as Carmelita Spats."
Isadora handed her silverware back to Klaus and patted him on the hand in forgiveness. "You'll never be as nasty as Carmelita Spats," she said.
"Carmelita Spats?" Violet said, lifting her head from her tray. She had dozed through Isadora and Klaus's argument but woken up at the sound of the Special Messenger's name. "She's not coming here again to tell us to do laps, is she?"
"I'm afraid she is," Duncan said ruefully, a word which here means "while pointing at a rude, violent, and filthy little girl."
"Hello, cakesniffers," Carmelita Spats said. "Today I have two messages for you, so I should really get two tips instead of one."
"Oh, Carmelita," Klaus said. "You haven't gotten a tip for the last nine days, and I see no reason to break that tradition."
"That's because you're a stupid orphan," Carmelita Spats said promptly. "In any case, message number one is the usual: meet Coach Genghis on the front lawn right after dinner."
Violet gave an exhausted groan. "And what's the second message?" she asked.
"The second message is that you must report to Vice Principal Nero's office right away."
"Vice Principal Nero's office?" Klaus asked. "Why?"
"I'm sorry," Carmelita Spats said with a nasty smile to indicate that she wasn't sorry one bit. "I don't answer questions from nontipping orphan cakesniffers."
Some children at the neighboring table laughed when they heard that and began banging their silverware on the table. "Cakesniffing orphans in the Orphans Shack! Cakesniffing orphans in the Orphans Shack!" they chanted as Carmelita Spats giggled and skipped off to finish her lunch. "Cakesniffing orphans in the Orphans Shack! Cakesniffing orphans in the Orphans Shack!" they chanted while the Baude-laires sighed and stood up on their aching legs. "We'd better go to Nero's," Violet said. "We'll see you later, Duncan and Isadora."
"Nonsense," Duncan said. "We'll walk you. Carmelita Spats has made me lose my appetite, so we'll skip lunch and take you to the administrative building. We won't go inside-otherwise there'll be no silverware between the five of us-but we'll wait outside and you can tell us what's going on."
"I wonder what Nero wants," Klaus said, yawning.
"Maybe he's discovered that Genghis is really Olaf, all by himself," Isadora said, and the Baudelaires smiled back. They didn't dare hope that this was the reason for their summons to Nero's office, but they appreciated their friends' hopefulness. The five children handed their scarcely eaten lunches to the cafeteria workers, who blinked at them silently from behind their metal masks, and walked to the administrative-building. The Quagmire triplets wished the Baudelaires luck, and Violet, Klaus, and Sunny trudged up the steps to Nero's office.
"Thank you for taking the time out of your busy orphan schedule to see me," Vice Principal Nero said, yanking open his door before they could knock. "Hurry up and come inside. Every minute I spend talking to you is a minute I could spend practicing the violin, and when you're a musical genius like me, every minute counts."
The three children walked into the tiny office and began clapping their tired hands together as Nero raised both his arms in the air. "There are two things I wanted to talk to you about," he said when the applause was over. "Do you know what they are?"
"No, sir," Violet replied.
"No, sir," Nero mimicked, although he looked disappointed that the children hadn't given him a longer answer to make fun of. "Well, the first one is that the three of you have missed nine of my violin concerts, and each of you owes me a bag of candy for each one. Nine hags of candy times three equals twenty-nine.
In addition, Carmelita Spats has told me that she has delivered ten messages to you, if you include the two she delivered today, and that you've never given her a tip. That's a disgrace. Now, I think a nice tip is a pair of earrings with precious stones, so you owe her ten pairs of earrings. What do you have to say about that?"
The Baudelaire orphans looked at one another with their sleepy, sleepy eyes. They had nothing to say about that. They had plenty to think about that - that they'd only missed Nero's concerts because Coach Genghis had forced them to, that nine bags of candy times three equals twenty-seven, not twenty-nine, and that tips are always optional and usually consist of money instead of earrings - but Violet, Klaus, and Sunny were too tired to say anything about it at all. This was another disappointment to Vice Principal Nero, who stood there scratching his pigtails and waiting for one of the children to say something that he could repeat in his nasty, mocking voice. But after a moment of silence, the vice principal went on to the second thing. "The second thing," he said, going on, "is that you three have become the worst students Prufrock Preparatory School has ever seen. Violet, Mr. Remora tells me that you have flunked a test. Klaus, Mrs. Bass reports that you can scarcely tell one end of a metric ruler from another. And Sunny, I've noticed that you haven't made a single staple! Mr. Poe told me you were intelligent and hardworking children, but you're just a bunch of cakesniffers!"
At this, the Baudelaires could keep quiet no longer. "We're flunking school because we're exhausted!" Violet cried.
"And we're exhausted because we're running laps every night!" Klaus cried.
"Galuka!" Sunny shrieked, which meant "So yell at Coach Genghis, not at us!"
Vice Principal Nero gave the children a big smile, delighted that he was able to answer them in his favorite way. "We're flunking school because we're exhausted!" he squealed. "And we're exhausted because we're running laps every night! Galuka! I've had enough of your nonsense! Prufrock Preparatory School has promised you an excellent education, and an excellent education you will get-or, in Sunny's case, an excellent job as an administrative assistant! Now, I've instructed Mr. Remora and Mrs. Bass to give comprehensive exams tomorrow-large tests on absolutely everything you've learned so far. Violet, you'd better remember every detail of Mr. Remora's stories, and Klaus, you'd better remember the length, width, and depths of Mrs. Bass's objects, or I will expel you from school. Also, I've found a bunch of papers that need to be stapled tomorrow. Sunny, you will staple all of them, with homemade staples, or I will expel you from your job. First thing tomorrow morning we will have the test and the stapling, and if you don't get As and make enough staples, you'll leave Prufrock Preparatory School. Luckily for you, Coach Genghis has offered to home-school you. That means he'd be your coach, your teacher, and your guardian, all in one. It's a very generous offer, and if I were you I'd give him a tip, too, although I don't think earrings are appropriate in this case."
"We're not going to give Count Olaf a tip!" Violet blurted out.
Klaus looked at his older sister in horror. "Violet means Coach Genghis," Klaus said quickly to Nero.
"I do not\" Violet cried. "Klaus, our situation is too desperate to pretend not to recognize him any longer!"
"Hifijoo!" Sunny agreed.
"I guess you're right," Klaus said. "What have we got to lose?"
"What have we got to lose?" Nero mocked. "What are you talking about?"
"We're talking about Coach Genghis," Violet said. "He's not really named Genghis. He's not even a real coach. He's Count Olaf in disguise."
"Nonsense!" Nero said.
Klaus wanted to say "Nonsense!" right back at Nero, in Nero's own repulsive way, but he bit his exhausted tongue. "It's true," he said. "He's put a turban over his eyebrow and expensive running shoes over his tattoo, but he's still Count Olaf."
"He has a turban for religious reasons," Nero said, "and running shoes because he's a coach. Look here." He strode over to the computer and pressed a button. The screen began to glow in its usual seasick way, and once again showed a picture of Count Olaf. "You see? Coach Genghis looks nothing like Count Olaf, and my advanced computer system proves it."
"Ushilo!" Sunny cried, which meant "That doesn't prove anything!"
"Ushilo!" Nero mocked. "Who am I going to believe, an advanced computer system or two children flunking school and a little baby too dumb to make her own staples? Now, stop wasting my time! I will personally oversee tomorrow's comprehensive exams, which will be given in the Orphans Shack! And you'd better do excellent work, or it's a free ride from Coach Genghis! Sayonara, Baudelaires!"
"Sayonara" is the Japanese word for goodbye, and I'm sure that each and every one of the millions of people who live in Japan would be ashamed to hear their language used by such a revolting person. But the Baudelaire orphans had no time to think such international thoughts. They were too busy giving the Quagmire triplets the latest news.
"This is awful!" Duncan cried as the five children trudged across the lawn so they could talk things over in peace. "There's no way you can get an A on those exams, particularly if you have to run laps tonight!"
"This is dreadful!" Isadora cried. "There's no way you can make all those staples, either! You'll be homeschooled before you know it!"
"Coach Genghis won't homeschool us," Violet said, looking out at the front lawn, where the luminous zero was waiting for them. "He'll do something much, much worse. Don't you see? That's why he's made us run all those laps! He knew we'd be exhausted. He knew we'd flunk our classes, or fail to perform our secretarial duties. He knew we'd be expelled from Prufrock Prep, and then he could get his hands on us."
Klaus groaned. "We've been waiting for his plan to be made clear, and now it is. But it might be too late."
"It's not too late," Violet insisted. "The comprehensive exams aren't until tomorrow morning. We must be able to figure out a plan by then."
"Plan!" Sunny agreed.
"It'll have to be a complicated plan," Duncan said. "We have to get Violet ready for Mr. Remora's test, and Klaus ready for Mrs. Bass's test."
"And we have to make staples," Isadora said. "And the Baudelaires still have to run laps."
"And we have to stay awake," Klaus said.
The children looked at one another, and then out at the front lawn. The afternoon sun was shining brightly, but the five youngsters knew that soon it would set behind the tombstone-shaped buildings, and that it would be time for S.O.R.E. They didn't have much time. Violet tied her hair up in a ribbon to keep it out of her eyes. Klaus polished his glasses and set them on his nose. Sunny scraped her teeth together, to make sure they were sharp enough for any task ahead. And the two triplets took their notebooks out of their sweater pockets. Coach Genghis's evil plan had become clear through the prism of the Baudelaire and Quagmire experiences, and now they had to use their experience to make a plan of their own.

Chapter Ten

The three Baudelaire orphans and the two Quagmire triplets sat in the Orphans Shack, which had never looked less unpleasant than it did now. All five children were wearing the noisy shoes Violet had invented, so the territorial crabs were nowhere to be seen. The salt had dried up the dripping tan fungus into a hard beige crust that was not particularly attractive but at least did not plop! drops of fungus juice on the youngsters. Because the arrival of Coach Genghis had focused their energies on defeating his treachery, the five orphans hadn't done anything about the green walls with the pink hearts on them, but otherwise the Orphans Shack had become quite a bit less mountainous and quite a bit more molehilly since the Baudelaires' arrival. It still had a long way to go to be attractive and comfortable living quarters, but for thinking of a plan, it would do in a pinch.
And the Baudelaire children were certainly in a pinch. If Violet, Klaus, and Sunny spent one more exhausting night running laps, they would flunk their comprehensive exams and secretarial assignment, and then Coach Genghis would whisk them away from Prufrock Prep, and as they thought of this they could almost feel Genghis's bony fingers pinching the life right out of them. The Quagmire triplets were so worried about their friends that they felt pinched as well, even though they were not directly in danger-or so they thought, anyway.
"I can't believe we didn't figure out Coach Genghis's plan earlier," Isadora said mournfully, paging through her notebook. "Duncan and I did all this research, and we still didn't figure it out."
"Don't feel badly," Klaus said. "My sisters and I have had many encounters with Olaf, and it's always difficult to figure out his scheme."
"We were trying to find out the history of Count Olaf," Duncan said. "The Prufrock Preparatory library has a pretty good collection of old newspapers, and we thought if we could find out some of his other schemes, we might figure out this one."
"That's a good idea," Klaus said thoughtfully. "I've never tried that."
"We figured that Olaf must have been an evil man even before he met you," Duncan continued, "so we looked up things in old newspapers. But it was difficult to find too many articles, because as you know he always uses a different name. But we found a person matching his description in the Bangkok Gazette, who was arrested for strangling a bishop but escaped from prison in just ten minutes."
"That sounds like him, all right," Klaus said.
"And then in the Verona Daily News," Duncan said, "there was a man who had thrown a rich widow off of a cliff. He had a tattoo of an eye on his ankle, but he had eluded authorities. And then we found a newspaper from your hometown that said-"
"I don't mean to interrupt," Isadora said, "but we'd better stop thinking about the past and start thinking about the present. Lunchtime is more than half over, and we desperately need a plan."
"You're not napping, are you?" Klaus asked Violet, who had been silent for a very long time.
"Of course I'm not napping," Violet replied. "I'm concentrating. I think I can invent something to make all those staples Sunny needs. But I can't figure out how I can invent the device and study for the test at the same time. Since S.O.R.E. began, I haven't taken good notes in Mr. Remora's class, so I won't be able to remember his stories."
"Well, you don't have to worry about that," Duncan said, holding up his dark green notebook. "I've written down every one of Mr. Remora's stories. Every boring detail is recorded here in my notebook."
"And I've written down how long, wide, and deep all of Mrs. Bass's objects are," Isadora said, holding up her own notebook. "You can study from my notebook, Klaus, and Violet can study from Duncan's."
"Thank you," Klaus said, "but you're forgetting something. We're supposed to be running laps this evening. We don't have time to read anybody's notebook."
"Tarcour," Sunny said, which meant "You're right, of course. S.O.R.E. always lasts until dawn, and the tests are first thing in the morning."
"If only we had one of the world's great inventors to help us," Violet said. "I wonder what Nikola Tesla would do."
"Or one of the world's great journalists," Duncan said. "I wonder what Dorothy Parker would do in this situation."
"And I wonder what Hammurabi, the ancient Babylonian, would do to help us," Klaus said. "He was one of the world's greatest researchers."
"Or the great poet Lord Byron," Isadora said.
"Shark," Sunny said, rubbing her teeth thoughtfully.
"Who knows what any of those people or fish would do in our shoes?" Violet said. "It's impossible to know."
Duncan snapped his fingers, not to signal a waiter or because he was listening to catchy music but because he had an idea. "In our shoes!" he said. "That's it!"
"What's it?" Klaus asked. "How will our noisy shoes help?"
"No, no," Duncan said. "Not the noisy shoes. I'm thinking about Coach Genghis's expensive running shoes that he said he couldn't take off because his feet were smelly."
"And I bet they are smelly," Isadora said.
"I've noticed he doesn't bathe much."
"But that's not why he wears them," Violet said. "He wears them for a disguise."
"Exactly!" Duncan said. "When you said 'in your shoes,' it gave me an idea. I know you just meant 'in our shoes' as an expression meaning 'in our situation.' But what if someone else were actually in your shoes-what if we disguised ourselves as you? Then we could run laps, and you could study for the comprehensive exams."
"Disguise yourselves as us?" Klaus said. "You two look exactly like each other, but you don't look anything like us."
"So what?" Duncan said. "It'll be dark tonight. When we've watched you from the archway, all we could see were two shadowy figures running-and one crawling."
"That's true," Isadora said. "If I took the ribbon from your hair, Violet, and Duncan took Klaus's glasses, we'd look enough like you that I bet Coach Genghis couldn't tell."
"And we could switch shoes, so your running on the grass would sound exactly the same," Duncan said.
"But what about Sunny?" Violet asked. "There's no way two people could disguise themselves as three people."
The Quagmire triplets' faces fell. "If only Quigley were here," Duncan said. "I just know he'd be willing to dress up as a baby if it meant helping you."
"What about a bag of flour?" Isadora asked. "Sunny's only about as big as a bag of flour- nothing personal, Sunny."
"Denada," Sunny said, shrugging.
"We could snitch a bag from the cafeteria," Isadora said, "and drag it alongside us as we ran. From a distance, it would probably look enough like Sunny to avoid suspicion."
"Being in each other's shoes seems like an extremely risky plan," Violet said. "If it fails, not only are we in trouble but you are as well, and who knows what Coach Genghis will do to you?"
This, as it turns out, was a question that would haunt the Baudelaires for quite some time, but the Quagmires gave it barely a thought. "Don't worry about that," Duncan said. "The important thing is to keep you out of his clutches. It may be a risky plan, but being in each other's shoes is the only thing we've been able to think of."
"And we don't have any time to waste thinking of anything else," Isadora added. "We'd better hurry if we want to snitch the bag of flour and not be late for class."
"And we'll need a string, or something, so we can drag it along and make it look like Sunny crawling," Duncan said.
"And I'll need to snitch some things, too," Violet said, "for my staple-making invention."
"Nidop," Sunny said, which meant something along the lines of "Then let's get moving."
The five children walked out of the Orphans Shack, taking off their noisy shoes and putting on their regular shoes so they wouldn't make a lot of noise as they walked nervously across the lawn to the cafeteria. They were nervous because they were not supposed to be sneaking into the cafeteria, or snitching things, and they were nervous because their plan was indeed a risky one. It is not a pleasant feeling, nervousness, and I would not wish for small children to be any more nervous than the Baudelaires and the Quagmires were as they walked toward the cafeteria in their regular shoes. But I must say that the children weren't nervous enough. They didn't need to be more nervous about sneaking into the cafeteria, even though it was against the rules, or snitching things, even though they didn't get caught. But they should have been more nervous about their plan, and about what would happen that evening when the sun set on the brown lawn and the luminous circle began to glow. They should have been nervous, now, in their regular shoes, about what would happen when they were in each other's.

Chapter Eleven

If you've ever dressed up for Halloween or attended a masquerade, you know that there is a certain thrill to wearing a disguise-a thrill that is half excitement and half danger. I once attended one of the famed masked balls hosted by the duchess of Winnipeg, and it was one of the most exciting and dangerous evenings of my life. I was disguised as a bullfighter and slipped into the party while being pursued by the palace guards, who were disguised as scorpions. The moment I entered the Grand Ballroom, I felt as if Lemony Snicket had disappeared. I was wearing clothes I had never worn before-a scarlet cape made of silk and a vest embroidered with gold thread and a skinny black mask-and it made me feel as if I were a different person. And because I felt like a different person, I dared to approach a woman I had been forbidden to approach for the rest of my life. She was alone on the veranda-the word "veranda" is a fancy term for a porch made of polished gray marble-and costumed as a dragonfly, with a glittering green mask and enormous silvery wings. As my pursuers scurried around the party, trying to guess which guest was me, I slipped out to the veranda and gave her the message I'd been trying to give her for fifteen long and lonely years. "Beatrice," I cried, just as the scorpions spotted me, "Count Olaf is--"
I cannot go on. It makes me weep to think of that evening, and of the dark and desperate times that followed, and in the meantime I'm sure you are curious what happened to the Baudelaire orphans and the Quagmire triplets, after dinner that evening at Prufrock Prep.
"This is sort of exciting," Duncan said, putting Klaus's glasses on his face. "I know that we're doing this for serious reasons, but I'm excited anyway."
Isadora recited, tying Violet's ribbon in her hair,

"It may not be particularly wise,
but it's a thrill to be disguised."

"That's not a perfect poem, but it will have to do under the circumstances. How do we look?"
The Baudelaire orphans took a step back and regarded the Quagmires carefully. It was just after dinner, and the children were standing outside the Orphans Shack, hurriedly putting their risky plan into action. They had managed to sneak into the cafeteria and steal a Sunny-sized bag of flour from the kitchen while the metal-masked cafeteria workers' backs were turned. Violet had also snitched a fork, a few teaspoons of creamed spinach, and a small potato, all of which she needed for her invention. Now they had just a few moments before the Bau-delaires-or, in this case, the Quagmires in disguise-had to show up for S.O.R.E. Duncan and Isadora handed over their notebooks so the Baudelaires could study for their comprehensive exams, and switched shoes so the Quagmires' laps would sound exactly like the Baudelaires'. Now, with only seconds to spare, the Baudelaires looked over the Quagmires' disguise and realized instantly just how risky this plan was.
Isadora and Duncan Quagmire simply did not look very much like Violet and Klaus Baudelaire. Duncan's eyes were of a different color from Klaus's, and Isadora had different hair from Violet's, even if it was tied up in a similar way. Being triplets, the Quagmires were the exact same height, but Violet was taller than Klaus because she was older, and there was no time to make small stilts for Isadora to mimic this height difference. But it wasn't really these small physical details that made the disguise so unconvincing. It was the simple fact that the Baudelaires and the Quagmires were different people, and a hair ribbon, a pair of glasses, and some shoes couldn't turn them into one another any more than a woman disguised as a dragonfly can actually take wing and escape the disaster awaiting her.
"I know we don't look much like you," Duncan admitted after the Baudelaires had been quiet for some time. "But remember, it's quite dark on the front lawn. The only light is coming from the luminous circle. We'll make sure to keep our heads down when we're running, so our faces won't give us away. We won't speak a word to Coach Genghis, so our voices won't give us away. And we have your hair ribbon, glasses, and shoes, so our accessories won't give us away, either."
"We don't have to go through with this plan," Violet said quietly. "We appreciate your help, but we don't have to try and fool Genghis. My siblings and I could just run away right now, tonight. We've gotten to be pretty good runners, so we'd have a good head start on Coach Genghis."
"We could call Mr. Poe from a pay phone somewhere," Klaus said.
"Zubu," Sunny said, which meant "Or attend a different school, under different names."
"Those plans don't have a chance of working," Isadora said. "From what you've told us about Mr. Poe, he's never very helpful. And Count Olaf seems to find you wherever you go, so a different school wouldn't help, either."
"This is our only chance," Duncan agreed. "If you pass the exams without arousing Genghis's suspicion, you will be out of danger, and then we can focus our efforts on exposing the coach for who he really is."
"I suppose you're right," Violet said. "I just don't like the idea of your putting your lives in such danger, just to help us."
"What are friends for?" Isadora said. "We're not going to attend some silly recital while you run laps to your doom. You three were the first people at Prufrock Prep who weren't mean to us just for being orphans. None of us have any family, so we've got to stick together."
"At least let us go with you to the front lawn," Klaus said. "We'll spy on you from the archway, and make sure you're fooling Coach Genghis."
Duncan shook his head. "You don't have time to spy on us," he said. "You have to make staples out of those metal rods and study for two comprehensive exams."
"Oh!" Isadora said suddenly. "How will we drag this bag of flour along the track? We need a string or something."
"We could just kick it around the circle," Duncan said.
"No, no, no," Klaus said. "If Coach Genghis thinks you're kicking your baby sister, he'll know something is up."
"I know!" Violet said. She leaned forward and put her hand on Duncan's chest, running her fingers along his thick wool sweater until she found what she was looking for-a loose thread. Carefully, she pulled, unraveling the sweater slightly until she had a good long piece of yarn. Then she snapped it off and tied one end around the bag of flour. The other end she handed to Duncan. "This should do it," she said. "Sorry about your sweater."
"I'm sure you can invent a sewing machine," he said, "when we're all out of danger. Well, we'd better go, Isadora. Coach Genghis will be waiting. Good luck with studying."
"Good luck with running laps," Klaus said.
The Baudelaires took a long look at their friends. They were reminded of the last time they saw their parents, waving good-bye to them as they left for the beach. They had not known, of course, that it would be the last moment they would spend with their mother and father, and again and again, each of the Baudelaires had gone back to that day in their lives, wishing that they had said something more than a casual good-bye. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny looked at the two triplets and hoped that this was not such a time, a time when people they cared for would disappear from their lives forever. But what if it were?
"If we never see-" Violet stopped, swallowed, and began again. "If something goes wrong-"
Duncan took Violet's hands and looked right at her. Violet saw, behind Klaus's glasses, the serious look in Duncan's wide eyes. "Nothing will go wrong," he said firmly, though of course he was wrong at that very moment. "Nothing will go wrong at all. We'll see you in the morning, Baudelaires."
Isadora nodded solemnly and followed her brother and the bag of flour away from the Orphans Shack. The Baudelaire orphans watched them walk toward the front lawn until the triplets were merely two specks, dragging another speck along with them.
"You know," Klaus said, as they watched them, "from a distance, in the dim light, they look quite a bit like us."
"Abax," Sunny agreed.
"I hope so," Violet murmured. "I hope so. But in the meantime, we'd better stop thinking about them and get started on our half of the plan. Let's put our noisy shoes on and go into the shack."
"I can't imagine how you're going to make staples," Klaus said, "with only a fork, a few teaspoons of creamed spinach, and a small potato. That sounds more like the ingredients for a side dish than for a staple-making device. I hope your inventing skills haven't been dulled by a lack of sleep."
"I don't think they have," Violet said. "It's amazing how much energy you can have once you have a plan. Besides, my plan doesn't only involve the things I snitched. It involves one of the Orphan Shack crabs and our noisy shoes. Now, when we all have our shoes on, please follow my instructions."
The two younger Baudelaires were quite puzzled at this, but they had learned long ago that when it came to inventions, Violet could be trusted absolutely. In the recent past, she had invented a grappling hook, a lockpic*, and a signaling device, and now, come hell or high water-an expression which here means "using a fork, a few teaspoons of creamed spinach, a small potato, a live crab, and noisy shoes"-she was going to invent a staple-making device.
The three siblings put on their shoes and, following Violet's instructions, entered the shack. As usual, the tiny crabs were lounging around, taking advantage of their time alone in the shack when they wouldn't be frightened by loud noises. On most occasions, the Baudelaires would stomp wildly on the floor when they entered the shack, and the crabs would scurry underneath the bales of hay and into other hiding places in the room. This time, however, Violet instructed her siblings to step on the floor in carefully arranged patterns, so as to herd one of the grumpiest and biggest-clawed crabs into a corner of the shack. While the other crabs scattered, this crab was trapped in a corner, afraid of the noisy shoes but with nowhere to hide from them.
"Good work!" Violet cried. "Keep him in the corner, Sunny, while I ready the potato."
"What is the potato for?" Klaus asked.
"As we know," Violet explained as Sunny tapped her little feet this way and that to keep the crab in the corner, "these crabs love to get their claws on our toes. I specifically snitched a potato that was toe-shaped. You see how it's curved in a sort of oval way, and the little bumpy part here looks like a toenail?"
"You're right," Klaus said. "The resemblance is remarkable. But what does it have to do with staples?"
"Well, the metal rods that Nero gave us are very long, and need to be cut cleanly into small, staple-sized pieces. While Sunny keeps the crab in the corner, I'm going to wave the potato at him. He-or she, come to think of it, I don't know how to tell a boy crab from a girl crab-"
"It's a boy," Klaus said. "Trust me."
"Well, he'll think it's a toe," Violet continued, "and snap at it with his claws. At that instant, I'll yank the potato away and put a rod in its place. If I do it carefully enough, the crab should do a perfect job of slicing it up."
"And then what?" Klaus asked.
"First things first," Violet replied firmly. "O.K. Sunny, keep tapping those noisy shoes. I'm ready with the potato and rod number one."
"What can I do?" Klaus asked.
"You can start studying for the comprehensive exam, of course," Violet said. "I couldn't possibly read all of Duncan's notes in just one night. While Sunny and I make the staples, you need to read Duncan's and Isadora's notebooks, memorize the measurements from Mrs. Bass's class, and teach me all of Mr. Remora's stories."
"Roger," Klaus said. As you probably know, the middle Baudelaire was not referring to anybody named Roger. He was saying a man's name to indicate that he understood what Violet had said and would act accordingly, and over the course of the next two hours, that's exactly what he did. While Sunny used her noisy shoes to keep the crab in the corner and Violet used the potato as a toe and the crab's claws as clean cutters, Klaus used the Quagmire notebooks to study for the comprehensive exams, and everything worked the way it should. Sunny tapped her shoes so noisily that the crab remained trapped. Violet was so quick with the potato and metal rods that soon they were snipped into staple-sized pieces. And Klaus-although he had to squint because Duncan was using his glasses-read Isadora's measuring notes so carefully that before long he had memorized the length, width, and depth of just about everything.
"Violet, ask me the measurements of the navy blue scarf," Klaus said, turning the notebook over so he couldn't peek.
Violet yanked the potato away just in time, and the crab snipped off another bit of the metal rods. "What are the measurements of the navy blue scarf?" she asked.
"Two decimeters long," Klaus recited, "nine centimeters wide, and four millimeters thick. It's boring, but it's correct. Sunny, ask me the measurements of the bar of deodorant soap."
The crab saw an opportunity to leave the corner, but Sunny was too quick for it. "Soap?" Sunny quizzed Klaus, tapping her tiny noisy shoes until the crab retreated.
"Eight centimeters by eight centimeters by eight centimeters," Klaus said promptly. "That one's easy. You're doing great, you two. I bet that crab's going to be almost as tired as we are."
"No," Violet said, "he's done. Let him go, Sunny. We have all the staple-sized pieces we need. I'm glad that part of the staple-making process is over. It's very nerve-wracking to tease a crab."
"What's next?" Klaus said, as the crab scurried away from the most frightening moments of his life.
"Next you teach me Mr. Remora's stories," Violet said, "while Sunny and I bend these little bits of metal into the proper shape."
"Shablo," Sunny said, which meant something like "How are we going to do that?"
"Watch," Violet said, and Sunny watched. While Klaus closed Isadora's black notebook and began paging through Duncan's dark green one, Violet took the glob of creamed spinach and mixed it with a few pieces of stray hay and dust until it was a sticky, gluey mess. Then she placed this mess on the spiky end of the fork, and stuck it to one of the bales of hay so the handle end of the fork hung over the side. She blew on the creamed-spinach-stray-hay-and-dust mixture until it hardened. "I always thought that Prufrock Prep's creamed spinach was awfully sticky," Violet explained, "and then I realized it could be used as glue. And now, we have a perfect method of making those tiny strips into staples. See, if I lay a strip across the handle of the fork, a tiny part of the strip hangs off each of the sides. Those are the parts that will go inside the paper when it's a staple. If I take off my noisy shoes"-and here Violet paused to take off her noisy shoes-"and use the metal ends to tap on the strips, they'll bend around the handle of the fork and turn into staples. See?"
"Gyba!" Sunny shrieked. She meant "You're a genius! But what can I do to help?"
"You can keep your noisy shoes on your feet," Violet replied, "and keep the crabs away from us. And Klaus, you start summarizing stories."
"Roger," Sunny said.
"Roger," Klaus said, and once again, neither of them were referring to Roger. They meant, once again, that they understood what Violet had said, and would act accordingly, and all three Baudelaires acted accordingly for the rest of the night. Violet tapped away at the rnetal strips, and Klaus read out loud from Duncan's notebook, and Sunny stomped her noisy shoes. Soon, the Baudelaires had a pile of homemade staples on the floor, the details of Mr. Remora's stories in their brains, and not a single crab bothering them in the shack, and even with the threat of Coach Genghis hovering over them, the evening actually began to feel rather cozy. It reminded the Baudelaires of evenings they had spent when their parents were alive, in one of the living rooms in the Baudelaire mansion. Violet would often be tinkering away at some invention, while Klaus would often be reading and sharing the information he was learning, and Sunny would often be making loud noises. Of course, Violet was never tinkering frantically at an invention that would save their lives, Klaus was never reading something so boring, and Sunny was never making loud noises to scare crabs, but nevertheless as the night wore on, the Baudelaires felt almost at home in the Orphans Shack. And when the sky began to lighten with the first rays of dawn, the Baudelaires began to feel a certain thrill that was quite different from the thrill of being in disguise. It was a thrill that I have never felt in my life, and it was a thrill that the Baudelaires did not feel very often. But as the morning sun began to shine, the Baudelaire orphans felt the thrill of thinking your plan might work after all, and that perhaps they would eventually be as safe and happy as the evenings they remembered.

Chapter Twelve

Assumptions are dangerous things to make, and like all dangerous things to make-bombs, for instance, or strawberry shortcake-if you make even the tiniest mistake you can find yourself in terrible trouble. Making assumptions simply means believing things are a certain way with little or no evidence that shows you are correct, and you can see at once how this can lead to terrible trouble. For instance, one morning you might wake up and make the assumption that your bed was in the same place that it always was, even though you would have no real evidence that this was so. But when you got out of your bed, you might discover that it had floated out to sea, and now you would be in terrible trouble all because of the incorrect assumption that you'd made. You can see that it is better not to make too many assumptions, particularly in the morning.
The morning of the comprehensive exams, however, the Baudelaire orphans were so tired, not only from staying up all night studying and making staples but also from nine consecutive nights of running laps, that they made plenty of assumptions, and every last one of them turned out to be incorrect.
"Well, that's the last staple," Violet said, stretching her tired muscles. "I think we can safely assume that Sunny won't lose her job."
"And you seem to know every detail of Mr. Remora's stories as well as I know all of Mrs. Bass's measurements," Klaus said, rubbing his tired eyes, "so I think we can safely assume that we won't be expelled."
"Nilikoh," Sunny said, yawning her tired mouth. She meant something like "And we haven't seen either of the Quagmire triplets, so I think we can safely assume that their part of the plan went well."
"That's true," Klaus said. "I assume if they'd been caught we would have heard by now."
"I'd make the same assumption," Violet said.
"I'd make the same assumption," came a nasty, mimicking voice, and the children were startled to see Vice Principal Nero standing behind them holding a huge stack of papers. In addition to the assumptions they had made out loud, the Baudelaires had made the assumption that they were alone, and they were surprised to find not only Vice Principal Nero but also Mr. Remora and Mrs. Bass waiting in the doorway of the Orphans Shack. "I hope you've been studying all evening," Nero said, "because I told your teachers to make these exams extra-challenging, and the pieces of paper that the baby has to staple are very thick. Well, let's get started. Mr. Remora and Mrs. Bass will take turns asking you questions until one of you gets an answer wrong, and then you flunk. Sunny will sit in the back and staple these papers into booklets of five papers each, and if your homemade staples don't work perfectly, then you flunk. Well, a musical genius like myself doesn't have all day to oversee exams. I've missed too much practice time as it is. Let's begin!"
Nero threw the papers into a big heap on one of the bales of hay, and the stapler right after it. Sunny crawled over as quickly as she could and began inserting the staples into the stapler, and Klaus stood up, still clutching the Quagmire notebooks. Violet put her noisy shoes back on her feet, and Mr. Remora swallowed a bite of banana and asked his first question.
"In my story about the donkey," he said, "how many miles did the donkey run?"
"Six," Violet said promptly.
"Six," Nero mimicked. "That can't be correct, can it, Mr. Remora?"
"Um, yes, actually," Mr. Remora said, taking another bite of banana.
"How wide," Mrs. Bass said to Klaus, "was the book with the yellow cover?"
"Nineteen centimeters," Klaus said immediately.
"Nineteen centimeters," Nero mocked. "That's wrong, isn't it, Mrs. Bass?"
"No," Mrs. Bass admitted. "That's the right answer."
"Well, try another question, Mr. Remora," Nero said.
"In my story about the mushroom," Mr. Remora asked Violet, "what was the name of the chef?"
"Maurice," Violet answered.
"Maurice," Nero mimicked.
"Correct," Mr. Remora said.
"How long was chicken breast number seven?" Mrs. Bass asked.
"Fourteen centimeters and five millimeters," Klaus said.
"Fourteen centimeters and five millimeters, Nero mimicked.
"That's right," Mrs. Bass said. "You're actually both very good students, even if you've been sleeping through class lately."
"Stop all this chitchat and flunk them," Nero said. "I've never gotten to expel any students, and I'm really looking forward to it."
"In my story about the dump truck," Mr. Remora said, as Sunny began to staple the pile of thick papers into booklets, "what color were the rocks that it carried?"
"Gray and brown."
"Gray and brown."
"Correct."
"How deep was my mother's casserole dish?"
"Six centimeters."
"Six centimeters."
"Correct."
"In my story about the weasel, what was its favorite color?"
The comprehensive exams went on and on, and if I were to repeat all of the tiresome and pointless questions that Mr. Remora and Mrs. Bass asked, you might become so bored that you might go to sleep right here, using this book as a pillow instead of as an entertaining and instructive tale to benefit young minds. Indeed, the exams were so boring that the Baudelaire orphans might normally have dozed through the test themselves. But they dared not doze. One wrong answer or unstapled piece of paper, and Nero would expel them from Prufrock Preparatory School and send them into the waiting clutches of Coach Genghis, so the three children worked as hard as they could. Violet tried to remember each detail Klaus had taught her, Klaus tried to remember every measurement he had taught himself, and Sunny stapled like mad, a phrase which here means "quickly and accurately." Finally, Mr. Remora stopped in the middle of his eighth banana and turned to Vice Principal Nero.
"Nero," he said, "there's no use continuing these exams. Violet is a very fine student, and has obviously studied very hard."
Mrs. Bass nodded her head in agreement. "In all my years of teaching, I've never encountered a more metric-wise boy than Klaus, here. And it looks like Sunny is a fine secretary as well. Look at these booklets! They're gorgeous."
"Pilso!" Sunny shrieked.
"My sister means 'Thank you very much,'" Violet said, although Sunny really meant something more like "My stapling hand is sore." "Does this mean we get to stay at Prufrock Prep?"
"Oh, let them stay, Nero," Mr. Remora said. "Why don't you expel that Carmelita Spats? She never studies, and she's an awful person besides."
"Oh yes," Mrs. Bass said. "Let's give her an extra-challenging examination."
"I can't flunk Carmelita Spats," Nero said impatiently. "She's Coach Genghis's Special Messenger."
"Who?" Mr. Remora asked.
"You know," Mrs. Bass explained, "Coach Genghis, the new gym teacher."
"Oh yes," Mr. Remora said. "I've heard about him, but never met him. What is he like?"
"He's the finest gym teacher the world has ever seen," Vice Principal Nero said, shaking his four pigtails in amazement. "But you don't have to take my word for it. You can see for yourself. Here he comes now."
Nero pointed one of his hairy hands out of the Orphans Shack, and the Baudelaire orphans saw with horror that the vice principal was speaking the truth. Whistling an irritating tune to himself, Coach Genghis was walking straight toward them, and the children could see at once how incorrect one of their assumptions had been. It was not the assumption that Sunny would not lose her job, although that assumption, too, would turn out to be incorrect. And it was not the assumption that Violet and Klaus would not be expelled, although that, too, was a wrong one. It was the assumption about the Quagmire triplets and their part of the plan going well. As Coach Genghis walked closer and closer, the Baudelaires saw that he was holding Violet's hair ribbon in one of his scraggly hands and Klaus's glasses in the other, and with every step of his expensive running shoes, the coach raised a small white cloud, which the children realized must be flour from the snitched sack. But more than the ribbon, or the glasses, or the small clouds of flour was the look in Genghis's eyes. As Coach Genghis reached the Orphans Shack, his eyes were shining bright with triumph, as if he had finally won a game that he had been playing for a long, long time, and the Baudelaire orphans realized that the assumption about the Quagmire triplets had been very, very wrong indeed.

Chapter Thirteen

"Where are they?" Violet cried as Coach Genghis stepped into the shack. "What have you done with them?" Normally, of course, one should begin conversations with something more along the lines of "Hello, how are you," but the eldest Baudelaire was far too distressed to do so.
Genghis's eyes were shining as brightly as could be, but his voice was calm and pleasant. "Here they are," he said, holding up the ribbon and glasses. "I thought you might be worried about them, so I brought them over first thing
"We don't mean these them!" Klaus said, taking the items from Genghis's scraggly hands. "We mean them them!"
"I'm afraid I don't understand all those thems," Coach Genghis said, shrugging at the adults. "The orphans ran laps last night as part of my S.O.R.E. program, but they had to dash off in the morning to take their exams. In their hurry, Violet dropped her ribbon and Klaus dropped his glasses. But the baby-"
"You know very well that's not what happened," Violet interrupted. "Where are the Quagmire triplets? What have you done with our friends?"
"What have you done with our friends?" Vice Principal Nero said in his mocking tone. "Stop talking nonsense, orphans."
"I'm afraid it's not nonsense," Genghis said, shaking his turbaned head and continuing his story. "As I was saying before the little girl interrupted me, the baby didn't dash off with the other orphans. She just sat there like a sack of flour. So I walked over to her and gave her a kick to get her moving."
"Excellent idea!" Nero said. "What a wonderful story this is! And then what happened?"
"Well, at first it seemed like I'd kicked a big hole in the baby," Genghis said, his eyes shining, "which seemed lucky, because Sunny was a terrible athlete and it would have been a blessing to put her out of her misery."
Nero clapped his hands. "I know just what you mean, Genghis," he said. "She's a terrible secretary as well."
"But she did all that stapling," Mr. Remora protested.
"Shut up and let the coach finish his story," Nero said.
"But when I looked down," Genghis continued, "I saw that I hadn't kicked a hole in a baby. I'd kicked a hole in a bag of flour! I'd been tricked!"
"That's terrible!" Nero cried.
"So I ran after Violet and Klaus," Genghis continued, "and I found that they weren't Violet and Klaus after all, but those two other orphans- the twins."
"They're not twins!" Violet cried. "They're triplets!"
"They're triplets!" Nero mocked. "Don't be an idiot. Triplets are when four babies are born at the same time, and there are only two Quagmires."
"And these two Quagmires were pretending to be the Baudelaires, in order to give the Baudelaires extra time to study."
"Extra time to study?" Nero said, grinning in delight. "Hee hee hee! Why, that's cheating!"
"That's not cheating!" Mrs. Bass said.
"Skipping gym class to study is cheating," Nero insisted.
"No, it's just good time management," Mr. Remora argued. "There's nothing wrong with athletics, but they shouldn't get in the way of your schoolwork."
"Look, I'm the vice principal," the vice principal said. "I say the Baudelaires were cheating, and therefore-hooray!-I can expel them. You two are merely teachers, so if you disagree with me, I can expel you, too."
Mr. Remora looked at Mrs. Bass, and they both shrugged. "You're the boss, Nero," Mr. Remora said finally, taking another banana out of his pocket. "If you say they're expelled, they're expelled."
"Well, I say they're expelled," Nero said. "And Sunny loses her job, too."
"Rantaw!" Sunny shrieked, which meant something along the lines of "I never wanted to work as a secretary, anyway!"
"We don't care about being expelled," Violet said. "We want to know what happened to our friends."
"Well, the Quagmires had to be punished for their part in the cheating," Coach Genghis said, "so I brought them over to the cafeteria and put those two workers in charge of them. They'll be whisking eggs all day long."
"Very sensible," Nero agreed.
"That's all they're doing?" Klaus said suspiciously. "Whisking eggs?"
"That's what I said," Genghis said and leaned so close to the Baudelaires that all they could see were his shiny eyes and the crooked curve of his wicked mouth. "Those two Quagmires will whisk and whisk until they are simply whisked away."
"You're a liar," Violet said.
"Insulting your coach," Nero said, shaking his pigtailed head. "Now you're doubly expelled."
"What's this?" said a voice from the doorway. "Doubly expelled?"
The voice stopped to have a long, wet cough, so the Baudelaires knew without looking that it was Mr. Poe. He was standing at the Orphans Shack holding a large paper sack and looking busy and confused. "What are all of you doing here?" he said. "This doesn't look like a proper place to have a conversation. It's just an old shack."
"What are you doing here?" Nero asked. "We don't allow strangers to wander around Prufrock Preparatory School."
"Poe's the name," Mr. Poe said, shaking Nero's hand. "You must be Nero. We've talked on the phone. I received your telegram about the twenty-eight bags of candy and the ten pairs of earrings with precious stones. My associates at Mulctuary Money Management thought I'd better deliver them in person, so here I am. But what's this about expelled?"
"These orphans you foisted on me," Nero said, using a nasty word for "gave," "have proven to be terrible cheaters, and I'm forced to expel them."
"Cheaters?" Mr. Poe said, frowning at the three siblings. "Violet, Klaus, Sunny, I'm very disappointed in you. You promised me that you'd be excellent students."
"Well, actually, only Violet and Klaus were students," Nero said. "Sunny was an administrative assistant, but she was terrible at it as well."
Mr. Poe's eyes widened in surprise as he paused to cough into his white handkerchief. "An administrative assistant?" he repeated. "Why, Sunny's only a baby. She should be in preschool, not an office environment."
"Well, it doesn't matter now," Nero said. "They're all expelled. Give me that candy."
Klaus looked down at his hands, which were still clutching the Quagmire notebooks. He was afraid that the notebooks might be the only sign of the Quagmires he would ever see again. "We don't have any time to argue about candy!" he cried. "Count Olaf has done something terrible to our friends!"
"Count Olaf?" Mr. Poe said, handing Nero the paper sack. "Don't tell me he's found you here!"
"No, of course not," Nero said. "My advanced computer system has kept him away, of course. But the children have this bizarre notion that Coach Genghis is actually Olaf in disguise."
"Count Olaf," Genghis said slowly. "Yes,
I've heard of him. He's supposed to be the best actor in the whole world. I'm the best gym teacher in the whole world, so we couldn't possibly be the same person."
Mr. Poe looked Coach Genghis up and down, then shook his hand. "A pleasure to meet you," he said, and then turned to the Baudelaires. "Children, I'm surprised at you. Even without an advanced computer system, you should be able to tell that this man isn't Count Olaf. Olaf has only one eyebrow, and this man is wearing a turban. And Olaf has a tattoo of an eye on his ankle, and this man is wearing expensive running shoes. They are quite handsome, by the way."
"Oh, thank you," Coach Genghis said. "Unfortunately, thanks to these children, they have flour all over them, but I'm sure it'll wash off."
"If he removes his turban and his shoes," Violet said impatiently, "you will be able to see that he's Olaf."
"We've been through this before," Nero said. "He can't take off his running shoes because he's been exercising and his feet smell."
"And I can't take off my turban for religious reasons," Genghis added.
"You're not wearing a turban for religious reasons!" Klaus said in disgust, and Sunny shrieked something in agreement. "You're wearing it as a disguise! Please, Mr. Poe, make him take it off!"
"Now, Klaus," Mr. Poe said sternly. "You have to learn to be accepting of other cultures. I'm sorry, Coach Genghis. The children aren't usually prejudiced."
"That's quite all right," Genghis said. "I'm used to religious persecution."
"However," Mr. Poe continued, after a brief coughing spell, "I would ask you to remove your running shoes, if only to set the Baudelaires' minds at ease. I think we can all stand a little smelliness if it's in the cause of criminal justice."
"Smelly feet," Mrs. Bass said, wrinkling her nose. "Ew, gross."
"I'm afraid I cannot take off my running shoes,"  Coach  Genghis said,  taking a step toward the door. "I need them."
"Need them?" Nero asked. "For what?"
Coach Genghis took a long, long look at the three Baudelaires and smiled a terrible, toothy grin. "For running, of course," he said, and ran out the door.
The orphans were startled for a moment, not only because he had started running so suddenly but also because it seemed like he had given up so easily. After his long, elaborate plan-disguising himself as a gym teacher, forcing the Baudelaires to run laps, getting them expelled-he was suddenly racing across the lawn without even glancing back at the children he'd been chasing for such a long time. The Baudelaires stepped out of the Orphans Shack, and Coach Genghis turned back to sneer at them.
"Don't think I've given up on you, orphans!" he called to them. "But in the meantime, I have two little prisoners with a very nice fortune of their own!"
He began to run again, but not before pointing a bony finger across the lawn. The Bau-delaires gasped. At the far end of Prufrock Prep, they saw a long, black car with dark smoke billowing out of its exhaust pipes. But the children were not gasping at air pollution. The two cafeteria workers were walking toward the car, but they had taken off their metal masks at last, and the three youngsters could see that they were the two powder-faced women who were comrades of Count Olaf's. But this was not what the children were gasping at either, although it was a surprising and distressing turn of events. What they were gasping at was what each of the women was dragging toward the car. Each powder-faced woman was dragging one of the Quagmire triplets, who were struggling desperately to get away.
"Put them in the back seat!" Genghis called. "I'll drive! Hurry!"
"What in the world is Coach Genghis doing with those children?" Mr. Poe asked, frowning.
The Baudelaires did not even turn to Mr. Poe to try and explain. After all their S.O.R.E. training sessions, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny found that their leg muscles could respond instantly if they wanted to run. And the Baudelaire orphans had never wanted to run more than they did now.
"After them!" Violet cried, and the children went after them. Violet ran, her hair flying wildly behind her. Klaus ran, not even bothering to drop the Quagmire notebooks. And Sunny crawled as fast as her legs and hands could carry her. Mr. Poe gave a startled cough and began running after them, and Nero, Mr. Remora, and Mrs. Bass began running after Mr. Poe. If you had been hiding behind the archway, spying on what was going on, you would have seen what looked like a strange race on the front lawn, with Coach Genghis running in front, the Baudelaire orphans right behind, and assorted adults huffing and puffing behind the children. But if you continued watching, you would have seen an exciting development in the race, a phrase which here means that the Baudelaires were gaining on Genghis. The coach had much longer legs than the Baudelaires, of course, but he had spent the last ten nights standing around blowing a whistle. The children had spent those nights running hundreds of laps around the luminous circle, and so their tiny, strong legs-and, in Sunny's case, arms-were overcoming Genghis's height advantage.
I hate to pause at such a suspenseful part of the story, but I feel I must intrude and give you one last warning as we reach the end of this miserable tale. You were probably thinking, as you read that the children were catching up to their enemy, that perhaps this was the time in the lives of the Baudelaire orphans when this terrible villain would finally be caught, and that perhaps the children would find some kind guardians and that Violet, Klaus, and Sunny would spend the rest of their lives in relative happiness, possibly creating the printing business that they had discussed with the Quagmires. And you are free to believe that this is how the story turns out, if you want. The last few events in this chapter of the Baudelaire orphans' lives are incredibly unfortunate, and quite terrifying, and so if you would prefer to ignore them entirely you should put this book down now and think of a gentle ending to this horrible story. I have made a solemn promise to write the Baudelaire history exactly as it occurred, but you have made no such promise- at least as far as I know-and you do not need to endure the wretched ending of this story, and this is your very last chance to save yourself from the woeful knowledge of what happened next.
Violet was the first to reach Coach Genghis, and she stretched her arm out as far as she could, grabbing part of his turban. Turbans, you probably know, consist of just one piece of cloth, wrapped very tightly and in a complicated way around someone's head. But Genghis had cheated, not knowing the proper way to tie a turban, because he was wearing it as a disguise and not for religious reasons. He had merely wrapped it around his head the way you might wrap a towel around yourself when getting out of the shower, so when Violet grabbed the turban, it unraveled immediately. She had been hoping that grabbing his turban would stop the coach from running, but all it did was leave her with a long piece of cloth in her hands. Coach Genghis kept running, his one eyebrow glistened with sweat over his shiny eyes.
"Look!" Mr. Poe said, who was far behind the Baudelaires but close enough to see. "Genghis has only one eyebrow, like Count Olaf!"Sunny was the next Baudelaire to reach Genghis, and because she was crawling on the ground, she was in a perfect position to attack his shoes. Using all four of her sharp teeth, she bit one pair of his shoelaces, and then the other.
The knots came undone immediately, leaving tiny, bitten pieces of shoelace on the brown lawn. Sunny had been hoping that untying his shoes would make the coach trip, but Genghis merely stepped out of his shoes and kept running. Like many disgusting people, Coach Genghis was not wearing socks, so with each step his eye tattoo glistening with sweat on his left ankle.
"Look!" Mr. Poe said, who was still too far to help but close enough to see. "Genghis has an eye tattoo, like Count Olaf! In fact, I think he is Count Olaf!"
"Of course he is!" Violet cried, holding up the unraveled turban.
"Merd!" Sunny shrieked, holding up a tiny piece of shoelace. She meant something like "That's what we've been trying to tell you."
Klaus, however, did not say anything. He was putting all of his energy toward running, but he was not running toward the man we can finally call by his true name, Count Olaf. Klaus was running toward the car. The powder-faced women were just shoving the Quagmires into the back seat, and he knew this might be his only chance to rescue them.
"Klaus! Klaus!" Isadora cried as he reached the car. Klaus dropped the notebooks to the ground and grabbed his friend's hand. "Help us!"
"Hang on!" Klaus cried and began to drag Isadora back out of the car. Without a word, one of the powder-faced women leaned forward and bit Klaus's hand, forcing him to let go of the triplet. The other powder-faced woman leaned across Isadora's lap and began pulling the car door closed.
"No!" Klaus cried and grabbed the door handle. Back and forth, Klaus and Olaf's associate tugged on the door, forcing it halfway open and halfway shut.
"Klaus!" Duncan cried, from behind Isadora. "Listen to me, Klaus! If anything goes wrong-"
"Nothing will go wrong," Klaus promised, pulling on the car door as hard as he could.
"You'll be out of here in a second!"
"If anything goes wrong," Duncan said again, "there's something you should know. When we were researching the history of Count Olaf, we found out something dreadful!"
"We can talk about this later," Klaus said, struggling with the door.
"Look in the notebooks!" Isadora cried. "The-" The first powder-faced woman put her hand over Isadora's mouth so she couldn't speak. Isadora turned her head roughly and slipped from the woman's grasp. "The-" The powdery hand covered her mouth again.
"Hang on!" Klaus called desperately. "Hang on!"
"Look in the notebooks! V.F.D." Duncan screamed, but the other woman's powdery hand covered his mouth before he could continue.
"What?" Klaus said.
Duncan shook his head vigorously and freed himself from the woman's hand for just one moment. "V.F.D." he managed to scream again, and that was the last Klaus heard. Count Olaf, who had been running slower without his shoes, had reached the car, and with a deafening roar, he grabbed Klaus's hand and pried it loose from the car door. As the door slammed shut, Olaf kicked Klaus in the stomach, sending him falling to the ground and landing with a rough thump! near the Quagmire notebooks he had dropped. The villain towered over Klaus and gave him a sickening smile, then leaned down, picked up the notebooks, and tucked them under his arm.
"No!" Klaus screamed, but Count Olaf merely smiled, stepped into the front seat, and began driving away just as Violet and Sunny reached their brother.
Clutching his stomach, Klaus stood up and tried to follow his sisters, who were trying to chase the long, black car. But Olaf was driving over the speed limit and it was simply impossible, and after a few yards the Baudelaires had to stop. The Quagmire triplets climbed over the powder-faced women and began to pound on the rear window of the car. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny could not hear what the Quagmires were screaming through the glass; they only saw their desperate and terrified faces. But then the powdery hands of Olaf's assistants grabbed them and pulled them back from the window. The faces of the Quagmire triplets faded to nothing, and the Baudelaires saw nothing more as the car pulled away.
"We have to go after them!" Violet screamed, her face streaked with tears. She turned around to face Nero and Mr. Poe, who were pausing for breath on the edge of the lawn. "We have to go after them!"
"We'll call the police," Mr. Poe gasped, wiping his sweaty forehead with his handkerchief. "They have an advanced computer system, too. They'll catch him. Where's the nearest phone, Nero?"
"You can't use my phone, Poe!" Nero said. "You brought three terrible cheaters here, and now, thanks to you, my greatest gym teacher is gone and took two students with him! The Baudelaires are triple-expelled!"
"Now see here, Nero," Poe said. "Be reasonable."
The Baudelaires sunk to the brown lawn, weeping with frustration and exhaustion. They paid no attention to the argument between Vice Principal Nero and Mr. Poe, because they knew, from the prism of their experience, that by the time the adults had decided on a course of action, Count Olaf would be long gone. This time, Olaf had not merely escaped but escaped with friends of theirs, and the Baudelaires wept as they thought they might never see the triplets again. They were wrong about this, but they had no way of knowing they were wrong, and just imagining what Count Olaf might do to their dear friends made them only weep harder. Violet wept, thinking of how kind the Quagmires had been to her and her siblings upon the Baudelaires' arrival at this dreadful academy. Klaus wept, thinking of how the Quagmires had risked their lives to help him and his sisters escape from Olaf's clutches. And Sunny wept, thinking of the research the Quagmires had done, and the information they hadn't had time to share with her and her siblings.
The Baudelaire orphans hung on to one another, and wept and wept while the adults argued endlessly behind them. Finally-as, I'm sorry to say, Count Olaf forced the Quagmires into puppy costumes so he could sneak them onto the airplane without anyone noticing-the Baudelaires cried themselves out and just sat on the lawn together in weary silence. They looked up at the smooth gray stone of the tombstone buildings and at the arch with "PRUFROCK PREPARATORY SCHOOL" in enormous black letters and the motto "Memento Mori" printed beneath. They looked out at the edge of the lawn, where Olaf had snatched the Quagmire notebooks. And they took long, long looks at one another. The Baudelaires remembered, as I'm sure you remembered, that in times of extreme stress one can find energy hidden in even the most exhausted areas of the body, and Violet, Klaus, and Sunny felt that energy surge through them now.
"What did Duncan shout to you?" Violet asked. "What did he shout to you from the car, about what was in the notebooks?"
"V.F.D." Klaus said, "but I don't know what it means."
"Ceju," Sunny said, which meant "We have to find out."
The older Baudelaires looked at their sister and nodded. Sunny was right. The children had to find out the secret of V.F.D. and the dreadful thing the Quagmires had discovered. Perhaps it could help them rescue the two triplets. Perhaps it could bring Count Olaf to justice. And perhaps it could somehow make clear the mysterious and deadly way that their lives had become so unfortunate.
A morning breeze blew through the campus of Prufrock Preparatory School, rustling the brown lawn and knocking against the stone arch with the motto printed on it. "Memento Mori"-"Remember you will die." The Baudelaire orphans looked up at the motto and vowed that before they died, they would solve this dark and complicated mystery that cast a shadow over their lives.



LEMONY SNICKET first received his education from public schools and private tutors, and then vice versa. He has been hailed as a brilliant scholar, discredited as a brilliant fraud, and mistaken for a much taller man on several occasions. Mr. Snicket's researching skills are currently and devoutly concentrated on the plight of the  Baudelaire  orphans,  published  serially by HarperCollins.



To My Kind Editor,
Please excuse this ridiculously fancy stationery. I am writing to you from 667 Dark Avenue, and this is the only paper available in the neighborhood. My investigation of the Baudelaire orphans' stay in this wealthy and woeful place is finally complete - I only pray that the manuscript will reach you.

Not next Tuesday, but the Tuesday after that, purchase a first-class, oneway ticket on the second-to-last train out of the city. Instead of boarding the train, wait until it departs and climb down to the tracks to retrieve the complete summary of my investigation, entitled THE ERSATZ ELEVATOR, as well as one of Jerome's neckties, a small photograph of Veblen Hall, a bottle of parsley soda, and the doorman's coat, so that Mr. Helquist can properly illustrate this terrible chapter in the Baudelaires' lives.

Remember, you are my last hope that the tales of the Baudelaire orphans can finally be told to the general public.
With all due respect,

.
 
Lemony Snicket

Chapter One

The book you are holding in your two hands right now-assuming that you are, in fact, holding this book, and that you have only two hands--is one of two books in the world that will show you the difference between the word "nervous" and the word "anxious." The other book, of course, is the dictionary, and if I were you I would read that book instead.

Like this book, the dictionary shows you that the word "nervous" means "worried about something"--you might feel nervous, for instance, if you were served prune ice cream for dessert, because you would be worried that it would taste awful--whereas the word "anxious" means "troubled by disturbing suspense," which you might feel if you were served a live alligator for dessert, because you would be troubled by the disturbing suspense about whether you would eat your dessert or it would eat you. But unlike this book, the dictionary also discusses words that are far more pleasant to contemplate. The word "bubble" is in the dictionary, for instance, as is the word "peacock," the word "vacation," and the words "the" "author's" "execution" "has" "been" "canceled," which make up a sentence that is always pleasant to hear. So if you were to read the dictionary, rather than this book, you could skip the parts about "nervous" and "anxious" and read about things that wouldn't keep you up all night long, weeping and tearing out your hair.

But this book is not the dictionary, and if you were to skip the parts about "nervous" and "anxious" in this book, you would be skipping the most pleasant sections in the entire story. Nowhere in this book will you find the words "bubble," "peacock," "vacation," or, unfortunately for me, anything about an execution being canceled. Instead, I'm sorry to say, you will find the words "grief, "despair," and "woeful" as well as the phrases "dark passageway," "Count Olaf in disguise," and "the Baudelaire orphans were trapped," plus an assortment of miserable words and phrases that I cannot bring myself to write down. In short, reading a dictionary might make you feel nervous, because you would worry about finding it very boring, but reading this book will make you feel anxious, because you will be troubled by the disturbing suspense in which the Baudelaire orphans find themselves, and if I were you I would drop this book right out of your two or more hands and curl up with a dictionary instead, because all the miserable words I must use to describe these unfortunate events are about to reach your eyes.

"I imagine you must be nervous," Mr. Poe said. Mr. Poe was a banker who had been put in charge of the Baudelaire orphans following the death of their parents in a horrible fire. I am sorry to say that Mr. Poe had not done a very good job so far, and that the Baudelaires had learned that the only thing they could rely on with Mr. Poe was that he always had a cough. Sure enough, as soon as he finished his sentence, he took out his white handkerchief and coughed into it.

The flash of white cotton was practically the only thing the Baudelaire orphans could see. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny were standing with Mr. Poe in front of an enormous apartment building on Dark Avenue, a street in one of the fanciest districts in the city. Although Dark Avenue was just a few blocks away from where the Baudelaire mansion had been, the three children had never been in this neighborhood before, and they had assumed that the "dark" in Dark Avenue was simply a name and nothing more, the way a street named George Washington Boulevard does not necessarily indicate that George Washington lives there or the way Sixth Street has not been divided into six equal parts. But this afternoon the Baudelaires realized that Dark Avenue was more than a name. It was an appropriate description. Rather than street-lamps, placed at regular intervals along the sidewalk were enormous trees the likes of which the children had never seen before--and which they could scarcely see now. High above a thick and prickly trunk, the branches of the trees drooped down like laundry hung out to dry, spreading their wide, flat leaves out in every direction, like a low, leafy ceiling over the Baudelaires' heads. This ceiling blocked out all the light from above, so even though it was the middle of the afternoon, the street looked as dark as evening--if a bit greener. It was hardly a good way to make three orphans feel welcome as they approached their new home.

"You have nothing to be nervous about," Mr. Poe said, putting his handkerchief back in his pocket. "I realize some of your previous guardians have caused a little trouble, but I think Mr. and Mrs. Squalor will provide you with a proper home."

"We're not nervous," Violet said. "We're too anxious to be nervous."

"'Anxious' and 'nervous' mean the same thing," Mr. Poe said. "And what do you have to be anxious about, anyway?"

"Count Olaf, of course," Violet replied. Violet was fourteen, which made her the eldest Baudelaire child and the one who was most likely to speak up to adults. She was a superb inventor, and I am certain that if she had not been so anxious, she would have tied her hair up in a ribbon to keep it out of her eyes while she thought of an invention that could brighten up her surroundings.

"Count Olaf?" Mr. Poe said dismissively. "Don't worry about him. He'll never find you here."

The three children looked at one another and sighed. Count Olaf had been the first guardian Mr. Poe had found for the orphans, and he was a person as shady as Dark Avenue. He had one long eyebrow, a tattoo of an eye on his ankle, and two filthy hands that he hoped to use to snatch away the Baudelaire fortune that the orphans would inherit as soon as Violet came of age. The children had convinced Mr. Poe to remove them from Olaf's care, but since then the count had pursued them with a dogged determination, a phrase which here means "everywhere they went, thinking up treacherous schemes and wearing disguises to try to fool the three children."

"It's hard not to worry about Olaf," Klaus said, taking off his glasses to see if it was easier to look around the gloom without them, "because he has our compatriots in his clutches." Although Klaus, the middle Baudelaire, was only twelve, he had read so many books that he frequently used words like "compatriots," which is a fancy word for "friends." Klaus was referring to the Quagmire triplets, whom the Baudelaires had met while they were attending boarding school. Duncan Quagmire was a reporter, and was always writing down useful information in his notebook. Isadora Quagmire was a poet, and used her notebook to write poetry. The third triplet, Quigley, had died in a fire before the Baudelaire orphans had the opportunity to meet him, but the Baudelaires were certain that he would have been as good a friend as his siblings. Like the Baudelaires, the Quagmires were orphans, having lost their parents in the same fire that claimed their brother's life, and also like the Baudelaires, the Quagmires had been left an enormous fortune, in the form of the famous Quagmire sapphires, which were very rare and valuable jewels. But unlike the Baudelaires, they had not been able to escape Count Olaf's clutches. Just when the Quagmires had learned some terrible secret about Olaf, he had snatched them away, and since then the Baudelaires had been so worried that they had scarcely slept a wink. Whenever they closed their eyes, they saw only the long, black car that had whisked the Quagmires away, and they heard only the sound of their friends shrieking one fragment of the dreadful secret they had learned. "V.F.D.!" Duncan had screamed, just before the car raced away, and the Baudelaires tossed and turned, and worried for their friends, and wondered what in the world V.F.D. could stand for.

"You don't have to worry about the Quagmires, either," Mr. Poe said confidently. "At least, not for much longer. I don't know if you happened to read the Mulctuary Money Management newsletter, but I have some very good news about your friends."

"Gavu?" Sunny asked. Sunny was the youngest Baudelaire orphan, and the smallest, too. She was scarcely larger than a salami. This size was usual for her age, but she had four teeth that were larger and sharper than those of any other baby I have ever seen. Despite the maturity of her mouth, however, Sunny usually talked in a way most people found difficult to understand. By "Gavu," for instance, she meant something along the lines of "The Quagmires have been found and rescued?" and Violet was quick to translate so Mr. Poe would understand. "Better than that," Mr. Poe said. "I have been promoted. I am now the bank's Vice President in Charge of Orphan Affairs. That means that I am in charge not only of your situation, but of the Quagmire situation as well. I promise you that I will concentrate a great deal of my energy on finding the Quagmires and returning them to safety, or my name isn't"--here Mr. Poe interrupted himself to cough once more into his handkerchief, and the Baudelaires waited patiently until he finished--"Poe. Now, as soon as I drop you off here I am taking a three-week helicopter ride to a mountain peak where the Quagmires may have been spotted. It will be very difficult to reach me during that time, as the helicopter has no phone, but I will call you as soon as I get back with your young pals. Now, can you see the number on this building? It's hard for me to tell if we're at the right place."

"I think it says 667," Klaus said, squinting in the dim green light.

"Then we're here," Mr. Poe said. "Mr. and Mrs. Squalor live in the penthouse apartment of 667 Dark Avenue. I think the door is here."

"No, it's over here," said a high, scratchy voice out of the darkness. The Baudelaires jumped a little in surprise, and turned to see a man wearing a hat with a wide brim and a coat that was much too big for him. The coat sleeves hung over his hands, covering them completely, and the brim of his hat covered most of his face. He was so difficult to see that it was no wonder that the children hadn't spotted him earlier. "Most of our visitors find it hard to spot the door," the man said. "That's why they hired a doorman."

"Well, I'm glad they did," Mr. Poe said. "My name is Poe, and I have an appointment with Mr. and Mrs. Squalor to drop off their new children."

"Oh, yes," the doorman said. "They told me you were coming. Come on in."

The doorman opened the door of the building and showed them inside to a room that was as dark as the street. Instead of lights, there were only a few candles placed on the floor, and the children could scarcely tell whether it was a large room or a small room they were standing in.

"My, it's dark in here," Mr. Poe said. "Why don't you ask your employers to bring in a good strong halogen lamp?"

"We can't," the doorman replied. "Right now, dark is in."

"In what?" Violet asked.

"Just 'in'," the doorman explained. "Around here, people decide whether something is in, which means it's stylish and appealing, or out, which means it's not. And it changes all the time. Why, just a couple of weeks ago, dark was out, and light was in, and you should have seen this neighborhood. You had to wear sunglasses all the time or you'd hurt your eyes."

"Dark is in, huh?" Mr. Poe said. "Wait until I tell my wife. In the meantime, could you show us where the elevator is? Mr. and Mrs. Squalor live in the penthouse apartment, and I don't want to walk all the way to the top floor."

"Well, I'm afraid you'll have to," the doorman said. "There's a pair of elevator doors right over there, but they won't be of any use to you."

"Is the elevator out of order?" Violet asked. "I'm very good with mechanical devices, and I'd be happy to take a look at it."

"That's a very kind and unusual offer," the doorman said. "But the elevator isn't out of order. It's just out. The neighborhood decided that elevators were out, so they had the elevator shut down. Stairs are in, though, so there's still a way to get to the penthouse. Let me show you."

The doorman led the way across the lobby, and the Baudelaire orphans peered up at a very long, curved staircase made of wood, with a metal banister that curved alongside. Every few steps, they could see, somebody had placed more candles, so the staircase looked like nothing more than curves of flickering lights, growing dimmer as the staircase went farther and farther up, until they could see nothing at all.

"I've never seen anything like this," Klaus said.

"It looks more like a cave than a staircase," Violet said.

"Pinse!" Sunny said, which meant something like "Or outer space!"

"It looks like a long walk to me," Mr. Poe said, frowning. He turned to the doorman. "How many floors up does this staircase go?"

The doorman's shoulders shrugged underneath his oversized coat. "I can't remember," he said. "I think it's forty-eight, but it might be eighty-four."

"I didn't know buildings could be that high," Klaus said.

"Well, whether it's forty-eight or eighty-four," Mr. Poe said, "I don't have time to walk you children all the way up. I'll miss my helicopter. You'll have to go up by yourselves, and tell Mr. and Mrs. Squalor that I send my regards."

"We have to walk up by ourselves?" Violet said.

"Just be glad you don't have any of your things with you," Mr. Poe said. "Mrs. Squalor said there was no reason to bring any of your old clothing, and I think it's because she wanted to save you the effort of dragging suitcases up all those stairs."

"You're not going to come with us?" Klaus asked.

"I simply don't have the time to accompany you," Mr. Poe said, "and that is that."

The Baudelaires looked at one another. The children knew, as I'm sure you know, that there is usually no reason to be afraid of the dark, but even if you are not particularly afraid of something, you might not want to get near it, and the orphans were a bit nervous about climbing all the way up to the penthouse without an adult walking beside them.

"If you're afraid of the dark," Mr. Poe said, "I suppose I could delay my search for the Quagmires, and take you to your new guardians."

"No, no," Klaus said quickly. "We're not afraid of the dark, and finding the Quagmires is much more important."

"Obog," Sunny said doubtfully. "Just try to crawl as long as you can," Violet said to her sister, "and then Klaus and I will take turns carrying you. Good-bye, Mr. Poe."

"Good-bye, children," Mr. Poe said. "If there's any problem, remember you can always contact me or any of my associates at Mulctuary Money Management--at least, as soon as I get off the helicopter."

"There's one good thing about this staircase," the doorman joked, starting to walk Mr. Poe back to the front door. "It's all uphill from here."

The Baudelaire orphans listened to the doorman's chuckles as he disappeared into the darkness, and they walked up the first few steps. As I'm sure you know, the expression "It's all uphill from here" has nothing to do with walking up stairs--it merely means that things will get better in the future. The children had understood the joke, but they were too anxious to laugh. They were anxious about Count Olaf, who might find them any minute. They were anxious about the Quagmire triplets, whom they might never see again. And now, as they began to walk up the candlelit stairway, they were anxious about their new guardians. They tried to imagine what sort of people would live on such a dark street, in such a dark building, and at the top of either forty-eight or eighty-four flights of very dark stairs. They found it difficult to believe that things would get better in the future when they lived in such gloomy and poorly lit surroundings. Even though a long, upward climb awaited them, as the Baudelaire orphans started walking into the darkness, they were too anxious to believe it was all uphill from here.

Chapter Two

In order to get a better sense of exactly how the Baudelaire orphans felt as they began the grueling journey up the stairs to Mr. and Mrs. Squalor's penthouse apartment, you might find it useful to close your eyes as you read this chapter, because the light was so dim from the small candles on the ground that it felt as if their eyes were closed even when they were looking as hard as they could. At each curve in the staircase, there was a door that led to the apartment on each floor, and a pair of sliding elevator doors. From behind the sliding doors, the youngsters of course heard nothing, as the elevator had been shut down, but behind the doors to the apartments the children could hear the noises of people who lived in the building. When they reached the seventh floor, they heard two men laugh as somebody told a joke. When they reached the twelfth floor, they heard the splashing of water as somebody took a bath. When they reached the nineteenth floor, they heard a woman say "Let them eat cake" in a voice with a strange accent.

"I wonder what people will hear when they walk by the penthouse apartment," Violet wondered out loud, "when we are living there."

"I hope they hear me turning pages," Klaus said. "Maybe Mr. and Mrs. Squalor will have some interesting books to read."

"Or maybe people will hear me using a wrench," Violet said. "I hope the Squalors have some tools they'd let me use for my inventing."

"Crife!" Sunny said, crawling carefully past one of the candles on the ground.

Violet looked down at her and smiled. "I don't think that will be a problem, Sunny," she said. "You usually find something or other to bite. Be sure to speak up when you want us to start carrying you."

"I wish somebody could carry me," Klaus said, clutching the banister for support. "I'm getting tired."

"Me too," Violet admitted. "You would think, after Count Olaf made us run all those laps when he was disguised as a gym teacher, that these stairs wouldn't tire us out, but that's not the case. What floor are we on, anyway?"

"I don't know," Klaus said. "The doors aren't numbered, and I've lost count."

"Well, we won't miss the penthouse," Violet said. "It's on the top floor, so we'll just keep walking until the stairs stop."

"I wish you could invent a device that could take us up the stairs," Klaus said.

Violet smiled, although her siblings couldn't see it in the darkness. "That device was invented a long time ago," she said. "It's called an elevator. But elevators are out, remember?"

Klaus smiled too. "And tired feet are in," he said.

"Remember that time," Violet said, "when our parents attended the Sixteenth Annual Run-a-Thon, and their feet were so tired when they got home that Dad prepared dinner while sitting on the kitchen floor, instead of standing?"

"Of course I remember," Klaus said. "We had only salad, because they couldn't stand up and reach the stove."

"It would have been a perfect meal for Aunt Josephine," Violet said, remembering one of the Baudelaires' previous guardians. "She never wanted to use the stove, because she thought it might explode."

"Pomres," Sunny said sadly. She meant something along the lines of "As it turned out, the stove was the least of Aunt Josephine's problems."

"That's true," Violet said quietly, as the children heard someone sneeze from behind a door.

"I wonder what the Squalors will be like," Klaus said.

"Well, they must be wealthy to live on Dark Avenue," Violet said.

"Akrofil," Sunny said, which meant "And they're not afraid of heights, that's for sure."

Klaus smiled and looked down at his sister. "You sound tired, Sunny," he said. "Violet and I can take turns carrying you. We'll switch every three floors."

Violet nodded in agreement with Klaus's plan, and then said "Yes" out loud because she realized that her nod was invisible in the gloom. They continued up the staircase, and I'm sorry to say that the two older Baudelaires took many, many turns holding Sunny. If the Baudelaires had been going up a staircase of regular size, I would write the sentence "Up and up they went," but a more appropriate sentence would begin "Up and up and up and up" and would take either forty-eight or eighty-four pages to reach "they went," because the staircase was so unbelievably lengthy. Occasionally, they would pass the shadowy figure of someone else walking down the stairs, but the children were too tired to say even "Good afternoon"--and, later, "Good evening"--to these other residents of 667 Dark Avenue. The Baudelaires grew hungry. They grew achy. And they grew very tired of gazing at identical candles and steps and doors.

Just when they could stand it no longer, they reached another candle and step and door, and about five flights after that the stairs finally ended and deposited the tired children in a small room with one last candle sitting in the middle of the carpet. By the light of the candle, the Baudelaire orphans could see the door to their new home, and across the way, two pairs of sliding elevator doors with arrowed buttons alongside.

"Just think," Violet said, panting from her long walk up the stairs, "if elevators were in, we would have arrived at the Squalor penthouse in just a few minutes."

"Well, maybe they'll be back in soon," Klaus said. "I hope so. The other door must be to the Squalors' apartment. Let's knock."

They knocked on the door, and almost instantly it swung open to reveal a tall man wearing a suit with long, narrow stripes down it. Such a suit is called a pinstripe suit, and is usually worn by people who are either movie stars or gangsters.

"I thought I heard someone approaching the door," the man said, giving the children a smile that was so big they could see it even in the dim room. "Please come in. My name is Jerome Squalor, and I'm so happy that you've come to stay with us."

"I'm very pleased to meet you, Mr. Squalor," Violet said, still panting, as she and her siblings walked into an entryway almost as dim as the staircase. "I'm Violet Baudelaire, and this is my brother, Klaus, and my sister, Sunny."

"Goodness, you sound out of breath," Mr. Squalor said. "Luckily, I can think of two things to do about that. One is that you can stop calling me Mr. Squalor and start calling me Jerome. I'll call you three by your first names, too, and that way we'll all save breath. The second thing is that I'll make you a nice, cold martini. Come right this way."

"A martini?" Klaus asked. "Isn't that an alcoholic beverage?"

"Usually it is," Jerome agreed. "But right now, alcoholic martinis are out. Aqueous martinis are in. An aqueous martini is simply cold water served in a fancy glass with an olive in it, so it's perfectly legal for children as well as for adults."

"I've never had an aqueous martini," Violet said, "but I'll try one."

"Ah!" Jerome said. "You're adventurous! I like that in a person. Your mother was adventurous, too. You know, she and I were very good friends a ways back. We hiked up Mount Fraught with some friends--gosh, it must have been twenty years ago. Mount Fraught was known for having dangerous animals on it, but your mother wasn't afraid. But then, swooping out of the sky--"

"Jerome, who was that at the door?" called a voice from the next room, and in walked a tall, slender woman, also dressed in a pinstripe suit. She had long fingernails that were so strongly polished that they shone even in the dim light.

"The Baudelaire children, of course," Jerome replied.

"But they're not coming today!" the woman cried.

"Of course they are," Jerome said. "I've been looking forward to it for days and days! You know," he said, turning from the woman to the Baudelaires, "I wanted to adopt you from the moment I heard about the fire. But, unfortunately, it was impossible."

"Orphans were out then," the woman explained. "Now they're in."

"My wife is always very attentive to what's in and what's out," Jerome said. "I don't care about it much, but Esmé feels differently. She was the one who insisted on having the elevator removed. Esmé, I was just about to make them some aqueous martinis. Would you like one?"

"Oh, yes!" Esmé cried. "Aqueous martinis are in!" She walked quickly over to the children and looked them over. "I'm Esmé Gigi Geniveve Squalor, the city's sixth most important financial advisor," she announced grandly. "Even though I am unbelievably wealthy, you may call me Esmé. I'll learn your names later. I'm very happy you're here, because orphans are in, and when all my friends hear that I have three real live orphans, they'll be sick with jealousy, won't they, Jerome?"

"I hope not," Jerome said, leading the children down a long, dim hallway to a huge, dim room that had various fancy couches, chairs, and tables. At the far end of the room was a series of windows, all with their shades drawn so that no light could get in. "I don't like to hear of anybody getting sick. Well, have a seat, children, and we'll tell you a little bit about your new home."

The Baudelaires sat down in three huge chairs, grateful for the opportunity to rest their feet. Jerome crossed to one of the tables, where a pitcher of water sat next to a bowl of olives and some fancy glasses, and quickly prepared the aqueous martinis. "Here you go," he said, handing Esmé and the children each a fancy glass. "Let's see. In case you ever get lost, remember that your new address is 667 Dark Avenue in the penthouse apartment."

"Oh, don't tell them silly things like that," Esmé said, waving her long-nailed hand in front of her face as if a moth were attacking it. "Children, here are some things you should know. Dark is in. Light is out. Stairs are in. Elevators are out. Pinstripe suits are in. Those horrible clothes you are wearing are out."

"What Esmé means," Jerome said quickly, "is that we want you to feel as comfortable here as possible."

Violet took a sip of her aqueous martini. She was not surprised to find that it tasted like plain water, with a slight hint of olive. She didn't like it much, but it did quench her thirst from the long climb up the stairs. "That's very nice of you," she said.

"Mr. Poe told me about some of your previous guardians," Jerome said, shaking his head. "I feel awful that you've had such terrible experiences, and that we could have cared for you the entire time."

"It couldn't be helped," Esmé said. "When something is out, it's out, and orphans used to be out."

"I heard all about this Count Olaf person, too," Jerome said. "I told the doorman not to let anyone in the building who looked even vaguely like that despicable man, so you should be safe."

"That's a relief," Klaus said.

"That dreadful man is supposed to be up on some mountain, anyway," Esmé said. "Remember, Jerome? That unstylish banker said he was going away in a helicopter to go find those twins he kidnapped."

"Actually," Violet said, "they're triplets. The Quagmires are good friends of ours."

"My word!" Jerome said. "You must be worried sick!"

"Well, if they find them soon," Esmé said, "maybe we'll adopt them, too. Five orphans! I'll be the innest person in town!"

"We certainly have room for them," Jerome said. "This is a seventy-one-bedroom apartment, children, so you will have your pick of rooms. Klaus, Poe mentioned something about your being interested in inventing things, is that right?"

"My sister's the inventor," Klaus replied. "I'm more of a researcher myself."

"Well, then," Jerome said. "You can have the bedroom next to the library, and Violet can have the one that has a large wooden bench, perfect for keeping tools. Sunny can be in the room between you two. How does that sound?" That sounded absolutely splendid, of course, but the Baudelaire orphans did not get an opportunity to say so, because a telephone rang just at that instant.

"I'll get it! I'll get it!" Esmé cried, and raced across the room to pick up the phone. "Squalor residence," she said, into the receiver, and then waited as the person spoke on the other end. "Yes, this is Mrs. Squalor. Yes. Yes. Yes? Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!" She hung up the phone and turned to the children. "Guess what?" she asked. "I have some fantastic news on what we were talking about!"

"The Quagmires have been found?" Klaus asked hopefully.

"Who?" Esmé asked. "Oh, them. No, they haven't been found. Don't be silly. Jerome, children, listen to me--dark is out! Regular light is in!"

"Well, I'm not sure I'd call that fantastic news," Jerome said, "but it will be a relief to get some light around this place. Come on, Baudelaires, help me open the shades and you can get a look at our view. You can see quite a bit from so high up."

"I'll go turn on all the lamps in the penthouse," Esmé said breathlessly. "Quickly, before anybody sees that this apartment is still dark!"

Esmé dashed from the room, while Jerome gave the three siblings a little shrug and walked across the room to the windows. The Baudelaires followed him, and helped him open the heavy shades that were covering the windows. Instantly, sunlight streamed into the room, making them squint as their eyes adjusted to regular light. If the Baudelaires had looked around the room now that it was properly illuminated, they would have seen just how fancy all the furniture was. The couches had pillows embroidered with silver. The chairs were all painted with gold paint. And the tables were made from wood chopped away from some of the most expensive trees in the world. But the Baudelaire orphans were not looking around the room, as luxurious as it was. They were looking out of the window onto the city below.

"Spectacular view, don't you think?" Jerome asked them, and they nodded in agreement. It was as if they were looking out on a tiny, tiny city, with matchboxes instead of buildings and bookmarks instead of streets. They could see tiny colored shapes that looked like various insects but were really all the cars and carriages in town, driving along the bookmarks until they reached the matchboxes where the tiny dots of people lived and worked. The Baudelaires could see the neighborhood where they had lived with their parents, and the parts of town where their friends had lived, and in a faint blue strip far, far away, the beach where they had received the terrible news that had begun all their misfortune.

"I knew you'd like it," Jerome said. "It's very expensive to live in a penthouse apartment, but I think it's worth it for a view like this. Look, those tiny round boxes over there are orange juice factories. That sort of purplish building next to the park is my favorite restaurant. Oh, and look straight down--they're already cutting down those awful trees that made our street so dark."

"Of course they're cutting them down," Esmé said, hurrying back into the room and blowing out a few candles that were sitting on the mantelpiece. "Regular light is in--as in as aqueous martinis, pinstripes, and orphans."

Violet, Klaus, and Sunny looked straight down, and saw that Jerome was right. Those strange trees that had blocked out the sunlight on Dark Avenue, looking no taller than paper clips from such a great height, were being chopped down by little gardener dots. Even though the trees had made the street seem so gloomy, it seemed a shame to tear them all down, leaving bare stumps that, from the penthouse window, looked like thumbtacks. The three siblings looked at one another, and then back down to Dark Avenue. Those trees were no longer in, so the gardeners were getting rid of them. The Baudelaires did not like to think of what would happen when orphans were no longer in, either.

Chapter Three

If you were to take a plastic bag and place it inside a large bowl, and then, using a wooden spoon, stir the bag around and around the bowl, you could use the expression "a mixed bag" to describe what you had in front of you, but you would not be using the expression in the same way I am about to use it now. Although "a mixed bag" sometimes refers to a plastic bag that has been stirred in a bowl, more often it is used to describe a situation that has both good parts and bad parts. An afternoon at a movie theater, for instance, would be a mixed bag if your favorite movie were showing, but if you had to eat gravel instead of popcorn. A trip to the zoo would be a very mixed bag if the weather were beautiful, but all of the man-and woman-eating lions were running around loose. And, for the Baudelaire orphans, their first few days with the Squalors were one of the most mixed bags they had yet encountered, because the good parts were very good, but the bad parts were simply awful.

One of the good parts was that the Baudelaires were living once more in the city where they were born and raised. After the Baudelaire parents had died, and after their disastrous stay with Count Olaf, the three children had been sent to a number of remote locations to live, and they sorely missed the familiar surroundings of their hometown. Each morning, after Esmé left for work, Jerome would take the children to some of their favorite places in town. Violet was happy to see that her favorite exhibits at the Verne Invention Museum had not been changed, so she could take another look at the mechanical demonstrations that had inspired her to be an inventor when she was just two years old. Klaus was delighted to revisit the Akhmatova Bookstore, where his father used to take him as a special treat, to buy an atlas or a volume of the encyclopedia. And Sunny was interested in visiting the Pincus Hospital where she was born, although her memories of this place were a little fuzzy.

But in the afternoons, the three children would return to 667 Dark Avenue, and it was this part of the Baudelaires' situation that was not nearly as pleasant. For one thing, the penthouse was simply too big. Besides the seventy-one bedrooms, there were a number of living rooms, dining rooms, breakfast rooms, snack rooms, sitting rooms, standing rooms, ballrooms, bathrooms, kitchens, and an assortment of rooms that seemed to have no purpose at all. The penthouse was so enormous that the Baudelaire orphans often found themselves hopelessly lost inside it. Violet would leave her bedroom to go brush her teeth and not find her way back for an hour. Klaus would accidentally leave his glasses on a kitchen counter and waste the whole afternoon trying to find the right kitchen. And Sunny would find a very comfortable spot for sitting and biting things and be unable to find it the next day. It was often difficult to spend any time with Jerome, simply because it was very difficult to find him amid all the fancy rooms of their new home, and the Baudelaires scarcely saw Esmé at all. They knew she went off to work every day and returned in the evenings, but even at the times when she was in the apartment with them, the three children scarcely caught a glimpse of the city's sixth most important financial advisor. It was as if she had forgotten all about the new members of her family, or was simply more interested in lounging around the rooms in the apartment rather than spending time with the three siblings. But the Baudelaire orphans did not really mind that Esmé was absent so often. They much preferred spending time with one another, or with Jerome, rather than participating in endless conversations about what was in and what was out. Even when the Baudelaires stayed in their bedrooms, the three children did not have such a splendid time. As he had promised, Jerome had given Violet the bedroom with the large wooden bench, which was indeed perfect for keeping tools, but Violet could find no tools in the entire penthouse. She found it odd that such an enormous apartment would have not even a socket wrench or one measly pair of pliers, but Esmé haughtily explained, when Violet asked her one evening, that tools were out. Klaus did have the Squalor library next to his bedroom, and it was a large and comfortable room with hundreds of books on its shelves. But the middle Baudelaire was disappointed to find that every single book was merely a description of what had been in and out during various times in history. Klaus tried to interest himself in books of this type, but it was so dull to read a snooty book like Boots Were In in 1812 or Trout: In France They're Out that Klaus found himself spending scarcely any time in the library at all. And poor Sunny fared no better, a phrase which here means "also became bored in her bedroom." Jerome had thoughtfully placed a number of toys in her room, but they were the sort of toys designed for softer-toothed babies-- squishy stuffed animals, cushioned balls, and assorted colorful pillows, none of which were the least bit fun to bite.

But what really mixed the Baudelaire bag was not the overwhelming size of the Squalor apartment, or the disappointments of a tool bench without tools, a library without interesting books, or nonchewable items of amusement. What really troubled the three children was the thought that the Quagmire triplets were undoubtedly experiencing things that were much, much worse. With every passing day, their worry for their friends felt like a heavy load on the Baudelaires' shoulders, and the load only seemed heavier, because the Squalors refused to be of any assistance.

"I'm very, very tired of discussing your little twin friends," Esmé said one day, as the Baudelaires and the Squalors sipped aqueous martinis one evening in a living room the children had never seen before. "I know you're worried about them, but it's boring to keep blabbing on about it."

"We didn't mean to bore you," Violet said, not adding that it is terribly rude to tell people that their troubles are boring.

"Of course you didn't," Jerome said, picking the olive out of his fancy glass and popping it into his mouth before turning to his wife. "The children are concerned, Esmé, which is perfectly understandable. I know Mr. Poe is doing all he can, but maybe we can put our heads together and come up with something else."

"I don't have time to put my head together," Esmé said. "The In Auction is coming up, and I have to devote all of my energy to making sure it's a success."

"The In Auction?" Klaus asked.

"An auction," Jerome explained, "is a sort of sale. Everyone gets together in a large room, and an auctioneer shows off a bunch of things that are available for purchase. If you see something you like, you call out how much you'd be willing to pay for it. That's called a bid. Then somebody else might call out a bid, and somebody else, and whoever calls out the highest price wins the auction and buys the item in question. It's terribly exciting. Your mother used to love them! I remember one time--"

"You forgot the most important part," Esmé interrupted. "It's called the In Auction because we're selling only things that are in. I always organize it, and it's one of the most smashing events of the year!"

"Smashi?" Sunny asked.

"In this case," Klaus explained to his younger sister, "the word 'smashing' doesn't mean that things got smashed up. It just means 'fabulous.'"

"And it is fabulous," Esmé said, finishing her aqueous martini. "We hold the auction at Veblen Hall, and we auction off only the innest things we can find, and best of all, all the money goes to a good cause."

"Which good cause?" Violet asked. Esmé clapped her long-nailed hands together with glee. "Me! Every last bit of money that people pay at the auction goes right to me! Isn't that smashing?"

"Actually, dear," Jerome said, "I was thinking that this year, perhaps we should give the money to another good cause. For instance, I was just reading about this family of seven. The mother and father lost their jobs, and now they're so poor that they can't even afford to live in a one-room apartment. We might send some of the auction money to people like them."

"Don't talk nonsense," Esmé said crossly. "If we give money to poor people, then they won't be poor anymore. Besides, this year we're going to make heaps of money. I had lunch with twelve millionaires this morning, and eleven of them said they were definitely going to attend the In Auction. The twelfth one has to go to a birthday party. Just think of the money I'll make, Jerome! Maybe we could move to a bigger apartment!"

"But we just moved in a few weeks ago," Jerome said. "I'd rather spend some money on putting the elevator back in use. It's very tiring to climb all the way up to the penthouse."

"There you go, talking nonsense again," Esmé said. "If I'm not listening to my orphans babble about their kidnapped friends, I'm listening to you talk about out things like elevators. Well, we have no more time for chitchat in any case. Gunther is stopping by tonight, and I want you, Jerome, to take the children out for dinner."

"Who is Gunther?" Jerome asked.

"Gunther is the auctioneer, of course," Esmé replied. "He's supposed to be the innest auctioneer in town, and he's going to help me organize the auction. He's coming over tonight to discuss the auction catalog, and we don't want to be disturbed. That's why I want you to go out to dinner, and give us a little privacy."

"But I was going to teach the children how to play chess tonight," Jerome said.

"No, no, no," Esmé said. "You're going out to dinner. It's all arranged. I made a reservation at Café Salmonella for seven o'clock. It's six o'clock now, so you should get moving. You want to allow plenty of time to walk down all those stairs. But before you leave, children, I have a present for each of you."

At this, the Baudelaire children were taken aback, a phrase which here means "surprised that someone who was so selfish had purchased gifts for them," but sure enough, Esmé reached behind the dark red sofa she was sitting on, and brought out three shopping bags that had the words "In Boutique" written on them in fancy, curly script. With an elegant gesture, Esmé handed a bag to each Baudelaire.

"I thought if I bought you something you really wanted," she said, "you might stop all this chatter about the Quagmires."

"What Esmé means," Jerome added hurriedly, "is that we want you to be happy here in our home, even when you're worried about your friends."

"That's not what I mean at all," Esmé said, "but never mind. Open the bags, kids."

The Baudelaires opened their presents, and I'm sorry to say that the shopping bags were mixed bags as well. There are many, many things that are difficult in this life, but one thing that isn't difficult at all is figuring out whether someone is excited or not when they open a present. If someone is excited, they will often put exclamation points at the ends of their sentences to indicate their excited tone of voice. If they say "Oh!" for instance, the exclamation point would indicate that the person is saying "Oh!" in an excited way, rather than simply saying "Oh," with a comma after it, which would indicate that the present is somewhat disappointing.

"Oh," Violet said, as she opened her present.

"Oh," Klaus said, as he opened his.

"Oh," Sunny said, as she tore open her shopping bag with her teeth.

"Pinstripe suits! I knew you'd be excited!" Esmé said. "You must have been mortified the last few days, walking around the city without wearing any pinstripes! Pinstripes are in, and orphans are in, so just imagine how in you'll be when you orphans are wearing pinstripes! No wonder you're so excited!"

"They didn't sound excited when they opened the presents," Jerome said, "and I don't blame them. Esmé, I thought we said that we'd buy Violet a tool kit. She's very enthusiastic about inventing, and I thought we'd support that enthusiasm."

"But I'm enthusiastic about pinstripe suits, too," Violet said, knowing that you should always say that you are delighted with a present even when you don't like it at all. "Thank you very much."

"And Klaus was supposed to get a good almanac," Jerome continued. "I told you about his interest in the International Date Line, and an almanac is the perfect book to learn all about that."

"But I'm very interested in pinstripes," said Klaus, who could lie as well as his sister, when the need arose. "I really appreciate this gift."

"And Sunny," Jerome said, "was going to be given a large square made of bronze. It would have been attractive, and easily bitable."

"Ayjim," Sunny said. She meant something along the lines of "I love my suit. Thank you very much," even though she didn't mean it one bit.

"I know we discussed buying those silly items," Esmé said, with a wave of her long-nailed hand, "but tools have been out for weeks, almanacs have been out for months, and I received a phone call this afternoon informing me that large bronze squares are not expected to be in for at least another year. What's in now is pinstripes, Jerome, and I don't appreciate your trying to teach my new children that they should ignore what's in and what's out. Don't you want what's best for the orphans?"

"Of course," Jerome sighed. "I hadn't thought of it that way, Esmé. Well, children, I do hope you like your gifts, even though they don't exactly match up with your interests. Why don't you go change into your new suits, and we'll wear them to dinner?"

"Oh, yes!" Esmé said. "Café Salmonella is one of the innest restaurants. In fact, I think they don't even let you eat there if you're not wearing pinstripes, so go change. But hurry up! Gunther is due to arrive any minute."

"We'll hurry," Klaus promised, "and thank you again for our gifts."

"You're very welcome," Jerome said with a smile, and the children smiled back at him, walked out of the living room, down a long hallway, across a kitchen, through another living room, past four bathrooms, and so on and so on and so on, eventually finding their way to their bedrooms. They stood together for a minute outside the three bedroom doors, looking sadly into their shopping bags.

"I don't know how we're going to wear these things," Violet said.

"I don't either," Klaus said. "And it's all the worse knowing that we almost got presents we really want."

"Puictiw," Sunny agreed glumly.

"Listen to us," Violet said. "We sound hopelessly spoiled. We're living in an enormous apartment. We each have our own room. The doorman has promised to watch out for Count Olaf, and at least one of our new guardians is an interesting person. And yet we're standing here complaining."

"You're right," Klaus said. "We should make the best of things. Getting a lousy present isn't really worth complaining over--not when our friends are in such terrible danger. We're really very lucky to be here at all."

"Chittol," Sunny said, which meant something like "That's true. We should stop complaining and go change into our new outfits."

The Baudelaires stood together for another moment and nodded resolutely, a phrase which here means "tried to make themselves stop feeling ungrateful and put on the suits." But even though they didn't want to seem spoiled, even though they knew their situation was not a terrible one at all, and even though they had less than an hour to change into the suits, find Jerome, and walk down all those hundreds and hundreds of stairs, the three children could not seem to move. They simply stood in front of their bedroom doors and stared into their bags from the In Boutique.

"Of course," Klaus said finally, "no matter how lucky we are, the fact remains that these pinstripe suits are entirely too big for us."

Klaus spoke the truth. It was a truth that might help you understand why the Baudelaires were so disappointed with what was in their bags. It was a truth that might help you understand why the Baudelaires were so reluctant to go into their rooms and change into their pinstripe suits. And it was a truth that became even more obvious when the Baudelaires finally went into their rooms, and opened their bags and put on the gifts that Esmé had given them.

It is often difficult to tell if a piece of clothing will fit you or not until you try it on, but the Baudelaire children could tell the instant they first looked into the shopping bags that these clothes dwarfed them by comparison. The expression "dwarfed by comparison" has nothing to do with dwarves, who are dull creatures in fairy tales who spend their time whistling and cleaning house. "Dwarfed by comparison" simply means that one thing seems small when compared to another thing. A mouse would be dwarfed by comparison with an ostrich, which is much bigger, and an ostrich would be dwarfed by comparison with the city of Paris. And the Baudelaires were dwarfed by comparison with the pinstripe suits. When Violet put the pants part of her suit on, the legs of the suit stretched much, much farther than the legs of her body, so it was as if she had two huge noodles instead of feet. When Klaus put the jacket part of his suit on, the sleeves fell far, far past his hands, so his arms looked as if they had shrunk up inside his body. And Sunny's suit dwarfed her so much by comparison that it was as if she had pulled the covers over her in bed instead of changing her clothes. When the Baudelaires stepped back out of their bedrooms and met up again in the hallway, they were so dwarfed by comparison that they scarcely recognized one another.

"You look like you're skiing," Klaus said, pointing at his older sister's pant legs. "Except your skis are made of cloth instead of titanium alloy."

Chapter  Four

If you are ever forced to take a chemistry class, you will probably see, at the front of the classroom, a large chart divided into squares, with different numbers and letters in each of them. This chart is called the table of the elements, and scientists like to say that it contains all the substances that make up our world. Like everyone else, scientists are wrong from time to time, and it is easy to see that they are wrong about the table of the elements. Because although this table contains a great many elements, from the element oxygen, which is found in the air, to the element aluminum, which is found in cans of soda, the table of the elements does not contain one of the most powerful elements that make up our world, and that is the element of surprise. The element of surprise is not a gas, like oxygen, or a solid, like aluminum. The element of surprise is an unfair advantage, and it can be found in situations in which one person has sneaked up on another. The surprised person--or, in this sad case, the surprised persons--are too stunned to defend themselves, and the sneaky person has the advantage of the element of surprise.

"Hello, please," Count Olaf said in his raspy voice, and the Baudelaire orphans were too stunned to defend themselves. They did not scream. They did not run away from Olaf. They did not call out for their guardians to save them. They merely stood there, in their enormous pinstripe suits, and stared at the terrible man who had somehow found them once more.

As Olaf looked down at them with a nasty smile, enjoying the unfair advantage of the element of surprise, the children saw that he was in yet another of his nefarious disguises, a phrase which here means that he did not fool them one bit no matter what he was wearing. On Olaf's feet were a pair of shiny black boots with high tops that almost reached his knees--the sort of boots that someone might wear to ride a horse. Over one of Olaf's eyes was a monocle, which is an eyeglass for one eye, instead of two--the sort of eyewear that requires you to furrow your brow in order to keep it in place. And the rest of his body was covered in a pinstripe suit--the sort of suit that someone might wear in order to be in at the time when this story takes place. But the Baudelaires knew that Olaf didn't care about being in, any more than he had imperfect vision in one eye or was about to go horseback riding. The three children knew that Olaf was wearing boots to cover up the tattoo of an eye that he had on his left ankle. They knew he was wearing the monocle so that he could furrow his brow and make it difficult to see that he had only one long eyebrow over his shiny, shiny eyes. And they knew that he was wearing a pinstripe suit so that people would think he was a rich, in person who belonged on Dark Avenue, instead of a greedy, treacherous villain who belonged in a heavily guarded prison.

"You must be children, please," he continued, using the word "please" incorrectly for the second time. "The name of mine is Gunther. Please excuse the talking of me. Please, I am not fluent in the English language, please."

"How . . ." Violet said, and then stopped. She was still stunned, and it was difficult to finish the sentence "How did you find us so quickly, and how did you get past the doorman, who promised to keep you away from us?" while under the element of surprise.

"Where . . ." Klaus said, and then stopped. He was as stunned as his sister, and he found it impossible to finish the sentence "Where have you put the Quagmire triplets?" while under the element of surprise.

"Bik . . ." Sunny said, and stopped. The element of surprise weighed down on the youngest Baudelaire as heavily as it did on Violet and Klaus, and Sunny could not find the words to finish the sentence "Bikayado?" which meant something like "What new evil plan have you cooked up to steal our fortune?"

"I see you are not fluent in the English language either, please," Count Olaf said, continuing to fake a different way of talking. "Where is the mother and father?"

"We're not the mother and father," Esmé said, and the Baudelaires felt another element of surprise as the Squalors walked into the hallway from another door. "We're the legal guardians. These children are orphans, Gunther."

"Ah!" From behind his monocle, Count Olaf's eyes grew even shinier, as they often did when he was looking down on the helpless Baudelaires. The children felt as if his eyes were a pair of lit matches, about to burn them to a crisp. "Orphans in!" he said.

"I know orphans are in," Esmé said, ignoring Olaf's improper grammar. "In fact, they're so in they ought to be auctioned off next week at the big event!"

"Esmé!" Jerome said. "I'm shocked! We're not going to auction off these children."

"Of course we're not," Esmé said. "It's against the law to auction off children. Oh, well. Come along, Gunther. I'll give you a full tour of our apartment. Jerome, take the children to Café Salmonella."

"But we haven't even introduced them," Jerome said. "Violet, Klaus, Sunny--meet Gunther, the auctioneer we were talking about earlier. Gunther, meet the newest members of our family."

"I am happy to meet you, please," Olaf said, reaching out one of his scraggly hands.

"We've met before," Violet said, happy to see that the element of surprise was fading away and that she was finding the courage to speak up. "Many times before. Jerome and Esmé, this man is an impostor. He's not Gunther and he's not an auctioneer. This is Count Olaf."

"I am not understanding, please, what the orphan is saying," Olaf said. "Please, I am not fluent in the English language, please."

"Yes you are," said Klaus, who also found himself feeling more courageous than surprised. "You speak English perfectly."

"Why, Klaus, I'm surprised at you!" Jerome said. "A well-read person such as yourself should know he made a few grammatical errors."

"Waran!" Sunny shrieked.

"My sister is right," Violet said. "His improper English is just part of his disguise. If you make him take off his boots, you'll see his tattoo, and if you make him take off his monocle, his brow will unfurrow, and--"

"Gunther is one of the innest auctioneers in the world," Esmé said impatiently. "He told me so himself. I'm not going to make him get undressed just to make you feel better. Now shake Gunther's hand, and go off to dinner and we'll say no more about it."

"He's not Gunther, I tell you!" Klaus cried. "He's Count Olaf."

"I am not knowing what you are saying, please," Count Olaf said, shrugging his scrawny shoulders.

"Esmé," Jerome said hesitantly. "How can we be sure this man is really who he says he is? ' The children do seem quite alarmed. Perhaps we should--"

"Perhaps we should listen to me," Esmé said, pointing one long-nailed finger at herself. "I am Esmé Gigi Geniveve Squalor, the city's sixth most important financial advisor. I live on Dark Avenue, and I am unbelievably wealthy." "I know that, dear," Jerome said. "I live with you."

"Well, if you want to continue to live with me, you will call this man by his proper name, and this goes for you three children as well. I go to the trouble of buying you some smashing pinstripe suits, and you start accusing people of being in disguise!"

"It is O.K., please," Count Olaf said. "The children are confused."

"We're not confused, Olaf," Violet said.

Esmé turned to Violet and gave her an angry glare. "You and your siblings will call this man Gunther," she ordered, "or you will make me very, very sorry I took you into my glamorous home."

Violet looked at Klaus, and then at Sunny, and quickly made a decision. Arguing with somebody is never pleasant, but sometimes it is useful and necessary to do so. Just the other day, for example, it was useful and necessary for me to have an unpleasant argument with a medical student, because if he hadn't let me borrow his speedboat I would now be chained inside a very small, waterproof room, instead of sitting in a typewriter factory typing out this woeful tale. But Violet realized that it was neither useful nor necessary to argue with Esmé, because her guardian had clearly made up her mind about Gunther. It would be more useful and necessary to leave the penthouse and try to figure out what to do about the reappearance of this dreadful villain, instead of standing there and bickering over what name to call him, so Violet took a deep breath and smiled up at the man who had brought so much trouble into the Baudelaire lives.

"I'm sorry, Gunther," she said, almost choking on her false apology.

"But--" Klaus started to argue, but Violet gave him a look that meant the Baudelaires would discuss the matter later, when there weren't any adults around. "That's right," he said quickly, understanding his sister's glance at once. "We thought you were someone else, sir."

Gunther reached up to his face and adjusted his monocle. "O.K., please," he said.

"It's so much nicer when no one is arguing," Jerome said. "Come on, children, let's go to dinner. Gunther and Esmé have to plan the auction, and they need the apartment to themselves."

"Let me just take a minute to roll up my sleeves," Klaus replied. "Our suits are a little big."

"First you complain that Gunther is an impostor, then you complain about your suits," Esmé said, rolling her eyes. "I guess it goes to show you that orphans can be in and rude at the same time. Come on, Gunther, let me show you the rest of my glorious apartment."

"See you later, please," Gunther said to the children, his eyes shining brightly, and gave them a little wave as he followed Esmé down the hallway. Jerome waved back, but as soon as Gunther was around the corner, he leaned in close to the children.

"That was very nice of you to stop arguing with Esmé," he said. "I could tell that you weren't completely convinced you had made a mistake about Gunther. But don't worry. There is something we can do to set your minds at ease."

The Baudelaires looked at one another and smiled in relief. "Oh, thank you, Jerome," Violet said. "What did you have in mind?"

Jerome smiled, and knelt down to help Violet roll up the legs of her suit. "I wonder if you can guess," he said.

"We could make Gunther take off his boots," she said, "and we could see if he had Olaf's tattoo."

"Or we could make him remove his monocle and unfurrow his brow," Klaus said, as he rolled up his sleeves, "and we could get a better look at his eyebrow situation."

"Resyca!" Sunny said, which meant something like "Or you could simply ask him to leave the penthouse, and never return!"

"Well, I don't know what 'Resyca!' means," Jerome said, "but we're not going to do those other things. Gunther is a guest, and we don't want to be rude to him."

The Baudelaires actually did want to be rude to him, but they knew it was rude to say so. "Then what will set our minds at ease?" Violet asked.

"Instead of climbing down all those stairs," Jerome said, "we can slide down the banister! It's great fun, and whenever I do it, it takes my mind off my troubles, no matter what they are. Follow me!"

Sliding down a banister, of course, was not going to make the Baudelaires feel any better about an evil person lurking around their home, but before any of them could say so, Jerome was already leading the way out of the penthouse. "Come on, Baudelaires!" he called, and the children followed him as he walked quickly down the hallway, through four sitting rooms, across a kitchen, past nine bedrooms, and finally out of the apartment. He led the youngsters past the two pairs of elevator doors to the top of the staircase, and sat on the banister with a wide grin.

"I'll go first," he said, "so you'll see how it's done. Be careful on the curvy parts, and if you're going too fast you can slow yourself down by scraping your shoes along the wall. Don't be scared!"

Jerome gave himself a push, and in a second he had slid out of view, his laughter echoing off the stairwell as he raced down toward the lobby. The children looked down the stairway and felt their hearts sink with fear. It was not the fear of sliding down the banister. The Baudelaires had slid down plenty of banisters, and although they had never slid down one that was either forty-eight or eighty-four stories high, they were not scared to try, particularly now that regular light was in so they could see where they were going. But they were afraid nonetheless. They were afraid that Gunther had a clever and nasty scheme to get his hands on the Baudelaire fortune, and that they didn't have the faintest idea of what it was. They were afraid that something dreadful had happened to the Quagmire triplets, because Gunther seemed to have time to find the Baudelaires here in their new home. And they were afraid that the Squalors would not be of any assistance in keeping the three children safe from Gunther's crooked clutches. Jerome's laughter grew fainter and fainter as he slid farther and farther away, and as they stood together without a word and looked down the stairway, which curved and curved and curved as far as their eyes could see, the Baudelaire orphans were afraid that it was all downhill from here.

Chapter Five

Café Salmonella was located in the Fish District, which was a part of the city that looked, sounded, smelled, and--if you were to kneel down and lick its streets--probably tasted like fish. The Fish District smelled like fish because it was located near the docks of the city, where fishermen sold the fish they had caught each morning. It sounded like fish because the pavement was always wet from the sea breeze, and the feet of passersby made bubbly, splashy sounds that resembled the noises made by sea creatures. And it looked like fish because all of the buildings in the Fish District were made of shiny, silvery scales, instead of bricks or wooden planks. When the Baudelaire orphans arrived at the Fish District and followed Jerome to Café Salmonella, they had to look up at the evening sky to remind themselves that they were not underwater.

Café Salmonella was not just a restaurant, but a theme restaurant, which simply means a restaurant with food and decorations that follow a certain idea. The theme for Café Salmonella-- and you can probably guess this from its name-- was salmon. There were pictures of salmon on the walls, and drawings of salmon on the menu, and the waiters and waitresses were dressed up in salmon costumes, which made it difficult for them to carry plates and trays. The tables were decorated with vases full of salmon, instead of flowers, and of course all of the food that Café Salmonella served had something to do with salmon. There is nothing particularly wrong with salmon, of course, but like caramel candy, strawberry yogurt, and liquid carpet cleaner, if you eat too much of it you are not going to enjoy your meal. And so it was that evening with the Baudelaire orphans. Their costumed waiter first brought bowls of creamy salmon soup to the table, and then some chilled salmon salad and then some broiled salmon served with salmon ravioli in a salmon butter sauce for a main course, and by the time the waiter brought over salmon pie with a scoop of salmon ice cream on top the children never wanted to have another bite of salmon again. But even if the meal had featured a variety of foods, all cooked deliciously and brought by a waiter dressed in a simple, comfortable outfit, the Baudelaires would not have enjoyed their dinner, because the thought of Gunther spending the evening alone with their guardian made them lose their appetite far more than too much pink, flavorful fish, and Jerome was simply not willing to discuss the matter any further.

"I am simply not willing to discuss the matter any further," Jerome said, taking a sip from his water glass, which had chunks of frozen salmon floating in it instead of ice cubes. "And frankly, Baudelaires, I think you should be a little ashamed of your suspicions. Do you know what the word 'xenophobe' means?"

Violet and Sunny shook their heads, and looked over at their brother, who was trying to remember if he had come across the word in one of his books. "When a word ends in '-phobe,'" Klaus said, wiping his mouth with a salmon-shaped napkin, "it usually means somebody who is afraid of something. Does 'xeno' mean 'Olaf'?"

"No," Jerome said. "It means 'stranger,' or 'foreigner.' A xenophobe is somebody who is afraid of people just because they come from a different country, which is a silly reason for fear. I would have thought that you three would be far too sensible to be xenophobes. After all, Violet, Galileo came from a country in Europe, and he invented the telescope. Would you be afraid of him?"

"No," Violet said. "I'd be honored to meet him. But--"

"And Klaus," Jerome continued, "surely you've heard of the writer Junichiro Tanizaki, who came from a country in Asia. Would you be afraid of him?"

"Of course not," Klaus said. "But--"

"And Sunny," Jerome continued. "The sharp-toothed mountain lion can be found in a number of countries in North America. Would you be afraid if you met a mountain lion?"

"Netesh," Sunny said, which meant something like "Of course I would! Mountain lions are wild animals," but Jerome continued talking as if he hadn't heard a word she said.

"I don't mean to scold you," he said. "I know you've had a very difficult time since your parents' death, and Esmé and I want to do all we can to provide a good, safe home for you. I don't think Count Olaf would dare come to our fancy neighborhood, but in case he does, the doorman will spot him and alert the authorities immediately."

"But the doorman didn't spot him," Violet insisted. "He was in disguise."

"And Olaf would dare to go anywhere to find us," Klaus added. "It doesn't matter how fancy the neighborhood is."

Jerome looked uncomfortably at the children. "Please don't argue with me," he said. "I can't stand arguing."

"But sometimes it's useful and necessary to argue," Violet said.

"I can't think of a single argument that would be useful or necessary," Jerome said. "For instance, Esmé made reservations for us here at Café Salmonella, and I can't stand the taste of salmon. I could have argued with her about that, of course, but why would it be useful?"

"Well, you could have had a dinner that you enjoyed," Klaus said.

Jerome shook his head. "Someday, when you're older, you'll understand," he said. "In the meantime, do you remember which salmon is our waiter? It's close to your bedtime, and I'd like to pay the bill and take you home."

The Baudelaire orphans looked at one another in frustration and sadness. They were frustrated from trying to convince Jerome of Gunther's true identity, and they were sad because they knew it was no use to keep on trying. They scarcely said another word as Jerome ushered them out of Café Salmonella and into a taxicab that drove them out of the Fish District to 667 Dark Avenue. On the way, the taxicab passed the beach where the Baudelaires had first heard the terrible news about the fire, a time that seemed in the very, very distant past, even though it had not been all that long ago, and as the children stared out the window at the ocean waves rippling along the dark, dark beach, they missed their parents more than ever. If the Baudelaire parents had been alive, they would have listened to their children. They would have believed them when they told them who Gunther really was. But what made the Baudelaires saddest of all was the fact that if the Baudelaire parents had been alive, the three siblings would not even know who Count Olaf was, let alone be the objects of his treacherous and greedy plans. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny sat in the taxi and stared mournfully out the window, and they wished with all their might that they could return to the time when their lives were happy and carefree.

"You're back already?" the doorman asked, as he opened the door of the taxi with a hand still hidden in the sleeve of his coat. "Mrs. Squalor said that you were not supposed to return until your guest left the penthouse, and he hasn't come down yet."

Jerome looked at his watch and frowned. "It's quite late," he said. "The children should be in bed soon. I'm sure if we're very quiet, we won't disturb them."

"I had very strict instructions," the doorman said. "Nobody is supposed to enter the penthouse apartment until the guest leaves the building, which he definitely has not done."

"I don't want to argue with you," Jerome said. "But perhaps he's on his way down now. It takes a long time to get down all those stairs, unless you're sliding down the banister. So it might be O.K. for us to go up."

"I never thought of that," the doorman said, scratching his chin with his sleeve. "All right, I guess you can go up. Maybe you'll run into him on the stairs."

The Baudelaire children looked at one another. They weren't sure which made them more nervous--the idea that Gunther had spent so much time in the Squalor penthouse, or the idea that they might meet him as he came down the stairs. "Maybe we should wait for Gunther to leave," Violet said. "We don't want the doorman to get in trouble."

"No, no," Jerome decided. "We'd best start the climb or we'll be too tired to reach the top. Sunny, be sure to let me know when you want me to carry you."

They walked into the lobby of the building and were surprised to see that it had been completely redecorated while they were at dinner. All the walls were painted blue, and the floor was covered in sand, with a few seashells scattered in the corners.

"Ocean decorating is in," the doorman explained. "I just got the phone call today. By tomorrow, the lobby will be filled with underwater scenery."

"I wish we'd known about this earlier," Jerome said. "We would have brought something back from the Fish District."

"Oh, I wish you had," the doorman said. "Everybody wants ocean decorations now, and they're getting hard to find."

"There are sure to be some ocean decorations for sale at the In Auction," Jerome said, as he and the Baudelaires reached the beginning of the stairway. "Maybe you should stop by and purchase something for the lobby."

"Maybe I will," the doorman said, smiling oddly at the children. "Maybe I will. Have a good evening, folks."

The Baudelaires said good night to the doorman, and began the long climb up the stairs. Up and up and up they climbed, and they passed a number of people who were on their way down, but although all of them were in pinstripe suits, none of them were Gunther. As the children climbed higher and higher, the people going down the stairs looked more and more tired, and each time the Baudelaires passed an apartment door, they heard the sounds of people getting ready for bed. On the seventeenth floor, they heard somebody ask their mother where the bubble bath was. On the thirty-eighth floor, they heard the sounds of somebody brushing their teeth. And on a floor very high up--the children had lost count again, but it must have been quite high, because Jerome was carrying Sunny--they heard someone with a deep, deep voice, reading a children's story out loud. All these sounds made them sleepier and sleepier, and by the time they reached the top floor the Baudelaire orphans were so tired it felt as if they were sleepwalking, or, in Sunny's case, being sleep-carried. They were so tired that they almost dozed off, leaning against the two sets of sliding elevator doors, as Jerome unlocked the front door. And they were so tired that it seemed as if Gunther's appearance had been a dream, because when they asked about him, Esmé replied that he had left a long time ago.

"Gunther left?" Violet asked. "But the doorman said that he was still here."

"Oh, no," Esmé said. "He dropped off a catalog of all the items for the In Auction. It's in the library if you want to look at it. We went over some auctioneering details, and then he went home."

"But that can't be," Jerome said.

"Of course it can be," Esmé replied. "He walked right out the front door."

The Baudelaires looked at one another in confusion and suspicion. How had Gunther managed to leave the penthouse without being spotted? "Did he take an elevator when he left?" Klaus said.

Esmé's eyes widened, and she opened and shut her mouth several times without saying anything, as if she were experiencing the element of surprise. "No," she said finally. "The elevator's been shut down. You know that."

"But the doorman said he was still here," Violet said again. "And we didn't see him when we walked up the stairs."

"Well, then the doorman was wrong," Esmé said. "But let's not have any more of this somniferous conversation. Jerome, put them right to bed."

The Baudelaires looked at one another. They didn't think the conversation was at all somniferous, a fancy word for something that is so boring it puts you to sleep. Despite their exhausting climb, the children did not feel the least bit tired when they were talking about Gunther's whereabouts. The idea that he had managed to disappear as mysteriously as he had appeared made them too anxious to be sleepy. But the three siblings knew that they would not be able to convince the Squalors to discuss it any further, any more than they had been able to convince them that Gunther was Count Olaf instead of an in auctioneer, so they said good night to Esmé and followed Jerome across three ballrooms, past a breakfast room, through two sitting rooms, and eventually to their own bedrooms.

"Good night, children," Jerome said, and smiled. "The three of you will probably sleep like logs, after all that climbing. I don't mean that you resemble parts of trees, of course. I just mean that once you get into bed, I bet you'll fall right asleep and won't move any more than a log does."

"We know what you meant, Jerome," Klaus replied, "and I hope you're right. Good night."

Jerome smiled at the children, and the children smiled back, and then looked at each other once more before walking into their bedrooms and shutting the doors behind them. The children knew that they would not sleep like logs, unless there were certain logs that tossed and turned all night wondering things. The siblings wondered where Gunther was hiding, and how he had managed to find them, and what terrible treachery he was dreaming up. They wondered where the Quagmire triplets were, since Gunther had time to prey on the Baudelaires. And they wondered what V.F.D. could mean, and if it would help them with Gunther if they knew.

The Baudelaires tossed and turned, and wondered about all these things, and as it grew later and later they felt less and less like logs and more and more like children in a sinister and mysterious plot, spending one of the least somniferous nights of their young lives.