Chapter Six

Morning is one of the best times for thinking. When one has just woken up, but hasn't yet gotten out of bed, it is a perfect time to look up at the ceiling, consider one's life, and wonder what the future will hold. The morning I am writing this chapter, I am wondering if the future will hold something that will enable me to saw through these handcuffs and crawl out of the double-locked window, but in the case of the Baudelaire orphans, when the morning sun shone through the eight hundred and forty-nine windows in the Squalor penthouse, they were wondering if the future would hold knowledge of the trouble they felt closing in around them.

Violet watched the first few rays of sunlight brighten her sturdy, tool-free workbench, and tried to imagine what sort of evil plan Gunther had cooked up. Klaus watched the dawn's rays make shifting shapes on the wall that separated his room from the Squalor library, and racked his brain for a way Gunther could have vanished into thin air. And Sunny watched the emerging sun illuminate all of the unbiteable baby toys, and tried to figure out if they had time to discuss the matter together before the Squalors came to wake them up.

This last thing was fairly easy to figure out. The littlest Baudelaire crawled out her bedroom door, fetched her brother, and opened Violet's door to find her out of bed and sitting at her wooden workbench with her hair tied up in a ribbon to keep it out of her eyes. "Tageb," Sunny said.

"Good morning," Violet replied. "I thought it might help me think if I tied my hair up, and sat at my workbench, as if I were inventing something. But I haven't figured out a thing."

"It's terrible enough that Olaf has shown up again," Klaus said, "and that we have to call him Gunther. But we don't have the faintest clue what he's planning."

"Well, he wants to get his hands on our fortune, that's for sure," Violet said.

"Klofy," Sunny said, which meant "Of course. But how?"

"Maybe it has something to do with the In Auction," Klaus guessed. "Why would he disguise himself as an auctioneer if it weren't part of his plan?"

Sunny yawned, and Violet reached down and lifted up her sister so she could sit on her lap. "Do you think he's going to try to auction us off?" Violet asked, as Sunny leaned forward to nibble on the workbench in thought. "He could get one of those terrible assistants of his to bid higher and higher for us until he won, and then we'd be in his clutches, just like the poor Quagmires."

"But Esmé said it's against the law to auction off children," Klaus pointed out.

Sunny stopped chewing on the workbench and looked at her siblings. "Nolano?" she asked, which meant something like "Do you think the Squalors are working together with Gunther?"

"I don't think so," Violet said. "They've been very kind to us--well, Jerome has, at least--and anyway, they don't need the Baudelaire fortune. They have so much money already."

"But not much common sense," Klaus said unhappily. "Gunther fooled them completely, and all it took were some black boots, a pinstripe suit, and a monocle."

"Plus, he fooled them into thinking that he had left," Violet said, "but the doorman was certain that he hadn't."

"Gunther's got me fooled, too," Klaus said. "How could he have left without the doorman noticing?"

"I don't know," Violet said miserably. "The whole thing is like a jigsaw puzzle, but there are too many missing pieces to solve it."

"Did I hear someone say 'jigsaw puzzles'?" Jerome asked. "If you're looking for some jigsaw puzzles, I think there are a few in the cabinet in one of the sitting rooms, or maybe in one of the living rooms, I can't remember which."

The Baudelaires looked up and saw their guardian standing in the doorway of Violet's bedroom with a smile on his face and a silver tray in his hands.

"Good morning, Jerome," Klaus said. "And thank you, but we're not looking for a jigsaw puzzle. Violet was just using an expression. We're trying to figure something out."

"Well, you'll never figure anything out on an empty stomach," Jerome replied. "I have some breakfast here for you: three poached eggs and some nice whole wheat toast."

"Thank you," Violet said. "It's very nice of you to fix us breakfast."

"You're very welcome," Jerome replied. "Esmé has an important meeting with the King of Arizona today, so we have the whole day to ourselves. I thought we could walk across town to the Clothing District, and take your pinstripe suits to a good tailor. There's no use having those suits if they don't fit you properly."

"Knilliu!" Sunny shrieked, which meant "That's very considerate of you."

"I don't know what 'Knilliu!' means," Esmé said, walking into the bedroom, "and I don't care, but neither will you when you hear the fantastic news I just received on the phone! Aqueous martinis are out, and parsley soda is in!"

"Parsley soda?" Jerome said, frowning. "That sounds terrible. I think I'll stick to aqueous martinis."

"You're not listening," Esmé said. "Parsley soda is in now. You'll have to go out right now and buy a few crates of it."

"But I was going to take the children's suits to the tailor today," Jerome said.

"Then you'll have to change your plans," Esmé said impatiently. "The children already have clothing, but we don't have any parsley soda."

"Well, I don't want to argue," Jerome said.

"Then don't argue," Esmé replied. "And don't take the children with you, either. The Beverage District is no place for young people. Well, we'd better go, Jerome. I don't want to be late for His Arizona Highness."

"But don't you want to spend some time with the Baudelaires before the work day begins?" Jerome asked.

"Not particularly," Esmé said, and looked briefly at her watch. "I'll just say good morning to them. Good morning. Well, let's go, Jerome."

Jerome opened his mouth as if he had something else to say, but Esmé was already marching out of the bedroom, so he just shrugged. "Have a good day," he said to the children. "There's food in all of our kitchens, so you can make yourselves lunch. I'm sorry that our plans didn't work out after all."

"Hurry up!" Esmé called, from down the hallway, and Jerome ran out of the room. The children heard their guardians' footsteps grow fainter and fainter as they made their way to the front door.

"Well," Klaus said, when they couldn't hear them anymore, "what shall we do today?"

"Vinfrey," Sunny said.

"Sunny's right," Violet said. "We'd better spend the day figuring out what Gunther's up to."

"How can we know what he's up to," Klaus said, "when we don't even know where he is?"

"Well, we'd better find out," Violet said. "He already had the unfair advantage of the element of surprise, and we don't want him to have the unfair advantage of a good hiding place."

"This penthouse has lots of good hiding places," Klaus said. "There are so many rooms."

"Koundix," Sunny said, which meant something like "But he can't be in the penthouse. Esmé saw him leave."

"Well, maybe he sneaked back in," Violet said, "and is lurking around right now."

The Baudelaires looked at one another, and then at Violet's doorway, half expecting to see Gunther standing there looking at them with his shiny, shiny eyes.

"If he was lurking around here," Klaus said, "wouldn't he have grabbed us the instant the Squalors went out?"

"Maybe," Violet said. "If that was his plan."

The Baudelaires looked at the empty doorway again.

"I'm scared," Klaus said.

"Ecrif!" Sunny agreed.

"I'm scared, too," Violet admitted, "but if he's here in the penthouse, we'd better find out. We'll have to search the entire place and see if we find him."

"I don't want to find him," Klaus said. "Let's run downstairs and call Mr. Poe instead."

"Mr. Poe is in a helicopter, looking for the Quagmire triplets," Violet said. "By the time he returns it may be too late. We have to figure out what Gunther is up to--not only for our sake, but for the sake of Isadora and Duncan."

At the mention of the Quagmire triplets, all three Baudelaires felt a stiffening of their resolve, a phrase which here means "realized that they had to search the penthouse for Gunther, even though it was a scary thing to do." The children remembered how hard Duncan and Isadora had worked to save them from Olaf's clutches back at Prufrock Preparatory School, doing absolutely everything they could to help the Baudelaires escape Olaf's evil plan. The Quagmires had sneaked out in the middle of the night and put themselves in grave danger. The Quagmires had put on disguises, risking their lives in order to try to fool Olaf. And the Quagmires had done a lot of researching, finding out the secret of V.F.D.--although they had been snatched away before they could reveal the secret to the Baudelaires. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny thought about the two brave and loyal triplets, and knew they had to be just as brave and loyal, now that they had an opportunity to save their friends.

"You're right," Klaus said to Violet, and Sunny nodded in agreement. "We have to search the penthouse. But it's such a complicated place. I get lost just trying to find the bathroom at night. How can we search without getting lost?"

"Hansel!" Sunny said.

The two older Baudelaires looked at one another. It was rare that Sunny said something that her siblings couldn't understand, but this seemed to be one of those times.

"Do you mean we should draw a map?" Violet asked.

Sunny shook her head. "Gretel!" she said.

"That's two times we don't understand you," Klaus said. "Hansel and Gretel? What does that mean?"

"Oh!" Violet cried suddenly. "Hansel and Gretel means Hansel and Gretel--you know, those two dim-witted children in that fairy tale."

"Of course," Klaus said. "That brother and sister who insist on wandering around the woods by themselves."

"Leaving a trail of bread crumbs," Violet said, picking up a piece of toast from the breakfast tray Jerome had brought them, "so they don't get lost. We'll crumble up this toast and leave a few crumbs in every room so we know we've already searched it. Good thinking, Sunny."

"Blized," Sunny said modestly, which meant something like "It's nothing," and I'm sorry to say she turned out to be right. For as the children wandered from bedroom to living room to dining room to breakfast room to snack room to sitting room to standing room to ballroom to bathroom to kitchen to those rooms that seemed to have no purpose at all, and back again, leaving trails of toast crumbs wherever they went, Gunther was nowhere to be found. They looked in the closets of each bedroom, and the cabinets in each kitchen, and even pulled back the shower curtains in each bathroom to see if Gunther was hiding behind them. They saw racks of clothes in the closets, cans of food in the cabinets, and bottles of cream rinse in the shower, but the children had to admit, as the morning ended and the Baudelaires' own trail of crumbs led them back to Violet's room, that they had found nothing.

"Where in the world can Gunther be hiding?" Klaus asked. "We've looked everywhere."

"Maybe he was moving around," Violet said. "He could have been in a room behind us all the time, jumping into the hiding places we already checked."

"I don't think so," Klaus said. "We surely would have heard him if he was clomping around in those silly boots. I don't think he's been in this penthouse since last night. Esmé insists that he left the apartment, but the doorman insists that he didn't. It doesn't add up."

"I've been thinking that over," Violet said. "I think it might add up. Esmé insists that he left the penthouse. The doorman insists that he didn't leave the building. That means he could be in any of the other apartments at 667 Dark Avenue."

"You're right," Klaus said. "Maybe he rented one of the apartments on another floor, as a headquarters for his latest scheme."

"Or maybe one of the apartments belongs to someone in his theater troupe," Violet said, and counted those terrible people on her fingers "There's the hook-handed man, or the bald man with the long nose, or that one who looks like neither a man nor a woman."

"Or maybe those two dreadful powder-faced women--the ones who helped kidnap the Quagmires--are roommates," Klaus said.

"Co," Sunny said, which meant something like "Or maybe Gunther managed to trick one of the other residents of 667 Dark Avenue into letting him into their apartment, and then he tied them up and is sitting there hiding in the kitchen."

"If we find Gunther in the building," Violet said, "then at least the Squalors will know that he is a liar. Even if they don't believe he's really Count Olaf, they'll be very suspicious if he's caught hiding in another apartment."

"But how are we going to find out?" Klaus asked. "We can't simply knock on doors and ask to see each apartment."

"We don't have to see each apartment," Violet said. "We can listen to them."

Klaus and Sunny looked at their sister in confusion for a moment, and then began to grin. "You're right!" Klaus said. "If we walk down the stairs, listening at every door, we may be able to tell if Gunther is inside."

"Lorigo!" Sunny shrieked, which meant "What are we waiting for? Let's go!"

"Not so fast," Klaus said. "It's a long trip down all those stairs, and we've already done a lot of walking--and crawling, in your case, Sunny. We'd better change into our sturdiest shoes, and bring along some extra pairs of socks.

That way we can avoid blisters."

"And we should bring some water," Violet said, "so we won't get thirsty."

"Snack!" Sunny shrieked, and the Baudelaire orphans went to work, changing out of their pajamas and into appropriate stair-climbing outfits, putting on their sturdiest shoes, and tucking pairs of extra socks into their pockets. After Violet and Klaus made sure that Sunny had tied her shoes correctly, the children left their bedrooms and followed their crumbs down the hallway, through a living room, past two bedrooms, down another hallway, and into the nearest kitchen, sticking together the whole time so they wouldn't lose one another in the enormous penthouse. In the kitchen they found some grapes, a box of crackers, and a jar of apple butter, as well as a bottle of water that the Squalors used for making aqueous martinis but that the Baudelaires would use to quench their thirst during their long climb. Finally, they left the penthouse apartment, walked past the sliding elevator doors, and stood at the top of the curving stairway, feeling more like they were about to go mountain climbing than downstairs.

"We'll have to tiptoe," Violet said, "so that we can hear Gunther, but he can't hear us."

"And we should probably whisper," Klaus whispered, "so that we can eavesdrop, without people eavesdropping on us."

"Philavem," Sunny said, which meant "Let's get started," and the Baudelaires got started, tiptoeing down the first curve of the stairway and listening at the door of the apartment directly below the penthouse. For a few seconds, they heard nothing, but then, very clearly, they heard a woman talking on the phone.

"Well, that's not Gunther," Violet whispered. "He's not a woman."

Klaus and Sunny nodded, and the children tiptoed down the next curve to the floor below. As soon as they reached the next door, it flung open to reveal a very short man in a pinstripe suit. "See you later, Avery!" he called, and, with a nod to the children, shut the door and began walking down the stairs.

"That's not Gunther either," Klaus whispered. "He's not that short, and he's not calling himself Avery."

Violet and Sunny nodded, and the children tiptoed down the next curve to the floor below the floor below. They stopped and listened at this door, and heard a man's voice call out, "I'm going to take a shower, Mother," and Sunny shook her head.

"Mineak," she whispered, which meant "Gunther would never take a shower. He's filthy."

Violet and Klaus nodded, and the children tiptoed down the next curve, and then the next, and the next and plenty more after that, listening at each door, whispering briefly to one another, and moving on. As they walked farther and farther down the stairway, they began to grow tired, as they always did when making their way to or from the Squalors' apartment, but this time they had additional hardships as well. The tips of their toes grew tired from all that tiptoeing. Their throats grew hoarse from all that whispering. Their ears were aching from listening at all those doors, and their chins drooped from nodding in agreement that nothing they heard sounded like Gunther. The morning wore on, and the Baudelaires tiptoed and listened, whispered and nodded, and by the time they reached the lobby of the building, it seemed that every physical feature of the Baudelaire orphans was suffering in some way from the long climb.

"That was exhausting," Violet said, sitting down on the bottom step and passing around the bottle of water. "Exhausting and fruitless."

"Grape!" Sunny said.

"No, no, Sunny," Violet said. "I didn't mean we didn't have any fruit. I just meant we didn't learn anything. Do you think we missed a door?"

"No," Klaus said, shaking his head and passing around the crackers. "I made sure. I even counted the number of floors this time, so we could double-check them on the way up. It's not forty-eight, or eighty-four. It's sixty-six, which happens to be the average of those two numbers. Sixty-six floors and sixty-six doors and not a peep from Gunther behind any of them."

"I don't understand it," Violet said miserably. "If he's not in the penthouse, and he's not in any of the other apartments, and he hasn't left the building, where could he be?"

"Maybe he is in the penthouse," Klaus said, "and we just didn't spot him."

"Bishuy," Sunny said, which meant "Or maybe he is in one of the other apartments, and we just didn't hear him."

"Or maybe he has left the building," Violet said, spreading apple butter on a cracker and giving it to Sunny. "We can ask the doorman. There he is."

Sure enough, the doorman was at his usual post by the door, and was just noticing the three exhausted children sitting on the bottom step.

"Hello there," he said, walking up to them and smiling from beneath the wide brim of his hat. Sticking out of his long sleeves were a small starfish carved out of wood, and a bottle of glue. "I was just going to put up this ocean decoration when I thought I heard someone walking down the stairs."

"We just thought we'd have lunch here in the lobby," Violet said, not wanting to admit that she and her siblings had been listening at doors, "and then hike back up."

"I'm sorry, but that means that you're not allowed back up to the penthouse," the doorman said, and shrugged his shoulders inside his oversized coat. "You'll have to stay here in the lobby. After all, my instructions were very clear: You were not supposed to return to the Squalor penthouse until the guest left. I let you go up last night because Mr. Squalor said that your guest was probably on his way down, but he was wrong, because Gunther never showed up in the lobby."

"You mean Gunther still hasn't left the building?" Violet asked.

"Of course not," the doorman said. "I'm here all day and all night, and I haven't seen him leave. I promise you that Gunther never walked out of this door."

"When do you sleep?" Klaus asked.

"I drink a lot of coffee," the doorman answered.

"It just doesn't make any sense," Violet said.

"Sure it does," the doorman said. "Coffee contains caffeine, which is a chemical stimulant. Stimulants keep people awake."

"I didn't mean the part about the coffee," Violet said. "I meant the part about Gunther. Esmé--that's Mrs. Squalor--is positive that he left the penthouse last night, while we were at the restaurant. But you are equally positive that he didn't leave the building. It's a problem that doesn't seem to have a solution."

"Every problem has a solution," the doorman said. "At least, that's what a close associate of mine says. Sometimes it just takes a long time to find the solution--even if it's right in front of your nose."

The doorman smiled at the Baudelaires, who watched him walk over to the sliding elevator doors. He opened the bottle of glue and made a small globby patch on one of the doors, and then held the wooden starfish against the glue in order to attach it. Gluing things to a door is never a very exciting thing to watch, and after a moment, Violet and Sunny turned their attention back to their lunch and the problem of Gunther's disappearance. Only Klaus kept looking in the direction of the doorman as he continued to decorate the lobby. The middle Baudelaire looked and looked and looked, and kept on looking even when the glue dried and the doorman went back to his post at the door. Klaus kept facing the ocean decoration that was now firmly attached to one of the elevator doors, because he realized now, after a tiring morning of searching the penthouse and an exhausting afternoon of eavesdropping on the stairs, that the doorman had been right. Klaus didn't move his face one bit, because he realized that the solution was, indeed, right in front of his nose.

Chapter Seven

When you know someone a long time, you become accustomed to their idiosyncrasies, which is a fancy word for their unique habits. For instance, Sunny Baudelaire had known her sister, Violet, for quite some time, and was accustomed to Violet's idiosyncrasy of tying her hair up in a ribbon to keep it out of her eyes whenever she was inventing something. Violet had known Sunny for exactly the same length of time, and was accustomed to Sunny's idiosyncrasy of saying "Freijip?" when she wanted to ask the question "How can you think of elevators at a time like this?" And both the young Baudelaire women were very well acquainted with their brother, Klaus, and were accustomed to his idiosyncrasy of not paying a bit of attention to his surroundings when he was thinking very hard about something, as he was clearly doing as the afternoon wore on. The doorman continued to insist that the Baudelaire orphans could not return to the penthouse, so the three children sat on the bottom step of 667 Dark Avenue's lengthy stairwell, ate food they had brought down with them, and rested their weary legs, which had not felt this sore since Olaf, in a previous disguise, had forced them to run hundreds and hundreds of laps as part of his scheme to steal their fortune. A good thing to do when one is sitting, eating, and resting is to have a conversation, and Violet and Sunny were both eager to converse about Gunther's mysterious appearance and disappearance, and what they might be able to do about it, but Klaus scarcely participated in the discussion. Only when his sisters asked him a direct question, such as "But where in the world could Gunther be?" or "What do you think Gunther is planning?" or "Topoing?" did Klaus mumble a response, and Violet and Sunny soon figured out that Klaus must be thinking very hard about something, so they left him to his idiosyncrasy and talked quietly to each other until the doorman ushered Jerome and Esmé into the lobby.

"Hello, Jerome," Violet said. "Hello, Esmé."

"Tretchev!" Sunny shrieked, which meant "Welcome home!"

Klaus mumbled something.

"What a pleasant surprise to see you all the way down here!" Jerome said. "It'll be easier to climb all those stairs if we have you three charming people for company."

"And you can carry the crates of parsley soda that are stacked outside," Esmé said. "Then I don't have to worry about breaking one of my fingernails."

"We'd be happy to carry big crates up all those stairs," Violet lied, "but the doorman says we're not allowed back in the penthouse."

"Not allowed?" Jerome frowned. "Whatever do you mean?"

"You gave me specific instructions not to let the children back in, Mrs. Squalor," the doorman said. "At least, until Gunther left the building. And he still hasn't left."

"Don't be absurd," Esmé said. "He left the penthouse last night. What kind of doorman are you?"

"Actually, I'm an actor," the doorman said, "but I was still able to follow your instructions."

Esmé gave the doorman a stern look she probably used when giving people financial advice. "Your instructions have changed," she said. "Your new instructions are to let me and my orphans go directly to my seventy-one-bedroom apartment. Got it, buster?"

"Got it," the doorman replied meekly.

"Good," Esmé said, and then turned to the children. "Hurry up, kids," she said. "Violet and what's-his-name can each take a crate of soda, and Jerome will take the rest. I guess the baby won't be very helpful, but that's to be expected. Let's get a move on."

The Baudelaires got a move on, and in a few moments the three children and the two adults were trekking up the sixty-six-floor-long staircase. The youngsters were hoping that Esmé might help carry the heavy crates of soda, but the city's sixth most important financial advisor was much more interested in telling them all about her meeting with the King of Arizona than in buttering up any orphans. "He told me a long list of new things that are in," Esmé squealed. "For one thing, grapefruits. Also bright blue cereal bowls, billboards with photographs of weasels on them, and plenty of other things that I will list for you right now." All the way up to the penthouse, Esmé listed the new in items she had learned about from His Arizona Highness, and the two Baudelaire sisters listened carefully the whole time. They did not listen very carefully to Esmé's very dull speech, of course, but they listened closely at each curve of the staircase, double-checking their eavesdropping to hear if Gunther was indeed behind one of the apartment doors. Neither Violet nor Sunny heard anything suspicious, and they would have asked Klaus, in a low whisper so the Squalors couldn't hear them, if he had heard any sort of Gunther noise, but they could tell from his idiosyncrasy that he was still thinking very hard about something and wasn't listening to the noises in the other apartments any more than he was listening to automobile tires, cross-country skiing, movies with waterfalls in them, and the rest of the in things Esmé was rattling off.

"Oh, and magenta wallpaper!" Esmé said, as the Baudelaires and the Squalors finished a dinner of in foods washed down with parsley soda, which tasted even nastier than it sounds. "And triangular picture frames, and very fancy doilies, and garbage cans with letters of the alphabet stenciled all over them, and--"

"Excuse me," Klaus said, and his sisters jumped a little bit in surprise. It was the first time Klaus had spoken in anything but a mumble since they had been down in the lobby. "I don't mean to interrupt, but my sisters and I are very tired. May we be excused to go to bed?"

"Of course," Jerome said. "You should get plenty of rest for the auction tomorrow. I'll take you to the Veblen Hall at ten-thirty sharp, so--"

"No you won't," Esmé said. "Yellow paper clips are in, Jerome, so as soon as the sun rises, you'll have to go right to the Stationery District and get some. I'll bring the children."

"Well, I don't want to argue," Jerome said, shrugging and giving the children a small smile. "Esmé, don't you want to tuck the children in?"

"Nope," Esmé answered, frowning as she sipped her parsley soda. "Folding blankets over three wriggling children sounds like a lot more trouble than it's worth. See you tomorrow, kids."

"I hope so," Violet said, and yawned. She knew that Klaus was asking to be excused so he could tell her and Sunny what he had been thinking about, but after lying awake the previous night, searching the entire penthouse, and tiptoeing down all those stairs, the eldest Baudelaire was actually quite tired. "Good night, Esmé. Good night, Jerome."

"Good night, children," Jerome said. "And please, if you get up in the middle of the night and have a snack, try not to spill your food. There seem to be a lot of crumbs around the penthouse lately."

The Baudelaire orphans looked at one another and smiled at their shared secret. "Sorry about that," Violet said. "Tomorrow we'll do the vacuuming if you want."

"Vacuum cleaners!" Esmé said. "I knew there was something else he told me was in. Oh, and cotton balls, and anything with chocolate sprinkles on it, and . . ."

The Baudelaires did not want to stick around for any more of Esmé's in list, so they brought their plates into the nearest kitchen, and walked down a hallway decorated with the antlers of various animals, through a sitting room, past five bathrooms, took a left at another kitchen, and eventually made their way to Violet's bedroom.

"O.K., Klaus," Violet said to her brother, when the three children had found a comfortable corner for their discussion. "I know you've been thinking very hard about something, because you've been doing that unique habit of yours where you don't pay a bit of attention to your surroundings."

"Unique habits like that are called idiosyncrasies," Klaus said.

"Stiblo!" Sunny cried, which meant "We can improve our vocabulary later--tell us what's on your mind!"

"Sorry, Sunny," Klaus said. "It's just that I think I've figured out where Gunther might be hiding, but I'm not positive. First, Violet, I need to ask you something. What do you know about elevators?"

"Elevators?" Violet said. "Quite a bit, actually. My friend Ben once gave me some elevator blueprints for my birthday, and I studied them very closely. They were destroyed in the fire, of course, but I remember that an elevator is essentially a platform, surrounded by an enclosure, that moves along the vertical axis via an endlessly looped belt and a series of ropes. It's controlled by a push-button console that regulates an electromagnetic braking system so the transport sequence can be halted at any access point the passenger desires. In other words, it's a box that moves up or down, depending on where you want to go. But so what?"

"Freijip?" Sunny asked, which, as you know, was her idiosyncratic way of saying "How can you think of elevators at a time like this?"

"Well, it was the doorman who got me thinking about elevators," Klaus said. "Remember when he said that sometimes the solution is right under your nose? Well, he was gluing that wooden starfish to the elevator doors right when he said that."

"I noticed that, too," Violet said. "It looked a little ugly."

"It did look ugly," Klaus agreed. "But that's not what I mean. I got to thinking about the elevator doors. Outside the door to this penthouse, there are two pairs of elevator doors. But on every other floor, there's only one pair."

"That's true," Violet said, "and that's odd, too, now that I think of it. That means one elevator can stop only on the top floor."

"Yelliverc!" Sunny said, which meant "That second elevator is almost completely useless!"

"I don't think it's useless," Klaus said, "because I don't think the elevator is really there."

"Not really there?" Violet asked. "But that would just leave an empty elevator shaft!"

"Middiow?" Sunny asked.

"An elevator shaft is the path an elevator uses to move up and down," Violet explained to her sister. "It's sort of like a hallway, except it goes up and down, instead of side to side."

"And a hallway," Klaus said, "could lead to a hiding place."

"Aha!" Sunny cried.

"Aha is right," Klaus agreed. "Just think, if he used an empty elevator shaft instead of the stairs, nobody would ever know where he was. I don't think the elevator has been shut down because it's out. I think it's where Gunther is hiding."

"But why is he hiding? What is he up to?" Violet asked.

"That's the part we still don't know," Klaus admitted, "but I bet you the answers can be found behind those sliding doors. Let's take a look at what's behind the second pair of elevator doors. If we see the ropes and things you were describing, then we know it's a real elevator. But if we don't--"

"Then we know we're on the right track,"

Violet finished for him. "Let's go right this minute."

"If we go right this minute," Klaus said, "we'll have do it very quietly. The Squalors are not going to let three children poke around an elevator shaft."

"It's worth the risk, if it helps us figure out Gunther's plan," Violet said. I'm sorry to say that it turned out not to be worth the risk at all, but of course the Baudelaires had no way of knowing that, so they merely nodded in agreement and tiptoed toward the penthouse's exit, peeking into each room before they went through to see if the Squalors were anywhere to be found. But Jerome and Esmé were apparently spending the evening in some room in another part of the apartment, because the Baudelaires didn't see hide or hair of them--the expression "hide or hair of them" here means "even a glimpse of the city's sixth most important financial advisor, or her husband"--on their way to the front door. They hoped the door would not squeak as they pushed it open, but apparently silent hinges were in, because the Baudelaires made no noise at all as they left the apartment and tiptoed over to the two pairs of sliding elevator doors.

"How do we know which elevator is which?" Violet whispered. "The pairs of doors look exactly alike."

"I hadn't thought of that," Klaus replied. "If one of them is really a secret passageway, there must be some way to tell."

Sunny tugged on the legs of her siblings' pants, which was a good way to get their attention without making any noise, and when Violet and Klaus looked down to see what their sister wanted, she answered them just as silently. Without speaking, she reached out one of her tiny fingers and pointed to the buttons that were next to each set of sliding doors. Next to one pair of doors, there was a single button, with an arrow printed on it pointing down. But next to the second pair of doors, there were two buttons: one with a Down arrow, and one with an Up arrow. The three children looked at the buttons and considered.

"Why would you need an Up button," Violet whispered, "if you were already on the top floor?" and without waiting for an answer to her question, she reached out and pressed it. With a quiet, slithery sound, the sliding doors opened, and the children leaned carefully into the doorway, and gasped at what they saw.

"Lakry," Sunny said, which meant something like "There are no ropes."

"Not only are there no ropes," Violet said. "There's no endlessly looped belt, push-button console, or electromagnetic braking system. I don't even see an enclosed platform."

"I knew it," Klaus said, in hushed excitement. "I knew the elevator was ersatz!"

"Ersatz" is a word that describes a situation in which one thing is pretending to be another, the way the secret passageway the Baudelaires were looking at had been pretending to be an elevator, but the word might as well have meant "the most terrifying place the Baudelaires had ever seen." As the children stood in the doorway and peered into the elevator shaft, it was as if they were standing on the edge of an enormous cliff, looking down at the dizzying depths below them. But what made these depths terrifying, as well as dizzying, was that they were so very dark. The shaft was more like a pit than a passageway, leading straight down into a blackness the likes of which the youngsters had never seen. It was darker than any night had ever been, even on nights when there was no moon. It was darker than Dark Avenue had been on the day of their arrival. It was darker than a pitch-black panther, covered in tar, eating black licorice at the very bottom of the deepest part of the Black Sea. The Baudelaire orphans had never dreamed that anything could be this dark, even in their scariest nightmares, and as they stood at the edge of this pit of unimaginable blackness, they felt as if the elevator shaft would simply swallow them up and they would never see a speck of light again.

"We have to go down there," Violet said, scarcely believing the words she was saying.

"I'm not sure I have the courage to go down there," Klaus said. "Look how dark it is. It's terrifying."

"Prollit," Sunny said, which meant "But not as terrifying as what Gunther will do to us, if we don't find out his plan."

"Why don't we just go tell the Squalors about this?" Klaus asked. "Then they can go down the secret passageway."

"We don't have time to argue with the Squalors," Violet said. "Every minute we waste is a minute the Quagmires are spending in Gunther's clutches."

"But how are we going to go down?" Klaus asked. "I don't see a ladder, or a staircase. I don't see anything at all."

"We're going to have to climb down," Violet said, "on a rope. But where can we find rope at this time of night? Most hardware stores close at six."

"The Squalors must have some rope somewhere in their penthouse," Klaus said. "Let's split up and find some. We'll meet back here in fifteen minutes."

Violet and Sunny agreed, and the Baudelaires stepped carefully away from the elevator shaft and tiptoed back into the Squalor penthouse. They felt like burglars as they split up and began searching the apartment, although there have been only five burglars in the history of robbery who have specialized in rope. All five of these burglars were caught and sent to prison, which is why scarcely any people lock up their rope for safekeeping, but to their frustration, the Baudelaires learned that their guardians didn't lock up their ropes at all, for the simple reason that they didn't have any.

"I couldn't find any ropes at all," Violet admitted, as she rejoined her siblings. "But I did find these extension cords, which might work."

"I took these curtain pulls down from some of the windows," Klaus said. "They're a little bit like ropes, so I thought they might be useful."

"Armani," Sunny offered, holding up an armful of Jerome's neckties.

"Well, we have some ersatz ropes," Violet said, "for our climb down the ersatz elevator. Let's tie them all together with the Devil's Tongue."

"The Devil's Tongue?" Klaus asked.

"It's a knot," Violet explained. "It was invented by female Finnish pirates in the fifteenth century. I used it to make my grappling hook, when Olaf had Sunny trapped in that cage, dangling from his tower room, and it'll work here as well. We need to make as long a rope as possible--for all we know, the passageway goes all the way to the bottom floor of the building."

"It looks like it goes all the way to the center of the earth," Klaus said. "We've spent so much of our time trying to escape from Count Olaf. I can't believe that now we're trying to find him."

"Me neither," Violet agreed. "If it weren't for the Quagmires, I wouldn't go down there at all."

"Bangemp," Sunny reminded her siblings. She meant something along the lines of "If it weren't for the Quagmires, we would have been in his clutches a long time ago," and the two older Baudelaires nodded in agreement. Violet showed her siblings how to make the Devil's Tongue, and the three children hurriedly tied the extension cords to the curtain pulls, and the curtain pulls to the neckties, and the last necktie to the sturdiest thing they could find, which was the doorknob of the Squalor penthouse. Violet checked her siblings' handiwork and finally gave the whole rope a satisfied tug.

"I think this should hold us," she said. "I only hope it's long enough."

"Why don't we drop the rope down the shaft," Klaus said, "and listen to see if it hits the bottom? Then we'll know for sure."

"Good idea," Violet replied, and walked to the edge of the passageway. She threw down the edge of the furthermost extension cord, and the children watched as it disappeared into the blackness, dragging the rest of the Baudelaires' line with it. The coils of cord and pull and necktie unwound quickly, like a long snake waking up and slithering down into the shaft. It slithered and slithered and slithered, and the children leaned forward as far as they dared and listened as hard as they could. Finally, they heard a faint, faint clink!, as if the extension cord had hit a piece of metal, and the three orphans looked at one another. The thought of climbing down all that distance in the dark, on an ersatz rope they had fashioned themselves, made them want to turn around and run all the way back to their beds and pull the blankets over their heads. The siblings stood together at the edge of this dark and terrible place and wondered if they really dared to begin the climb.

The Baudelaire rope had made it to the bottom. But would the Baudelaire children?

"Are you ready?" Klaus asked finally.

"No," Sunny answered.

"Me neither," Violet said, "but if we wait until we're ready we'll be waiting for the rest of our lives. Let's go."

Violet tugged one last time on the rope, and carefully, carefully lowered herself down the passageway. Klaus and Sunny watched her disappear into the darkness as if some huge, hungry creature had eaten her up. "Come on," they heard her whisper, from the blackness. "It's O.K."

Klaus blew on his hands, and Sunny blew on hers, and the two younger Baudelaires followed their sister into the utter darkness of the elevator shaft, only to discover that Violet had not told the truth. It was not O.K. It was not half O.K. It was not even one twenty-seventh O.K. The climb down the shadowy passageway felt like falling into a deep hole at the bottom of a deep pit on the bottom floor of a dungeon that was deep underground, and it was the least O.K. situation the Baudelaires had ever encountered. Their hands gripping the line was the only thing they saw, because even as their eyes adjusted to the darkness, they were afraid to look anywhere else, particularly down. The distant clink! at the bottom of the line was the only sound they heard, because the Baudelaires were too scared to speak. And the only thing they felt was sheer terror, as deep and as dark as the passageway itself, a terror so profound that I have slept with four night-lights ever since I visited 667 Dark Avenue and saw this deep pit that the Baudelaires climbed down. But I also saw, during my visit, what the Baudelaire orphans saw when they reached the bottom after climbing for more than three terrifying hours. By then, their eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and they could see what the bottom of their line was hitting, when it was making that faint clinking sound. The edge of the farthest extension cord was bumping up against a piece of metal, all right--a metal lock. The lock was secured around a metal door, and the metal door was attached to a series of metal bars that made up a rusty metal cage. By the time my research led me to this passageway, the cage was empty, and had been empty for a very long time. But it was not empty when the Baudelaires reached it. As they arrived at the bottom of this deep and terrifying place, the Baudelaire orphans looked into the cage and saw the huddled and trembling figures of Duncan and Isadora Quagmire.

Chapter Eight

I'm dreaming," Duncan Quagmire said. His voice was a hoarse whisper of utter shock. "I must be dreaming."

"But how can you be dreaming," Isadora asked him, "if I'm having the same dream?"

"I once read about a journalist," Duncan whispered, "who was reporting on a war and was imprisoned by the enemy for three years. Each morning, she looked out her cell window and thought she saw her grandparents coming to rescue her. But they weren't really there. It was a hallucination."

"I remember reading about a poet," Isadora said, "who would see six lovely maidens in his kitchen on Tuesday nights, but his kitchen was really empty. It was a phantasm."

"No," Violet said, and reached her hand between the bars of the cage. The Quagmire triplets shrank back into the cage's far corner, as if Violet were a poisonous spider instead of a long-lost friend. "It's not a hallucination. It's me, Violet Baudelaire."

"And it's really Klaus," Klaus said. "I'm not a phantasm."

"Sunny!" Sunny said.

The Baudelaire orphans blinked in the darkness, straining their eyes to see as much as possible. Now that they were no longer dangling from the end of a rope, they were able to get a good look at their gloomy surroundings. Their long climb ended in a tiny, filthy room with nothing in it but the rusty cage that the extension cord had clinked against, but the Baudelaires saw that the passageway continued with a long hallway, just as shadowy as the elevator shaft, that twisted and turned away into the dark. The children also got a good look at the Quagmires, and that view was no less gloomy. They were dressed in tattered rags, and their faces were so smeared with dirt that the Baudelaires might not have recognized them, if the two triplets had not been holding the notebooks they took with them wherever they went. But it was not just the dirt on their faces, or the clothes on their bodies, that made the Quagmires look so different. It was the look in their eyes. The Quagmire triplets looked exhausted, and they looked hungry, and they looked very, very frightened. But most of all, Isadora and Duncan looked haunted. The word "haunted," I'm sure you know, usually applies to a house, graveyard, or supermarket that has ghosts living in it, but the word can also be used to describe people who have seen and heard such horrible things that they feel as if ghosts are living inside them, haunting their brains and hearts with misery and despair. The Quagmires looked this way, and it broke the Baudelaire hearts to see their friends look so desperately sad.

"Is it really you?" Duncan said, squinting at the Baudelaires from the far end of the cage. "Can it really, really be you?"

"Oh, yes," Violet said, and found that her eyes were filling with tears.

"It's really the Baudelaires," Isadora said, stretching her hand out to meet Violet's. "We're not dreaming, Duncan. They're really here."

Klaus and Sunny reached into the cage as well, and Duncan left his corner to reach the Baudelaires as best he could from behind bars. The five children embraced as much as they could, half laughing and half crying because they were all together once more.

"How in the world did you know where we are?" Isadora said. "We don't even know where we are."

"You're in a secret passageway inside 667 Dark Avenue," Klaus said, "but we didn't know you'd be here. We were just trying to find out what Gunther--that's what Olaf is calling himself now--was up to, and our search led us all the way down here."

"I know what he's calling himself," Duncan said, "and I know what he's up to." He shuddered, and opened his notebook, which the Baudelaires remembered was dark green but looked black in the gloom. "Every second we spend with him, all he does is brag about his horrible plans, and when he's not looking, I write down everything he tells us so I don't forget it. Even though I'm a kidnap victim, I'm still a journalist."

"And I'm still a poet," Isadora said, and opened her notebook, which the Baudelaires remembered was black, but now looked even blacker. "Listen to this:

"On Auction Day, when the sun goes down, Gunther will sneak us out of town. "

"How will he do that?" Violet asked. "The police have been informed of your kidnapping, and are on the lookout."

"I know," Duncan said. "Gunther wants to smuggle us out of the city, and hide us away on some island where the police won't find us. He'll keep us on the island until we come of age and he can steal the Quagmire sapphires. Once he has our fortune, he says, he'll take us and--"

"Don't say it," Isadora cried, covering her ears. "He's told us so many horrible things. I can't stand to hear them again."

"Don't worry, Isadora," Klaus said. "We'll alert the authorities, and they'll arrest him before he can do anything."

"But it's almost too late," Duncan said. "The In Auction is tomorrow morning. He's going to hide us inside one of the items and have one of his associates place the highest bid."

"Which item?" Violet asked.

Duncan flipped the pages of his notebook, and his eyes widened as he reread some of the wretched things Gunther had said. "I don't know," he said. "He's told us so many haunting secrets, Violet. So many awful schemes--all the treachery he has done in the past, and all he's planning to do in the future. It's all here in this notebook--from V.F.D. all the way to this terrible auction plan."

"We'll have plenty of time to discuss everything," Klaus said, "but in the meantime, let's get you out of this cage before Gunther comes back. Violet, do you think you can pick this lock?"

Violet took the lock in her hands and squinted at it in the gloom. "It's pretty complicated," she said. "He must have bought himself some extra-difficult locks, after I broke into that suitcase of his when we were living with Uncle Monty. If I had some tools, maybe I could invent something, but there's absolutely nothing down here."

"Aguen?" Sunny asked, which meant something like "Could you saw through the bars of the cage?"

"Not saw," Violet said, so quietly that it was as if she was talking to herself. "I don't have the time to manufacture a saw. But maybe . . ." Her voice trailed off, but the other children could see, in the gloom, that she was tying her hair up in a ribbon, to keep it out of her eyes.

"Look, Duncan," Isadora said, "she's thinking up an invention! We'll be out of here in no time!"

"Every night since we've been kidnapped," Duncan said, "we've been dreaming of the day when we would see Violet Baudelaire inventing something that could rescue us."

"If we're going to rescue you in time," Violet said, thinking furiously, "then my siblings and I have to climb back up to the penthouse right away."

Isadora looked nervously around the tiny, dark room. "You're going to leave us alone?" she asked.

"If I'm going to invent something to get you out of that cage," Violet replied, "I need all the help I can get, so Klaus and Sunny have to come with me. Sunny, start climbing. Klaus and I will be right behind you."

"Onosew," Sunny said, which meant "Yes ma'am," and Klaus lifted her up to the end of the rope so she could begin the long, dark climb back up to the Squalors' apartment. Klaus began climbing right behind her, and Violet clasped hands with her friends.

"We'll be back as soon as we can," she promised. "Don't worry, Quagmires. You'll be out of danger before you know it."

"In case anything goes wrong," Duncan said, flipping to a page in his notebook, "like it did the last time, let me tell you--"

Violet placed her finger on Duncan's mouth. "Shush," she said. "Nothing will go wrong this time. I swear it."

"But if it does," Duncan said, "you should know about V.F.D. before the auction begins."

"Don't tell me about it now," Violet said. "We don't have time. You can tell us when we're all safe and sound." The eldest Baudelaire grabbed the end of the extension cord and started to follow her siblings. "I'll see you soon," she called down to the Quagmires, who were already fading into the darkness as she began her climb. "I'll see you soon," she said again, just as she lost all sight of them.

The climb back up the secret passageway was much more tiring but a lot less terrifying, simply because they knew what they would find at the other end of their ersatz rope. On the way down the elevator shaft, the Baudelaires had no idea what would be waiting for them at the bottom of such a dark and cavernous journey, but Violet, Klaus, and Sunny knew that all seventy-one bedrooms of the Squalor penthouse would be at the top. And it was these bedrooms--along with the living rooms, dining rooms, breakfast rooms, snack rooms, sitting rooms, standing rooms, ballrooms, bathrooms, kitchens, and the assortment of rooms that seemed to have no purpose at all--that would be helpful in rescuing the Quagmires.

"Listen to me," Violet said to her siblings, after they had been climbing for a few minutes. "When we get up to the top, I want the two of you to search the penthouse."

"What?" Klaus said, peering down at his sister. "We already searched it yesterday, remember?"

"I don't want you to search it for Gunther," Violet replied. "I want you to search it for long, slender objects made of iron."

"Agoula?" Sunny asked, which meant "What for?"

"I think the easiest way to get the Quagmires out of that cage will be by welding," Violet said. "Welding is when you use something very hot to melt metal. If we melt through a few of the bars of the cage, we can make a door and get Duncan and Isadora out of there."

"That's a good idea," Klaus agreed. "But I thought that welding required a lot of complicated equipment."

"Usually it does," Violet said. "In a normal welding situation, I'd use a welding torch, which is a device that makes a very small flame to melt the metal. But the Squalors won't have a welding torch--that's a tool, and tools are out. So I'm going to devise another method. When you two find the long, slender objects made of iron, meet me in the kitchen closest to the front door."

"Selrep," Sunny said, which meant something like "That's the one with the bright blue oven."

"Right," Violet said, "and I'm going to use that bright blue oven to heat those iron objects as hot as they can get. When they are burning, burning hot, we will take them back down to the cage and use their heat to melt the bars."

"Will they stay hot long enough to work, after such a long climb down?" Klaus asked.

"They'd better," Violet replied grimly. "It's our only hope."

To hear the phrase "our only hope" always makes one anxious, because it means that if the only hope doesn't work, there is nothing left, and that is never pleasant to think about, however true it might be. The three Baudelaires felt anxious about the fact that Violet's invention was their only hope of rescuing the Quagmires, and they were quiet the rest of the way up the elevator shaft, not wanting to consider what would happen to Duncan and Isadora if this only hope didn't work. Finally, they began to see the dim light from the open sliding doors, and at last they were once again at the front door of the Squalors' apartment.

"Remember," Violet whispered, "long, slender objects made of iron. We can't use bronze or silver or even gold, because those metals will melt in the oven. I'll see you in the kitchen."

The younger Baudelaires nodded solemnly, and followed two different trails of bread crumbs in opposite directions, while Violet walked straight into the kitchen with the bright blue oven and looked around uncertainly. Cooking had never been her forte--a phrase which here means "something she couldn't do very well, except for making toast, and sometimes she couldn't even do that without burning it to a crisp"--and she was a bit nervous about using the oven without any adult supervision. But then she thought about all the things she had done recently without adult supervision--sprinkling crumbs on the floor, eating apple butter, climbing down an empty elevator shaft on a ersatz rope made of extension cords, curtain pulls, and neckties tied together with the Devil's Tongue--and stiffened her resolve. She turned the oven's bright blue temperature dial to the highest temperature--500 degrees Fahrenheit--and then, as the oven slowly heated up, began quietly opening and closing the kitchen drawers, looking for three sturdy oven mitts. Oven mitts, as you probably know, are kitchen accessories that serve as ersatz hands by enabling you to pick up objects that would burn your fingers if you touched them directly. The Baudelaires would have to use oven mitts, Violet realized, once the long, slender objects were hot enough to be used as welding torches. Just as her siblings entered the kitchen, Violet found three oven mitts emblazoned with the fancy, curly writing of the In Boutique stuffed into the bottom of the ninth drawer she had opened.

"We hit the jackpot," Klaus whispered, and Sunny nodded in agreement. The two younger Baudelaires were using an expression which here means "Look at these fire tongs--they're perfect!" and they were absolutely right. "Fireplaces must have been in at some point," Klaus explained, holding up three long, slender pieces of iron, "because Sunny remembered that living room with six fireplaces between the ballroom with the green walls and the bathroom with that funny-looking sink. Next to the fireplaces are fire tongs--you know, these long pieces of iron that people use to move logs around to keep a fire going. I figured that if they can touch burning logs, they'll be able to survive a hot oven."

"You really did hit the jackpot," Violet said. "Fire tongs are perfect. Now, when I open the door of the oven, you put them in, Klaus. Sunny, stand back. Babies shouldn't be near a hot oven."

"Prawottle," Sunny said. She meant something like "Older children aren't supposed to be near a hot oven either, especially without adult supervision," but she understood that it was an emergency and crawled to the opposite end of the kitchen, where she could safely watch her older siblings put the long, slender tongs into the hot oven. Like most ovens, the Squalors' bright blue oven was designed for baking cakes and casseroles, not fire tongs, and it was impossible to shut the door of the oven with the long pieces of iron inside. So, as the Baudelaire orphans waited for the pieces of iron to heat up into welding torches, the kitchen heated up as well, as some of the hot air from the oven escaped out the open door. By the time Klaus asked if the welding torches were ready, the kitchen felt as if it were an oven instead of merely containing one.

"Not yet," Violet replied, peering carefully into the open oven door. "The tips of the tongs are just beginning to get yellow with heat. We need them to get white with heat, so it will still be a few minutes."

"I'm nervous," Klaus said, and then corrected himself. "I mean I'm anxious. I don't like leaving the Quagmires down there all alone."

"I'm anxious, too," Violet said, "but the only thing we can do now is wait. If we take the iron out of the oven now, it won't be of any use to us by the time we get all the way down to the cage."

Klaus and Sunny sighed, but they nodded in agreement with their sister and settled down to wait for the welding torches to be ready, and as they waited, they felt as if this particular kitchen in the Squalor penthouse was being remodeled before their very eyes. When the Baudelaires had searched the apartment to see if Gunther was hiding in it, they had left crumbs in an assortment of bedrooms, living rooms, dining rooms, breakfast rooms, snack rooms, sitting rooms, standing rooms, bathrooms, ballrooms, and kitchens, as well as those rooms that seemed to have no purpose at all, but the one type of room that the Squalor penthouse lacked was a waiting room. Waiting rooms, as I'm sure you know, are small rooms with plenty of chairs for waiting, as well as piles of old, dull magazines to read and some vapid paintings--the word "vapid" here means "usually containing horses in a field or puppies in a basket"--while you endure the boredom that doctors and dentists inflict on their patients before bringing them in to poke them and prod them and do all the miserable things that such people are paid to do. It is very rare to have a waiting room in someone's home, because even a home as enormous as the Squalors' does not contain a doctor's or dentist's office, and also because waiting rooms are so uninteresting that you would never want one in the place where you live. The Baudelaires had certainly never wished that the Squalors had a waiting room in their penthouse, but as they sat and waited for Violet's invention to be ready to use, they felt as if waiting rooms were suddenly in and Esmé had ordered one constructed right there in the kitchen. The kitchen cabinets were not painted with horses in a field or puppies in a basket, and there were no old, dull magazine articles printed on the bright blue stove, but as the three children waited for the iron objects to turn yellow and then orange and then red as they grew hotter and hotter and hotter, they felt the same itchy nervousness as they did when waiting for a trained medical professional.

But at last the fire tongs were white-hot, and were ready for their welding appointment with the thick iron bars of the cage. Violet passed out an oven mitt to each of her siblings and then put the third one on her own hand to carefully remove each tong from the oven. "Hold them very, very carefully," she said, giving an ersatz welding torch to each of her siblings. "They're hot enough to melt metal, so just imagine what they could do if they touched us. But I'm sure we can manage."

"It'll be tougher to go down this time," Klaus said, as he followed his sisters to the front door of the penthouse. He held his fire tong straight up, as if it were a regular torch instead of a welding one, and he kept his eye on the white-hot part so that it wouldn't brush up against anything or anybody. "We'll each have to keep one hand free to hold the torch. But I'm sure we can manage."

"Zelestin," Sunny said, when the children reached the sliding doors of the ersatz elevator. She meant something along the lines of "It'll be terrifying to climb down that horrible passageway again," but after she said "Zelestin" she added the word "Enipy," which meant "But I'm sure we can manage," and the youngest Baudelaire was as sure as her siblings. The three children stood at the edge of the dark passageway, but they did not pause to gather their courage, as they had done before their first descent into the gaping shaft. Their welding torches were hot, as Violet had said, and going down would be tough, as Klaus had said, and the climb would be terrifying, as Sunny had said, but the siblings looked at one another and knew they could manage. The Quagmire triplets were counting on them, and the Baudelaire orphans were sure that this only hope would work after all.

Chapter Nine

One of the greatest myths in the world---and the phrase "greatest myths" is just a fancy way of saying "big fat lies"--is that troublesome things get less and less troublesome if you do them more and more. People say this myth when they are teaching children to ride bicycles, for instance, as though falling off a bicycle and skinning your knee is less troublesome the fourteenth time you do it than it is the first time. The truth is that troublesome things tend to remain troublesome no matter how many times you do them, and that you should avoid doing them unless they are absolutely urgent.

Obviously, it was absolutely urgent for the Baudelaire orphans to take another three-hour climb down into the terrible darkness of the elevator shaft. The children knew that the Quagmire triplets were in grave danger, and that using Violet's invention to melt the bars of the cage was the only way that their friends could escape before Gunther hid them inside one of the items of the In Auction, and smuggled them out of the city. But I'm sorry to say that the absolute urgency of the Baudelaires' second climb did not make it any less troublesome. The passageway was still as dark as a bar of extra-dark chocolate sitting in a planetarium covered in a thick, black blanket, even with the tiny glow from the white-hot tips of the fire tongs, and the sensation of lowering themselves down the elevator shaft still felt like a descent into the hungry mouth of some terrible creature. With only the clink! of the last extension cord hitting the lock of the cage to guide them, the three siblings pulled themselves down the ersatz rope with one hand, and held out their welding torches with the other, and the trek down to the tiny, filthy room where the triplets were trapped was still not even one twenty-seventh O.K.

But the dreadful repetition of the Baudelaires' troublesome climb was dwarfed in comparison with the sinister surprise they found at the bottom, a surprise so terrible that the three children simply refused to believe it. Violet reached the end of the final extension cord and thought it was a hallucination. Klaus stood looking at the cage and thought that it must be a phantasm. And Sunny peered in through the bars and prayed that it was some combination of the two. The youngsters stared at the tiny, filthy room, and stared at the cage, but it took them several minutes before they believed that the Quagmires were no longer inside.

"They're gone," Violet said. "They're gone, and it's all my fault!" She threw her welding torch into the corner of the tiny room, where it sizzled against the floor. She turned to her siblings, and they could see, by the white glow of their tongs, that their older sister was beginning to cry. "My invention was supposed to save them," she said mournfully, "and now Gunther has snatched them away. I'm a terrible inventor, and a horrible friend."

Klaus threw his welding torch into the corner, and gave his sister a hug. "You're the best inventor I know," he said, "and your invention was a good one. Listen to those welding torches sizzle. The time just wasn't ripe for your invention, that's all."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Violet said miserably.

Sunny threw the last welding torch into the corner, and took off her oven mitt so she could pat her sister comfortingly on the ankle. "Noque, noque," she said, which meant "There, there."

"All it means," Klaus said, "is that you invented something that wasn't handy at this particular time. It's not your fault that we didn't rescue them--it's Gunther's."

"I guess I know that," Violet said, wiping her eyes. "I'm just sad that the time wasn't ripe for my invention. Who knows if we will ever see our friends again?"

"We will," Klaus said. "Just because the time isn't right for your inventing skills, doesn't meant it isn't ripe for my researching skills."

"Dwestall," Sunny said sadly, which meant "All the research in the world can't help Duncan and Isadora now."

"That's where you're wrong, Sunny," Klaus replied. "Gunther might have snatched them, but we know where he's taking them--to Veblen Hall. He's going to hide them inside one of the items at the In Auction, remember?"

"Yes," Violet said, "but which one?"

"If we climb back up to the penthouse," Klaus said, "and go to the Squalor library, I think I can figure it out."

"Meotze," Sunny said, which meant "But the Squalor library has only those snooty books on what's in and what's out."

"You're forgetting the recent addition to the library," Klaus said. "Esmé told us that Gunther had left a copy of the In Auction catalog, remember? Wherever he's planning to hide the Quagmires, it'll be listed in the catalog. If we can figure out which item he's hiding them in--"

"We can get them out of there," Violet finished, "before he auctions them off. That's a brilliant idea, Klaus!"

"It's no less brilliant than inventing welding torches," Klaus said. "I just hope the time is ripe this time."

"Me too," Violet said. "After all, it's our only--"

"Vinung," Sunny said, which meant "Don't say it," and her sister nodded in agreement. There was no use in saying it was their only hope, and getting them as anxious as they were before, so without another word the Baudelaires hoisted themselves back up on their makeshift rope and began climbing back up to the Squalor penthouse. The darkness closed in on them again, and the children began to feel as if their whole lives had been spent in this deep and shadowy pit, instead of in a variety of locations ranging from a lumbermill in Paltryville to a cave on the shores of Lake Lachrymose to the Baudelaire mansion, which sat in charred remains just a few blocks away from Dark Avenue. But rather than think about all of the shadowy places in the Baudelaire past, or the shadowiest place that they were climbing through now, the three siblings tried to concentrate on the brighter places in the Baudelaire future. They thought of the penthouse apartment, which drew closer and closer to them as they climbed.

They thought of the Squalor library, which could contain the proper information they needed to defeat Gunther's plan. And they thought of some glorious time that was yet to come, when the Baudelaires and the Quagmires could enjoy their friendship without the ghastly shadow of evil and greed that hung over them now. The Baudelaire orphans tried to keep their minds on these bright thoughts of the future as they climbed up the shadowy elevator shaft, and by the time they reached the sliding doors they felt that perhaps this glorious time was not so far off.

"It must almost be morning," Violet said, as she helped Sunny hoist herself out of the elevator doors. "We'd better untie our rope from the doorknob, and shut these doors, otherwise the Squalors will see what we've been up to."

"Why shouldn't they see?" Klaus asked. "Maybe then they'd believe us about Gunther."

"No one ever believes us about Gunther, or any of Olaf's other disguises," Violet said, "unless we have some evidence. All we have now is an ersatz elevator, an empty cage, and three cooling fire tongs. That's not evidence of anything."

"I suppose you're right," Klaus said. "Well, why don't you two untie the rope, and I'll go straight to the library and start reading the catalog."

"Good plan," Violet said.

"Reauhop!" Sunny said, which meant "And good luck!" Klaus quietly opened the door of the penthouse and let himself in, and the Baudelaire sisters began pulling the rope back up the shaft. The end of the last extension cord clinked and clinked against the walls of the passageway as Sunny wound up the ersatz rope until it was a coil of extension cords, curtain pulls, and fancy neckties. Violet untied the last double knot to detach it from the doorknob, and turned to her sister.

"Let's store this under my bed," she said, "in case we need it later. It's on the way to the library anyway."

"Yallrel," Sunny added, which meant "And let's shut the sliding elevator doors, so the Squalors don't see that we've been sneaking around an elevator shaft."

"Good thinking," Violet said, and pressed the Up button. The doors slid shut again, and after taking a good look around to make sure they hadn't left anything behind, the two Baudelaires walked into the penthouse and followed their bread-crumb trail past a breakfast room, down a hallway, across a standing room, down a hallway, and finally to Violet's room, where they stored the ersatz rope under the bed. They were about to head right to the library when Sunny noticed a note that had been left on Violet's extra-fluffy pillow.

"'Dear Violet,'" read Violet, '"I couldn't find you or your siblings this morning to say good-bye. I had to leave early to buy yellow paper clips before heading over to the In Auction. Esmé will take you to Veblen Hall at ten-thirty sharp, so be sure to be ready, or she'll be very annoyed. See you then! Sincerely yours, Jerome Squalor.'"

"Yikes!" Sunny said, pointing to the nearest of the 612 clocks that the Squalors owned.

"Yikes is right," Violet said. "It's already ten o'clock. All that climbing up and down the elevator shaft took much longer than I thought."

"Wrech," Sunny added, which meant something like "Not to mention making those welding torches."

"We'd better go to the library right away," Violet said. "Maybe we can help Klaus speed up the research process in some way."

Sunny nodded in agreement, and the two sisters walked down the hallway to the Squalor library. Since Jerome had first shown it to them, Violet and Sunny had scarcely been inside, and it looked like nobody else had used it much, either. A good library will never be too neat, or too dusty, because somebody will always be in it, taking books off the shelves and staying up late reading them. Even libraries that were not to the Baudelaires' taste--Aunt Josephine's library, for instance, only contained books on grammar--were comfortable places to be in, because the owners of the library used them so much. But the Squalor library was as neat and as dusty as could be. All of the dull books on what was in and what was out sat on the shelves in tidy rows, with layers of dust on top of them as if they hadn't been disturbed since they'd first been placed there. It made the Baudelaire sisters a little sad to see all those books sitting in the library unread and unnoticed, like stray dogs or lost children that nobody wanted to take home. The only sign of life in the library was their brother, who was reading the catalog so closely that he didn't look up until his sisters were standing at his side.

"I hate to disturb you when you're researching," Violet said, "but there was a note from Jerome on my pillow. Esmé is going to take us to Veblen Hall at ten-thirty sharp, and it's just past ten o'clock now. Is there any way we can help you?"

"I don't see how," Klaus said, his eyes looking worried behind his glasses. "There's only one copy of the catalog, and it's pretty complicated. Each of the items for the auction is called a lot, and the catalog lists each lot with a description and a guess at what the highest bid may be. I've read up to Lot #49, which is a valuable postage stamp."

"Well, Gunther can't hide the Quagmires in a postage stamp," Violet said. "You can skip that lot."

"I've been skipping lots of lots," Klaus said, "but I'm still no closer to figuring out where the triplets will be. Would Gunther hide them in Lot #14--an enormous globe? Would he hide them under the lid of Lot #25--a rare and valuable piano? Would he hide them in Lot #48-- an enormous statue of a scarlet fish?" Klaus stopped and turned the page of a catalog. "Or would he hide them in Lot #50, which is--"

Klaus ended his sentence in a gasp, but his sisters knew immediately that he did not mean that the fiftieth item to be sold at the In Auction was a sharp intake of breath. He meant he'd discovered something remarkable in the catalog, and they leaned forward to read over his shoulder and see what it was.

"I can't believe it," Violet said. "I simply can't believe it."

"Toomsk," Sunny said, which meant something like "This must be where the Quagmires will be hidden."

"I agree with Sunny," Klaus said, "even though there's no description of the item. They don't even write what the letters stand for."

"We'll find out what they stand for," Violet said, "because we're going to find Esmé right this minute, and tell her what's going on. When she finds out, she'll finally believe us about Gunther, and we'll get the Quagmires out of Lot #50 before they leave the city. You were right, Klaus--the time was ripe for your researching skills."

"I guess I was right," Klaus said. "I can scarcely believe our luck."

The Baudelaires looked again at the page of the catalog, making sure that it was neither a hallucination nor a phantasm. And it wasn't. Right there, written in neat black type under the heading "Lot #50," were three letters, and three punctuation marks, that seemed to spell out the solution to the Baudelaires' problems. The children looked at one another and smiled. All three siblings could scarcely believe their luck. The Baudelaire orphans could scarcely believe that those three letters spelled out the hiding place of the Quagmires as clearly as it spelled out "V.F.D."

Chapter Ten

"... and one of the items in the catalog is listed as 'V.F.D.,' which is the secret that the Quagmires tried to tell us about right before they were kidnapped," Klaus finished.

"This is terrible," Esmé said, and took a sip of the parsley soda she had insisted on pouring for herself before the Baudelaire orphans could tell her everything they had discovered. Then she had insisted on settling herself on the innest couch in her favorite sitting room, and that the three children sit in three chairs grouped around her in a semicircle, before they could relate the story of Gunther's true identity, the secret passageway behind the sliding elevator doors, the scheme to smuggle the Quagmires out of the city, and the surprising appearance of those three mysterious initials as the description of Lot #50. The three siblings were pleased that their guardian had not dismissed their findings, or argued with them about Gunther or the Quagmires or anything else, but instead had quietly and calmly listened to every detail. In fact, Esmé was so quiet and calm that it was disconcerting, a word which here means "a warning that the Baudelaire children did not heed in time."

"This is the least smashing thing I have ever heard," Esmé said, taking another sip of her in beverage. "Let me see if I have understood everything you have said. Gunther is in fact Count Olaf in disguise."

"Yes," Violet said. "His boots are covering up his tattoo, and his monocle makes him scrunch his face up to hide his one eyebrow."

"And he has hidden away the Quagmires in a cage at the bottom of my elevator shaft," Esmé said, putting her soda glass down on a nearby table.

"Yes," Klaus said. "There's no elevator behind those doors. Somehow Gunther removed it so he could use the shaft as a secret passageway."

"And now he's taken the Quagmires out of the cage," Esmé continued, "and is going to smuggle them out of the city by hiding them inside Lot #50 of the In Auction."

"Kaxret," Sunny said, which meant "You got it, Esmé."

"This is certainly a complicated plot," Esmé said. "I'm surprised that young children such as yourself were able to figure it out, but I'm glad you did." She paused for a moment and removed a speck of dust from one of her fingernails. "And now there's only one thing to do. We'll rush right to Veblen Hall and put a stop to this terrible scheme. We'll have Gunther arrested and the Quagmires set free. We'd better leave right this minute."

Esmé stood up, and beckoned to the children with a faint smile. The children followed her out of the sitting room and past twelve kitchens to the front door, exchanging puzzled glances. Their guardian was right, of course, that they should go to Veblen Hall and expose Gunther and his treachery, but they couldn't help wondering why the city's sixth most important financial advisor was so calm when she said it. The children were so anxious about the Quagmires that they felt as if they were jumping out of their skin, but Esmé led the Baudelaires out of the penthouse as if they were going to the grocery store to purchase whole wheat flour instead of rushing to an auction to stop a horrible crime. As she shut the door of the apartment and turned to smile at the children again, the three siblings could see no sign of anxiousness on her face, and it was disconcerting.

"Klaus and I will take turns carrying you, Sunny," Violet said, lifting her sister up. "That way the trip down the stairs will be easier for you."

"Oh, we don't have to walk down all those stairs," Esmé said.

"That's true," Klaus said. "Sliding down the banisters will be much quicker."

Esmé put one arm around the children and began walking them away from the front door. It was nice to receive an affectionate gesture from their guardian, but her arm was wrapped around them so tightly that they could scarcely move, which was also disconcerting. "We won't have to slide down the banisters, either," she said.

"Then how will we get down from the penthouse?" Violet asked.

Esmé stretched out her other arm, and used one of her long fingernails to press the Up button next to the sliding doors. This was the most disconcerting thing of all, but by now, I'm sorry to say, it was too late. "We'll take the elevator," she said, as the doors slid open, and then with one last smile she swept her arm forward and pushed the Baudelaire orphans into the darkness of the elevator shaft.

Sometimes words are not enough. There are some circumstances so utterly wretched that I cannot describe them in sentences or paragraphs or even a whole series of books, and the terror and woe that the Baudelaire orphans felt after Esmé pushed them into the elevator shaft is one of those most dreadful circumstances that can be represented only with two pages of utter blackness. I have no words for the profound horror the children felt as they tumbled down into the darkness. I can think of no sentence that can convey how loudly they screamed, or how cold the air was as it whooshed around them while they fell. And there is no paragraph I could possibly type that would enable you to imagine how frightened the Baudelaires were as they plunged toward certain doom.

But I can tell you that they did not die. Not one hair on their heads had been harmed by the time the children finally stopped tumbling through the darkness. They survived the fall from the top of the shaft for the simple reason that they did not reach the bottom. Something broke their fall, a phrase which here means that the Baudelaires' plunge was stopped halfway between the sliding elevator doors and the metal cage where the Quagmires had been locked up. Something broke their fall without even injuring them, and though it at first felt like a miracle, when the children understood that they were alive, and no longer falling, they reached out their hands and soon realized that it felt a lot more like a net. While the Baudelaires were reading the catalog of the In Auction, and telling Esmé what they had learned, someone had stretched a rope net across the entire passageway, and it was this net that had stopped the children from plunging to their doom. Far, far above the orphans was the Squalor penthouse, and far, far below them was the cage in the tiny, filthy room with the hallway leading out of it. The Baudelaire orphans were trapped.

But it is far better to be trapped than to be dead, and the three children hugged each other in relief that something had broken their fall. "Spenset," Sunny said, in a voice hoarse from screaming.

"Yes, Sunny," Violet said, holding her close. "We're alive." She sounded as if she were talking as much to herself as to her sister.

"We're alive," Klaus said, hugging them both. "We're alive, and we're O.K."

"I wouldn't say you were O.K." Esmé's voice called down to them from the top of the passageway. Her voice echoed off the walls of the passageway, but the children could still hear every cruel word. "You're alive, but you're definitely not O.K. As soon as the auction is over and the Quagmires are on their way out of the city, Gunther will come and get you, and I can guarantee that you three orphans will never be O.K. again. What a wonderful and profitable day! My former acting teacher will finally get his hands on not one but two enormous fortunes!"

"Your former acting teacher?" Violet asked in horror. "You mean you've known Gunther's true identity the entire time?"

"Of course I did," Esmé said. "I just had to fool you kids and my dim-witted husband into thinking he was really an auctioneer. Luckily, I am a smashing actress, so it was easy to trick you."

"So you've been working together with that terrible villain?" Klaus called up to her. "How could you do that to us?"

"He's not a terrible villain," Esmé said. "He's a genius! I instructed the doorman not to let you out of the penthouse until Gunther came and retrieved you, but Gunther convinced me that throwing you down there was a better idea, and he was right! Now there's no way you'll make it to the auction and mess up our plans!"

"Zisalem!" Sunny shrieked.

"My sister is right!" Violet cried. "You're our guardian! You're supposed to be keeping us safe, not throwing us down elevator shafts and stealing our fortune!"

"But I want to steal from you," Esmé said. "I want to steal from you the way Beatrice stole from me."

"What are you talking about?" Klaus asked. "You're already unbelievably wealthy. Why do you want even more money?"

"Because it's in, of course," Esmé said. "Well, toodle-oo, children. 'Toodle-oo' is the in way of saying good-bye to three bratty orphans you're never going to see again."

"Why?" Violet cried. "Why are you treating us so terribly?"

Esmé's answer to this question was the cruelest of all, and like a fall down an elevator shaft, there were no words for her reply. She merely laughed, a loud rude cackle that bounced off the walls of the passageway and then faded into silence as their guardian walked away. The Baudelaire orphans looked at one another--or tried to look at one another, in the darkness-- and trembled in disgust and fear, shaking the net that had trapped them and saved them at the same time.

"Dielee?" Sunny said miserably, and her siblings knew that she meant "What are we going to do?"

"I don't know," Klaus said, "but we've got to do something."

"And we've got to do it quickly," Violet added, "but this is a very difficult situation. There's no use climbing up or down--the walls feel too smooth."

"And there's no use making a lot of noise to try and get someone's attention," Klaus said. "Even if anybody hears, they'll just think someone is yelling in one of the apartments."

Violet closed her eyes in thought, although it was so dark that it didn't really make a difference if her eyes were closed or open. "Klaus, maybe the time is right for your researching skills," she said after a moment. "Can you think of some moment in history when people got out of a trap like this one?"

"I don't think so," Klaus replied sadly. "In the myth of Hercules, he's trapped between two monsters named Scylla and Charybdis, just like we're trapped between the sliding doors and the floor. But he got out of the trap by turning them into whirlpools."

"Glaucus," Sunny said, which meant something like "But we can't do that."

"I know," Klaus said glumly. "Myths are often entertaining, but they're never very helpful. Maybe the time is ripe for one of Violet's inventions."

"But I don't have any materials to work with," Violet said, reaching out her hand to feel the edges of the net. "I can't use this net for an invention, because if I start to tear it up, we'll fall. The net seems to be attached to the walls with little metal pegs that stick into the walls, but I can't pull those out and use them, either."

"Gyzan?" Sunny asked.

"Yes," Violet replied, "pegs. Feel right here, Sunny. Gunther probably stood on a long ladder to drive these pegs into the walls of the passageway, and then strung the net across the pegs. I guess the walls of the elevator shaft are soft enough that small sharp objects can be stuck into them."

"Thole?" Sunny asked, which meant "Like teeth?" and instantly her siblings knew what she was thinking.

"No, Sunny," Violet said. "You can't climb up the elevator shaft by using your teeth. It's too dangerous."

"Yoigt," Sunny pointed out, which meant something like "But if I fall, I'll just fall back into the net."

"But what if you get stuck halfway up?" Klaus asked. "Or what if you lose a tooth?"

"Vasta," Sunny said, which meant "I'll just have to risk it--it's our only hope," and her siblings reluctantly agreed. They did not like the idea of their baby sister climbing up to the sliding doors of the ersatz elevator, using only her teeth, but they could think of no other way to escape in time to foil Gunther's plan. The time wasn't ripe for Violet's inventing skills, or for the knowledge Klaus had from his reading, but the time was ripe for Sunny's sharp teeth, and the youngest Baudelaire tilted her head back and then swung forward, sticking one of her teeth into the wall with a rough sound that would make any dentist weep for hours. But the Baudelaires were not dentists, and the three children listened closely in the darkness to hear if Sunny's tooth would stick as firmly as the net pegs. To their delight they heard nothing--no scraping or sliding or cracking or anything that would indicate that Sunny's teeth wouldn't hold. Sunny even shook her head a little bit to see if that would easily dislodge her tooth from the wall, but it remained a firm toothhold. Sunny swung her head slightly, and embedded another tooth, slightly above the first one. The second tooth stuck, so Sunny carefully eased out the first tooth and inserted it once more in the wall, slightly above the second tooth. By spacing her teeth slightly apart, Sunny had moved a few inches up the wall, and by the time she stuck her first tooth above the second one again, her little body was no longer touching the net.

"Good luck, Sunny," Violet said.

"We're rooting for you, Sunny," Klaus said.

Sunny did not reply, but her siblings were not alarmed because they imagined it was difficult to say much when you had a mouthful of wall. So Violet and Klaus merely sat on their net and continued to call up encouragement to their baby sister. Had Sunny been able to climb and speak at the same time, she might have said "Soried," which meant something like "So far so good," or "Yaff," which meant "I think I've reached the halfway point," but the two older Baudelaires heard nothing but the sound of her teeth inserting and detaching themselves in the dark until Sunny triumphantly called down the word "Top!"

"Oh, Sunny!" Klaus cried. "You did it!"

"Way to go!" Violet called up. "Now, go get our makeshift rope from under the bed, and we'll climb up and join you."

"Ganba," Sunny called back, and crawled off. The two older siblings sat and waited in the darkness for a while, marveling at their sister's skills.

"I couldn't have climbed all the way up this passageway," Violet said, "not when I was Sunny's age."

"Me neither," Klaus said, "although we both have regular-sized teeth."

"It's not just the size of her teeth," Violet said, "it's the size of her courage, and the size of her concern for her siblings."

"And the size of the trouble we're in," Klaus added, "and the size of our guardian's treachery. I can't believe Esmé was scheming together with Gunther the entire time. She's as ersatz as her elevator."

"Esmé's a pretty good actress," Violet said comfortingly, "even though she's a terrible person. She had us completely fooled that Gunther had her completely fooled. But what was she talking about when she said--"

"Tada!" Sunny called down from the sliding doors.

"She has the rope," Violet said excitedly. "Tie it to the doorknob, Sunny, using the Devil's Tongue."

"No," Klaus said, "I have a better idea."

"A better idea than climbing out of here?" Violet asked.

"I want to climb out of here," Klaus said, "but I don't think we should climb up. Then we'll just be at the penthouse."

"But from the penthouse," Violet said, "we can get to Veblen Hall. We can even slide down the banisters to save time."

"But at the end of the banisters," Klaus said, "is the lobby of the building, and in the lobby is a doorman with strict instructions not to let us leave."

"I hadn't thought about him," Violet said. "He always follows instructions."

"That's why we've got to leave 667 Dark Avenue another way," Klaus said.

"Ditemu," Sunny called down, which meant something like "What other way is there?"

"Down," Klaus said. "That tiny room at the bottom of the elevator shaft has a hallway leading out of it, remember? It's right next to the cage."

"That's true," Violet said. "That must be how Gunther snatched the Quagmires away before we could rescue them. But who knows where it leads?"

"Well, if Gunther took the Quagmires down that hallway," Klaus said, "it must lead to somewhere near Veblen Hall. And that's precisely where we want to go."

"You're right," Violet said. "Sunny, forget about tying the rope to the doorknob. Someone might see it, anyway, and realize we've escaped. Just bring it down here. Do you think you can bite your way back down?"

"Geronimo!" Sunny cried, which meant something like "I don't need to bite my way back down," and the youngest Baudelaire was right. She took a deep breath, and threw herself down the dark passageway, the coil of ersatz rope trailing behind her. This time, the plunge does not need to be represented by pages of darkness, because the terror of the long, dark fall was alleviated--the word "alleviated" here means "not particularly on Sunny's mind"-- because the youngest Baudelaire knew that a net, and her siblings, were waiting for her at the bottom. With a thump! Sunny landed on the net, and with a slightly smaller thump! the coil of rope landed next to her. After making sure her sister was unharmed by the fall, Violet began tying one end of their rope to one of the pegs holding the net in place.

"I'll make sure this end of the rope is secured," Violet said. "Sunny, if your teeth aren't too sore from the climb, use them to cut a hole in the net, so we can climb through it."

"What can I do?" Klaus asked.

"You can pray this works," Violet said, but the Baudelaire sisters were so quick with their tasks that there was no time for even the shortest of religious ceremonies. In a matter of moments, Violet had attached the rope to the peg with some complicated and powerful knots, and Sunny had cut a child-sized hole in the middle of the net. Violet dangled the rope down the hole, and the three children listened until they heard the familiar clink! of their ersatz rope against the metal cage. The Baudelaire orphans paused for a moment at the hole in the net, and stared down into the blackness.

"I can't believe we're climbing down this passageway again," Violet said.

"I know what you mean," Klaus said. "If someone had asked me, that day at the beach, if I ever thought we'd be climbing up and down an empty elevator shaft in an attempt to rescue a pair of triplets, I would have said never in a million years. And now we're doing it for the fifth time in twenty-four hours. What happened to us? What led us to this awful place we're staring at now?"

"Misfortune," Violet said quietly.

"A terrible fire," Klaus said.

"Olaf," Sunny said decisively, and began crawling down the rope. Klaus followed his sister down through the hole in the net, and Violet followed Klaus, and the three Baudelaires made the long trek down the bottom half of the passageway until they reached the tiny, filthy room, the empty cage, and the hallway that they hoped would lead them to the In Auction. Sunny squinted up at their rope, making sure that her siblings had safely reached the bottom. Klaus squinted at the hallway, trying to see how long it was, or if there was anybody or anything lurking in it. And Violet squinted in the corner, at the welding torches the children had thrown in the corner when the time had not been ripe to use them.

"We should take these with us," she said.

"But why?" Klaus asked. "They've certainly cooled off long ago."

"They have," Violet said, picking one up.

"And the tips are all bent from throwing them in the corner. But they still might come in handy for something. We don't know what we'll encounter in that hallway, and I don't want to come up shorthanded. Here, Klaus. Here's yours, and here's Sunny's."

The younger Baudelaires took the bent, cooled fire tongs, and then, sticking close to one another, all three children took their first few steps down the hallway. In the utter darkness of this terrible place, the fire tongs seemed like long, slender extensions of the Baudelaires' hands, instead of inventions they were each holding, but this was not what Violet had meant when she said she didn't want them to be short-handed. "Shorthanded" is a word which here means "unprepared," and Violet was thinking that three children alone in a dark hallway holding fire tongs were perhaps a bit more prepared than three children alone in a dark hallway holding nothing at all. And I'm sorry to tell you that the eldest Baudelaire was absolutely right. The three children couldn't afford to be shorthanded at all, not with the unfair advantage that was lurking at the end of their walk. As they took one cautious step after another, the Baudelaire orphans needed to be as longhanded as possible for the element of surprise that was waiting for them when the dark hallway came to an end

Chapter Eleven

The French expression "cul-de-sac" describes what the Baudelaire orphans found when they reached the end of the dark hallway, and like all French expressions, it is most easily understood when you translate each French word into English. The word "de," for instance, is a very common French word, so even if I didn't know a word of French, I would be certain that "de" means "of." The word "sac" is less common, but I am fairly certain that it means something like "mysterious circumstances." And the word "cul" is such a rare French word that I am forced to guess at its translation, and my guess is that in this case it would mean "At the end of the dark hallway, the Baudelaire children found an assortment," so that the expression "cul-de-sac" here means "At the end of the dark hallway, the Baudelaire children found an assortment of mysterious circumstances."

If the Baudelaires had been able to choose a French expression that would be waiting for them at the end of the hallway, they might have chosen one that meant "By the time the three children rounded the last dark corner of the corridor, the police had captured Gunther and rescued the Quagmire triplets," or at least "The Baudelaires were delighted to see that the hallway led straight to Veblen Hall, where the In Auction was taking place." But the end of the hallway proved to be as mysterious and worrisome as the rest of it. The entire length of the hallway was very dark, and it had so many twists and turns that the three children frequently found themselves bumping into the walls. The ceiling of the hallway was very low-- Gunther must have had to crouch when he used it for his treacherous plans--and over their heads the three children could hear a variety of noises that told them where the hallway was probably taking them. After the first few curves, they heard the muted voice of the doorman, and his footsteps as he walked overhead, and the Baudelaires realized that they must be underneath the lobby of the Squalors' apartment building. After a few more curves, they heard two men discussing ocean decorations, and they realized they must be walking beneath Dark Avenue. And after a few more curves, they heard the rickety rattle of an old trolley that was passing over their heads, and the children knew that the hallway was leading them underneath one of the city's trolley stations. On and on the hallway curved, and the Baudelaires heard a variety of city sounds--the clopping of horses' hooves, the grinding of factory equipment, the tolling of church bells and the clatter of people dropping things--but when they finally reached the corridor's end, there was no sound over their heads at all. The Baudelaires stood still and tried to imagine a place in the city where it was absolutely silent.

"Where do you think we are?" Violet asked, straining her ears to listen even more closely. "It's as silent as a tomb up there."

"That's not what I'm worried about," Klaus answered, poking the wall with his fire tong. "I can't find which way the hallway curves. I think we might be at a dead end."

"A dead end!" Violet said, and poked the opposite wall with her tong. "It can't be a dead end. Nobody builds a hallway that goes nowhere."

"Pratjic," Sunny said, which meant "Gunther must have ended up somewhere if he took this passageway."

"I'm poking every inch of these walls," Klaus said grimly, "and there's no door or stairway or curve or anything. It's a dead end, all right. There's no other word for it. Actually, there's a French expression for 'dead end,' but I can't remember what is."

"I guess we have to retrace our steps," Violet said miserably. "I guess we have to turn around, and make our way back down the corridor, and climb up to the net, and have Sunny teeth her way to the penthouse and find some more materials to make an ersatz rope, and climb all the way up to the top floor, and slide down the banisters to the lobby, and sneak past the doorman and run to Veblen Hall."

"Pyetian," Sunny said, which meant something like "We'll never make it there in time to expose Gunther and save the Quagmires."

"I know," Violet sighed. "But I don't know what else we can do. It looks like we're shorthanded, even with these tongs."

"If we had some shovels," Klaus said, "we could try to dig our way out of the hallway, but we can't use the tongs as shovels."

"Tend," Sunny said, which meant "If we had some dynamite, we could blast our way out of the hallway, but we can't use the tongs as dynamite."

"But we might be able to use them as noise-makers," Violet said suddenly. "Let's bang on the ceiling with our tongs, and see if we can attract the attention of someone who is passing by."

"It doesn't sound like anyone is passing by," Klaus said, "but it's worth a try. Here, Sunny, I'll pick you up so your tong can reach the ceiling, too."

Klaus picked his sister up, and the three children began to bang on the ceiling, planning to make a racket that would last for several minutes. But as soon as the their tongs first hit the ceiling, the Baudelaires were showered with black dust. It rained down on them like a dry, filthy storm, and the children had to cut short their banging to cough and rub their eyes and spit out the dust that had fallen into their mouths.

"Ugh!" Violet spat. "This tastes terrible."

"It tastes like burned toast," Klaus said.

"Peflob!" Sunny shrieked.

At that, Violet stopped coughing, and licked the tip of her finger in thought. "It's ashes," she said. "Maybe we're below a fireplace."

"I don't think so," Klaus said. "Look up."

The Baudelaires looked up, and saw that the black dust had uncovered a very small stripe of light, barely as wide as a pencil. The children gazed up into it, and could see the morning sun gazing right back at them.

"Tisdu?" Sunny said, which meant "Where in the city can you find ashes outdoors?"

"Maybe we're below a barbeque pit," Klaus said.

"Well, we'll find out soon enough," Violet replied, and began to sweep more dust away from the ceiling. As it fell on the children in a thick, dark cloud, the skinny stripe of light became four skinny stripes, like a drawing of a square on the ceiling. By the light of the square, the Baudelaires could see a pair of hinges. "Look," Violet said, "it's a trapdoor. We couldn't see it in the darkness of the hallway, but there it is."

Klaus pressed his tong against the trapdoor to try to open it, but it didn't budge. "It's locked, of course," he said. "I bet Gunther locked it behind him when he took the Quagmires away."

Violet looked up at the trapdoor, and the other children could see, by the light of the sun streaming in, that she was tying her hair up in a ribbon to keep it out of her eyes. "A lock isn't going to stop us," she said. "Not when we've come all this way. I think the time is finally ripe for these tongs--not as welding torches, and not as noisemakers." She smiled, and turned her attention to her siblings. "We can use them as crowbars," she said excitedly.

"Herdiset?" Sunny asked.

"A crowbar is a sort of portable lever," Violet said, "and these tongs will work perfectly. We'll stick the bent end into the part where the light is shining through, and then push the rest of the tong sharply down. It should bring the trapdoor down with it. Understand?"

"I think so," Klaus said. "Let's try." The Baudelaires tried. Carefully, they stuck the part of the tongs that had been heated in the oven into one side of the square of light. And then, grunting with the effort, they pushed the straight end of the tongs down as sharply as they could, and I'm happy to report that the crowbars worked perfectly. With a tremendous crackling sound and another cloud of ashes, the trapdoor bent on its hinges and opened toward the children, who had to duck as it swung over their heads. Sunlight streamed into the hallway, and the Baudelaires saw that they had finally come to the end of their long, dark journey. "It worked!" Violet cried. "It really worked!"

"The time was ripe for your inventing skills!" Klaus cried. "The solution was right on the tip of our tongs!"

"Up!" Sunny shrieked, and the children agreed. By standing on tiptoe, the Baudelaires could grab ahold of the hinges and pull themselves out of the hallway, leaving behind their crowbars, and in a moment the three children were squinting in the sunlight.

One of my most prized possessions is a small wooden box with a special lock on it that is more than five hundred years old and works according to a secret code that my grandfather taught me. My grandfather learned it from his grandfather, and his grandfather learned it from his grandfather, and I would teach it to my grandchild if I thought that I would ever have a family of my own instead of living out the remainder of my days all alone in this world. The small wooden box is one of my most prized possessions, because when the lock is opened according to the code, a small silver key may be found inside, and this key fits the lock on one of my other most prized possessions, which is a slightly larger wooden box given to me by a woman whom my grandfather always refused to speak about. Inside this slightly larger wooden box is a roll of parchment, a word which here means "some very old paper printed with a map of the city at the time when the Baudelaire orphans lived in it." The map has every single detail of the city written down in dark blue ink, with measurements of buildings and sketches of costumes and charts of changes in the weather all added in the margins by the map's twelve previous owners, all of whom are now dead. I have spent more hours than I can ever count going over every inch of this map as carefully as possible, so that everything that can be learned from it can be copied into my files and then into books such as this one, in the hopes that the general public will finally learn every detail of the treacherous conspiracy I have spent my life trying to escape. The map contains thousands of fascinating things that have been discovered by all sorts of explorers, criminal investigators, and circus performers over the years, but the most fascinating thing that the map contains was discovered just at this moment by the three Baudelaire children. Sometimes, in the dead of night when I cannot sleep, I rise from my bed and work the code on the small wooden box to retrieve the silver key that opens the slightly larger wooden box so I can sit at my desk and look once again, by candlelight, at the two dotted lines indicating the underground hallway that begins at the bottom of the elevator shaft at 667 Dark Avenue and ends at the trapdoor that the Baudelaires managed to open with their ersatz crowbars. I stare and stare at the part of the city where the orphans climbed out of that ghastly corridor, but no matter how much I stare I can scarcely believe my own eyes, any more than the youngsters could believe theirs.

The siblings had been in darkness for so long that their eyes took a long time to get used to properly lit surroundings, and they stood for a moment, rubbing their eyes and trying to see exactly where the trapdoor had led them. But in the sudden brightness of the morning sun, the only thing the children could see was the chubby shadow of a man standing near them.

"Excuse me," Violet called, while her eyes were still adjusting. "We need to get to Veblen Hall. It's an emergency. Could you tell me where it is?"

"Ju-just two blo-blocks that way," the shadow stuttered, and the children gradually realized that it was a slightly overweight mailman, pointing down the street and looking at the children fearfully. "Please don't hurt me," the mailman added, stepping away from the youngsters.

"We're not going to hurt you," Klaus said, wiping ashes off his glasses.

"Ghosts always say that," the mailman said, "but then they hurt you anyway."

"But we're not ghosts," Violet said.

"Don't tell me you're not ghosts," the mailman replied. "I saw you rise out of the ashes myself, as if you had come from the center of the earth. People have always said it's haunted here on the empty lot where the Baudelaire mansion burned down, and now I know it's true."

The mailman ran away before the Baudelaires could reply, but the three children were too amazed by his words to speak to him anyway. They blinked and blinked in the morning sun, and finally their eyes adjusted enough to see that the mailman was right. It was true. It was not true that the three children were ghosts, of course. They were not spooky creatures who had risen from the center of the earth, but three orphans who had hoisted themselves out of the hallway. But the mailman had spoken the truth when he had told them where they were. The Baudelaire orphans looked around them, and huddled together as if they were still in a dark hallway instead of outdoors in broad daylight, standing amid the ashy ruins of their destroyed home.

Chapter Twelve

Several years before the Baudelaires were born, Veblen Hall won the prestigious Door Prize, an award given each year to the city's best-constructed opening, and if you ever find yourself standing in front of Veblen Hall, as the Baudelaire orphans did that morning, you will immediately see why the committee awarded the shiny pink trophy to the door's polished wooden planks, its exquisite brass hinges and its gorgeous, shiny doorknob, fashioned out of the world's second-finest crystal. But the three siblings were in no state to appreciate architectural detail. Violet led the way up the stairs to Veblen Hall and grabbed the doorknob without a thought to the ashy smear she would leave on its polished surface. If I had been with the Baudelaires, I never would have opened the award-winning door. I would have considered myself lucky to have gotten out of the net suspended in the middle of the elevator shaft, and to have escaped Gunther's evil plan, and I would have fled to some remote corner of the world and hid from Gunther and his associates for the rest of my life rather than risk another encounter with this treacherous villain--an encounter, I'm sorry to say, that will only bring more misery into the three orphans' lives. But these three children were far more courageous than I shall ever be, and they paused just for a moment to gather all of this courage up and use it.

"Beyond this doorknob," Violet said, "is our last chance at revealing Gunther's true identity and his terrible plans."

"Just past those brass hinges," Klaus said, "is our final opportunity to save the Quagmires from being smuggled out of the country."

"Sorusu," Sunny said, which meant "Behind those wooden planks lies the answer to the mystery of V.F.D., and why the secret hallway led us to the place where the Baudelaire mansion burned to the ground, killing our parents, and beginning the series of unfortunate events that haunt us wherever we go."

The Baudelaires looked at one another and stood up as straight as they could, as if their backbones were as strong as their courage, and Violet opened the door of Veblen Hall; and instantly the orphans found themselves in the middle of a hubbub, a word which here means "a huge crowd of people in an enormous, fancy room." Veblen Hall had a very high ceiling, a very shiny floor, and one massive window that had won first runner-up for the Window Prize the previous year. Hanging from the ceiling were three huge banners, one with the word "In" written on it, one with the word "Auction" written on it, and one last one, twice as big as the others, with a huge portrait of Gunther. Standing on the floor were at least two hundred people, and the Baudelaires could tell that it was a very in crowd. Almost everyone was wearing pinstripe suits, sipping tall frosty glasses of parsley soda, and eating salmon puffs offered by some costumed waiters from Café Salmonella, which had apparently been hired to cater the auction. The Baudelaires were in regular clothes rather than pinstripes, and they were covered in dirt from the tiny, filthy room at the bottom of the elevator shaft, and in ashes from the Baudelaire lot where the hallway had led them. The in crowd would have frowned upon such attire had they noticed the children, but everyone was too busy gazing at the far end of the room to turn around and see who had walked through the award-winning door.

For at the far end of Veblen Hall, underneath the biggest banner and in front of the massive window, Gunther was standing up on a small stage and speaking into a microphone. On one side of him was a small glass vase with blue flowers painted on it, and on the other was Esmé, who was sitting in a fancy chair and gazing at Gunther as if he were the cat's pajamas, a phrase which here means "a charming and handsome gentleman instead of a cruel and dishonest villain."

"Lot #46, please," Gunther was saying into the microphone. With all of their exploration of dark passageways, the Baudelaires had almost forgotten that Gunther was pretending that he wasn't fluent in English. "Please, gentlemen and ladies, see the vase with blue flowers. Vases in. Glass in. Flowers in, please, especially the flowers that are blue. Who bid?"

"One hundred," called out a voice from the crowd.

"One hundred fifty," another voice said.

"Two hundred," another said.

"Two hundred fifty," returned the person who had bid first.

"Two hundred fifty-three," another said.

"We're just in time," Klaus whispered to Violet. "V.F.D, is Lot #50. Do we wait to speak up until then, or do we confront Gunther right now?"

"I don't know," Violet whispered back. "We were so focused on getting to Veblen Hall in time that we forgot to think up a plan of action."

"Is two hundred fifty-three last bidding of people, please?" Gunther asked, into the microphone. "O.K. Here is vase, please. Give money, please, to Mrs. Squalor." A pinstriped woman walked to the edge of the stage and handed a stack of bills to Esmé, who smiled greedily and handed her the vase in exchange. Watching Esmé count the pile of bills and then calmly place them in her pinstripe purse, while somewhere backstage the Quagmires were trapped inside whatever V.F.D. was, made the Baudelaires feel sick to their stomachs.

"Evomer," Sunny said, which meant "I can't stand it any longer. Let's tell everyone in this room what is really going on."

"Excuse me," said somebody, and the three children looked up to see a stern-looking man peering down at them from behind some very large sunglasses. He was holding a salmon puff in one hand and pointing at the Baudelaires with the other. "I'm going to have to ask you to leave Veblen Hall at once," he said. "This is the In Auction. It's no place for grimy little children like yourselves."

"But we're supposed to be here," Violet said, thinking quickly. "We're meeting our guardians."

"Don't make me laugh," the man said, although it looked like he had never laughed in his life. "What sort of people would be caring for such dirty little kids?"

"Jerome and Esmé Squalor," Klaus said. "We've been living in their penthouse."

"We'll see about this," the man said. "Jerry, get over here!"

At the sound of the man's raised voice, a few people turned around and looked at the children, but almost everyone kept listening to Gunther as he began to auction off Lot #47, which he explained was a pair of ballet slippers, please, made of chocolate. Jerome detached himself from a small circle of people and walked over to the stern man to see what the matter was. When he caught sight of the orphans, he looked as if you could have knocked him over with a feather, a phrase which here means he seemed happy but extremely surprised to see them.

"I'm very happy to see you," he said, "but extremely surprised. Esmé told me you weren't feeling very well."

"So you know these children, Jerome?" the man in sunglasses said.

"Of course I know them," Jerome replied. "They're the Baudelaires. I was just telling you about them."

"Oh yes," the man said, losing interest. "Well, if they're orphans, then I guess it's O.K. for them to be here. But Jerry, you've got to buy them some new clothes!"

The man walked away before Jerome could reply. "I don't like to be called Jerry," he admitted to the children, "but I don't like to argue with him, either. Well, Baudelaires, are you feeling better?"

The children stood for a moment and looked up at their guardian. They noticed that he had a half-eaten salmon puff in his hand, even though he had told the siblings that he didn't like salmon. Jerome had probably not wanted to argue with the waiters in the salmon costumes, either. The Baudelaires looked at him, and then looked at one another. They did not feel better at all. They knew that Jerome would not want to argue with them if they told him once more about Gunther's true identity. He would not want to argue with Esmé if they told him about her part in the treacherous scheme. And he would not want to argue with Gunther if they told him that the Quagmires were trapped inside one of the items at the In Auction. The Baudelaires did not feel better at all as they realized that the only person who could help them was someone who could be knocked over with a feather.

"Menrov?" Sunny said.

"Menrov?" Jerome repeated, smiling down at the littlest Baudelaire. "What does 'Menrov?' mean?"

"I'll tell you what it means," Klaus said, thinking quickly. Perhaps there was a way to have Jerome help them, without making him argue with anyone. "It means 'Would you do us a favor, Jerome?'"

Violet and Sunny looked at their brother curiously. "Menrov?" didn't mean "Would you do us a favor, Jerome?" and Klaus most certainly knew it. "Menrov?" meant something more like "Should we try to tell Jerome about Gunther and Esmé and the Quagmire triplets?" but the sisters kept quiet, knowing that Klaus must have a good reason to lie to his guardian.

"Of course I'll do you a favor," Jerome said. "What is it?"

"My sisters and I would really like to own one of the lots at this auction," Klaus said. "We were wondering if you might buy it for us, as a gift."

"I suppose so," Jerome said. "I didn't know you three were interested in in items."

"Oh, yes," Violet said, understanding at once what Klaus was up to. "We're very anxious to own Lot #50--V.F.D."

"V.F.D.?" Jerome asked. "What does that stand for?"

"It's a surprise," Klaus said quickly. "Would you bid for it?"

"If it's very important to you," Jerome said, "I suppose I will, but I don't want you to get spoiled. You certainly arrived in time. It looks like Gunther is just finishing the bidding on those ballet shoes, so we're coming right up to Lot #50. Let's go watch the auction from where I was standing. There's an excellent view of the stage, and there's a friend of yours standing with me."

"A friend of ours?" Violet asked.

"You'll see," Jerome said, and they did see. When they followed Jerome across the enormous room to watch the auction underneath the "In" banner, they found Mr. Poe, holding a glass of parsley soda and coughing into his white handkerchief.

"You could knock me over with a feather," Mr. Poe said, when he was done coughing. "What are you Baudelaires doing here?"

"What are you doing here?" Klaus asked. "You told us you would be on a helicopter ride to a mountain peak."

Mr. Poe paused to cough into his white handkerchief again. "The reports about the mountain peak turned out to be false," Mr. Poe said, when the coughing fit had passed. "I now know for certain that the Quagmire twins are being forced to work at a glue factory nearby. I'm heading over there later, but I wanted to stop by the In Auction. Now that I'm Vice President in Charge of Orphan Affairs, I'm making more money, and my wife wanted to see if I could buy a bit of ocean decoration."

"But--" Violet started to say, but Mr. Poe shushed her.

"Shush," he said. "Gunther is beginning Lot #48, and that's what I want to bid on."

"Please, Lot #48," Gunther announced. His shiny eyes regarded the crowd from behind his monocle, but he did not appear to spot the Baudelaires. "Is large statue of fish, painted red, please. Very big, very in. Big enough to sleep inside this fish, if you are in the mood, please. Who bid?"

"I bid, Gunther," Mr. Poe called out. "One hundred."

"Two hundred," called out another voice from the crowd.

Klaus leaned in close to Mr. Poe to talk to him without Jerome hearing. "Mr. Poe, there's something you should know about Gunther," he said, thinking that if he could convince Mr. Poe, then the Baudelaires wouldn't have to continue their charade, a word which here means "pretending to want V.F.D. so Jerome would bid on it and save the Quagmires without knowing it." "He's really--"

"An in auctioneer, I know," Mr. Poe finished for him, and bid again. "Two hundred six."

"Three hundred," replied the other voice.

"No, no," Violet said. "He's not really an auctioneer at all. He's Count Olaf in disguise."

"Three hundred twelve," Mr. Poe called out, and then frowned down at the children. "Don't be ridiculous," he said to them. "Count Olaf is a criminal. Gunther is just a foreigner. I can't remember the word for a fear of foreigners, but I am surprised that you children have such a fear."

"Four hundred," called out the other voice.

"The word is 'xenophobia,'" Klaus said, "but it doesn't apply here, because Gunther's not really a foreigner. He's not even really Gunther!"

Mr. Poe took out his handkerchief again, and the Baudelaires waited as he coughed into it before replying. "You're not making any sense," he said finally. "Can we please discuss this after I buy this ocean decoration? I bid four hundred nine!"

"Five hundred," called out the other voice.

"I give up," Mr. Poe said, and coughed into his handkerchief. "Five hundred is too much to pay for a big herring statue."

"Five hundred is highest bid, please," Gunther said, and smiled at someone in the crowd. "Please will the winner give money to Mrs. Squalor, please."

"Why, look, children," Jerome said. "The doorman bought that big red fish."

"The doorman?" Mr. Poe said, as the doorman handed Esmé a sack of coins and, with difficulty, lifted the enormous red fish statue off the stage, his hands still hidden in his long, long sleeves. "I'm surprised that a doorman can afford to buy anything at the In Auction."

"He told me once he was an actor, too," Jerome said. "He's an interesting fellow. Care to meet him?"

"That's very nice of you," Mr. Poe said, and coughed into his handkerchief. "I'm certainly meeting all sorts of interesting people since my promotion."

The doorman was struggling past the children with his scarlet herring when Jerome tapped him on the shoulder. "Come meet Mr. Poe," he said.

"I don't have time to meet anyone," the doorman replied. "I have to get this in the boss's truck and--" The doorman stopped midsentence when he caught sight of the Baudelaire children. "You're not supposed to be here!" he said. "You're not supposed to have left the penthouse."

"Oh, but they're feeling better now," Jerome said, but the doorman wasn't listening. He had turned around--swatting several pinstripe members of the crowd with his fish statue as he did so--and was calling up to the people on the stage. "Hey, boss!" he said, and both Esmé and Gunther turned to look as he pointed at the three Baudelaires. "The orphans are here!"

Esmé gasped, and she was so affected by the element of surprise that she almost dropped her sack of coins, but Gunther merely turned his head and looked directly at the children. His eyes shone very, very brightly, even the one behind his monocle, and the Baudelaires were horrified to recognize his expression. Gunther was smiling as if he had just told a joke, and it was an expression he wore when his treacherous mind was working its hardest.

"Orphans in," he said, still insisting on pretending that he could not speak English properly. "O.K. for orphans to be here, please." Esmé looked curiously at Gunther, but then shrugged, and gestured to the doorman with a long-nailed hand that everything was O.K. The doorman shrugged back at her, and then gave the Baudelaires a strange smile and walked out of the award-winning door. "We will skip Lot #49, please," Gunther continued. "We will bid on Lot #50, please, and then, please, auction is over."

"But what about all the other items?" someone called.

"Skip 'em," Esmé said dismissively. "I've made enough money today."

"I never thought I'd hear Esmé say that," Jerome murmured.

"Lot #50, please," Gunther announced, and pushed an enormous cardboard box onto the stage. It was as big as the fish statue--just the right size for storing two small children. The box had "V.F.D." printed on it in big black letters, and the Baudelaires saw that some tiny airholes had been poked in the top. The three siblings could picture their friends, trapped inside the box and terrified that they were about to be smuggled out of the city. "V.F.D. please," Gunther said. "Who bid?"

"I bid twenty," Jerome said, and winked at the children.

"What in the world is 'V.F.D.'?" Mr. Poe asked.

Violet knew that she had no time to try to explain everything to Mr. Poe. "It's a surprise," she said. "Stick around and find out."

"Fifty," said another voice, and the Baudelaires turned to see that this second bid had come from the man in sunglasses who had asked them to leave.

"That doesn't look like one of Gunther's assistants," Klaus whispered to his sisters.

"You never know," Violet replied. "They're hard to spot."

"Fifty-five," Jerome called out. Esmé frowned at him, and then gave the Baudelaires a very mean glare.

"One hundred," the man in sunglasses said.

"Goodness, children," Jerome said. "This is getting very expensive. Are you sure you want this V.F.D.?"

"You're buying this for the children?" Mr. Poe said. "Please, Mr. Squalor, don't spoil these youngsters."

"He's not spoiling us!" Violet said, afraid that Gunther would stop the bidding. "Please, Jerome, please buy Lot #50 for us. We'll explain everything later."

Jerome sighed. "Very well," he said. "I guess it's only natural that you'd want some in things, after spending time with Esmé. I bid one hundred eight."

"Two hundred," the man in sunglasses said. The Baudelaires craned their necks to try and get a better look at him, but the man in sunglasses didn't look any more familiar.

"Two hundred four," Jerome said, and then looked down at the children. "I won't bid any higher, children. This is getting much too expensive, and bidding is too much like arguing for me to enjoy it."

"Three hundred," the man in sunglasses said, and the Baudelaire children looked at one another in horror. What could they do? Their friends were about to slip out of their grasp.

"Please, Jerome," Violet said. "I beg of you, please buy this for us."

Jerome shook his head. "Someday you'll understand," he said. "It's not worth it to spend money on silly in things."

Klaus turned to Mr. Poe. "Mr. Poe," he said, "would you be willing to loan us some money from the bank?"

"To buy a cardboard box?" Mr. Poe said. "I should say not. Ocean decorations are one thing, but I don't want you children wasting money on a box of something, no matter what it is."

"Final bid is three hundred, please," Gunther said, turning and giving Esmé a monocled wink. "Please, sir, if--"

"Thousand!"

Gunther stopped at the sound of a new bidder for Lot #50. Esmé's eyes widened, and she grinned at the thought of putting such an enormous sum in her pinstripe purse. The in crowd looked around, trying to figure out where this new voice was coming from, but nobody suspected such a long and valuable word would originate in the mouth of a tiny baby who was no bigger than a salami.

"Thousand!" Sunny shrieked again, and her siblings held their breath. They knew, of course, that their sister had no such sum of money, but they hoped that Gunther could not see where this bid was coming from, and would be too greedy to find out. The ersatz auctioneer looked at Esmé, and then again out into the crowd.

"Where in the world did Sunny get that kind of money?" Jerome asked Mr. Poe.

"Well, when the children were in boarding school," Mr. Poe answered, "Sunny worked as a receptionist, but I had no idea that her salary was that high."

"Thousand!" Sunny insisted, and finally Gunther gave in.

"The highest bid is now one thousand," he said, and then remembered to pretend that he wasn't fluent in English. "Please," he added.

"Good grief!" the man in sunglasses said. "I'm not going to pay more than one thousand for V.F.D. It's not worth it."

"It is to us," Violet said fiercely, and the three children walked toward the stage. Every eye in the crowd fell on the siblings as they left an ashy trail behind them on their way to the cardboard box. Jerome looked confused. Mr. Poe looked befuddled, a word which here means "as confused as Jerome." Esmé looked vicious. The man in sunglasses looked like he had lost an auction. And Gunther kept smiling, as if a joke he had told was only getting funnier and funnier. Violet and Klaus climbed up on the stage and then hoisted Sunny up alongside them, and the three orphans looked fiercely at the terrible man who had imprisoned their friends.

"Give your thousand, please, to Mrs. Squalor," Gunther said, grinning down at the children. "And then auction is over."

"The only thing that is over," Klaus said, "is your horrible plan."

"Silko!" Sunny agreed, and then, using her teeth even though they were still sore from climbing up the elevator shaft, the youngest Baudelaire bit into the cardboard box and began ripping it apart, hoping that she wasn't hurting Duncan and Isadora Quagmire as she did so.

"Wait a minute, kids!" Esmé snarled, getting out of her fancy chair and stomping over to the box. "You can't open the box until you give me the money. That's illegal!"

"What is illegal," Klaus said, "is auctioning off children. And soon this whole room will see that you have broken the law!"

"What's this?" Mr. Poe asked, striding toward the stage. Jerome followed him, looking from the orphans to his wife in confusion.

"The Quagmire triplets are in this box," Violet explained, helping her sister tear it open. "Gunther and Esmé are trying to smuggle them out of the country."

"What?" Jerome cried. "Esmé, is this true?"

Esmé did not reply, but in a moment everyone would see if it was true or not. The children had torn away a large section of the cardboard, and they could see a layer of white paper inside, as if Gunther had wrapped up the Quagmires the way you might have the butcher wrap up a pair of chicken breasts.

"Hang on, Duncan!" Violet called, into the paper. "Just a few more seconds, Isadora! We're getting you out of there!"

Mr. Poe frowned, and coughed into his white handkerchief. "Now look here, Baudelaires," he said sternly, when his coughing spell was over, "I have reliable information that the Quagmires are in a glue factory, not inside a cardboard box."

"We'll see about that," Klaus said, and Sunny gave the box another big bite. With a loud shredding sound it split right down the middle, and the contents of the box spilled out all over the stage. It is necessary to use the expression "a red herring" to describe what was inside the cardboard box. A red herring, of course, is a type of fish, but it is also an expression that means "a distracting and misleading clue." Gunther had used the initials V.F.D. on the box to mislead the Baudelaires into thinking that their friends were trapped inside, and I'm sorry to tell you that the Baudelaires did not realize it was a red herring until they looked around the stage and saw what the box contained.

Chapter Thirteen

"These are doilies'" Violet cried. "This box is full of doilies!" And it was true. Scattered around the stage, spilling out of the remains of the cardboard box, were hundreds and hundreds of small, round napkins with a strip of lace around them--the sort of napkins that you might use to decorate a plate of cookies at a fancy tea party.

"Of course," the man in sunglasses said. He approached the stage and removed his sunglasses, and the Baudelaires could see that he wasn't one of Gunther's associates after all. He was just a bidder, in a pinstripe suit. "I was going to give them to my brother for a birthday present. They're Very Fancy Doilies. What else could V.F.D. stand for?"

"Yes," Gunther said, smiling at the children. "What else could it stand for, please?"

"I don't know," Violet said, "but the Quagmires didn't find out a secret about fancy napkins. Where have you put them, Olaf?"

"What is Olaf, please?" Gunther asked.

"Now, Violet," Jerome said. "We agreed that we wouldn't argue about Gunther anymore. Please excuse these children, Gunther. I think they must be ill."

"We're not ill!" Klaus cried. "We've been tricked! This box of doilies was a red herring!"

"But the red herring was Lot #48," someone in the crowd said.

"Children, I'm very disturbed by your behavior," Mr. Poe said. "You look like you haven't washed in a week. You're spending your money on ridiculous items. You run around accusing everybody of being Count Olaf in disguise. And now you've made a big mess of doilies on the floor. Someone is likely to trip and fall on all these slippery napkins. I would have thought that the Squalors would be raising you better than this."

"Well, we're not going to raise them anymore," Esmé said. "Not after they've made such a spectacle of themselves. Mr. Poe, I want these terrible children placed out of my care. It's not worth it to have orphans, even if they're in."

"Esmé!" Jerome cried. "They lost their parents! Where else can they go?"

"Don't argue with me," Esmé snapped, "and I'll tell you where they can go. They can--"

"With me, please," Gunther said, and placed one of his scraggly hands on Violet's shoulder. Violet remembered when this treacherous villain had plotted to marry her, and shuddered underneath his greedy fingers. "I am loving of the children. I would be happy, please, to raise three children of my own." He put his other scraggly hand on Klaus's shoulder, and then stepped forward as if he was going to put one of his boots on Sunny's shoulder so all three Baudelaires would be locked in a sinister embrace. But Gunther's foot did not land on Sunny's shoulder. It landed on a doily, and in a second Mr. Poe's prediction that someone would trip and fall came true. With a papery thump! Gunther was suddenly on the ground, his arms flailing wildly in the doilies and his legs flailing madly on the floor of the stage. "Please!" he shouted as he hit the ground, but his wiggling limbs only made him slip more, and the doilies began to spread out across the stage and fall to the floor of Veblen Hall. The Baudelaires watched the fancy napkins flutter around them, making flimsy, whispering sounds as they fell, but then they heard two weighty sounds, one after the other, as if Gunther's fall had made something heavier fall to the floor, and when they turned their heads to follow the sound, they saw Gunther's boots lying on the floor, one at Jerome's feet and one at Mr. Poe's.

"Please!" Gunther shouted again, as he struggled to stand up, but when he finally got to his feet, everyone else in the room was looking at them.

"Look!" the man who had been wearing sunglasses said. "The auctioneer wasn't wearing any socks! That's not very polite!"

"And look!" someone else said. "He has a doily stuck between two of his toes! That's not very comfortable!"

"And look!" Jerome said. "He has a tattoo of an eye on his ankle! He's not Gunther!"

"He's not an auctioneer!" Mr. Poe cried. "He's not even a foreigner! He's Count Olaf!"

"He's more than Count Olaf," Esmé said, walking slowly toward the terrible villain. "He's a genius! He's a wonderful acting teacher! And he's the handsomest, innest man in town!"

"Don't be absurd!" Jerome said. "Ruthless kidnapping villains aren't in!"

"You're right," said Count Olaf, and what a relief it is to call him by his proper name. Olaf tossed away his monocle and put his arm around Esmé. "We're not in. We're out--out of the city! Come on, Esmé!"

With a shriek of laughter, Olaf took Esmé's hand and leaped from the stage, elbowing aside the in crowd as he began running toward the exit.

"They're escaping!" Violet cried, and jumped off the stage to chase after them. Klaus and Sunny followed her as fast as their legs could carry them, but Olaf and Esmé had longer legs, which in this case was just as unfair an advantage as the element of surprise. By the time the Baudelaires had run to the banner with Gunther's face on it, Olaf and Esmé had reached the banner with "Auction" printed on it, and by the time the children reached that banner, the two villains had run past the "In" banner and through the award-winning door of Veblen Hall.

"Egad!" Mr. Poe cried. "We can't let that dreadful man escape for the sixth time! After him, everyone! That man is wanted for a wide variety of violent and financial crimes!"

The in crowd sprang into action, and began chasing after Olaf and Esmé, and you may choose to believe, as this story nears its conclusion, that with so many people chasing after this wretched villain, it would be impossible for him to escape. You may wish to close this book without finishing it, and imagine that Olaf and Esmé were captured, and that the Quagmire triplets were rescued, and that the true meaning of V.F.D. was discovered and that the mystery of the secret hallway to the ruined Baudelaire mansion was solved and that everyone held a delightful picnic to celebrate all this good fortune and that there were enough ice cream sandwiches to go around. I certainly wouldn't blame you for imagining these things, because I imagine them all the time. Late at night, when not even the map of the city can comfort me, I close my eyes and imagine all those happy comforting things surrounding the Baudelaire children, instead of all those doilies that surrounded them and brought yet another scoop of misfortune into their lives. Because when Count Olaf and Esmé Squalor flung open the door of Veblen Hall, they let in an afternoon breeze that made all the very fancy doilies flutter over the Baudelaires' heads and then settle back down on the floor behind them, and in one slippery moment the entire in crowd was falling all over one another in a papery, pinstripe blur. Mr. Poe fell on Jerome. Jerome fell on the man who had been wearing sunglasses, and his sunglasses fell on the woman who had bid highest on Lot #47. That woman dropped her chocolate ballet slippers, and those slippers fell on Count Olaf's boots, and those boots fell on three more doilies that made four more people slip and fall on one another and soon the entire crowd was in a hopeless tangle. But the Baudelaires did not even glance back to see the latest grief that the doilies had caused. They kept their eyes on the pair of loathsome people who were running down the steps of Veblen Hall toward a big black pickup truck. Behind the wheel of the pickup truck was the doorman, who had finally done the sensible thing and rolled up his oversized sleeves, but that must have been a difficult task, for as the children gazed into the truck they caught a glimpse of two hooks where the doorman's hands should have been.

"The hook-handed man!" Klaus cried. "He was right under our noses the entire time!"

Count Olaf turned to sneer at the children just as he reached the pickup truck. "He might have been right under your noses," he snarled, "but soon he will be at your throats. I'll be back, Baudelaires! Soon the Quagmire sapphires will be mine, but I haven't forgotten about your fortune!"

"Gonope?" Sunny shrieked, and Violet was quick to translate.

"Where are Duncan and Isadora?" she said. "Where have you taken them?"

Olaf and Esmé looked at one another, and burst into laughter as they slipped into the black truck. Esmé jerked a long-nailed thumb toward the flatbed, which is the word for the back part of a pickup where things are stored. "We used two red herrings to fool you," she said, as the truck's engine roared into life. The children could see, in the back of the truck, the big red herring that had been Lot #48 in the In Auction.

"The Quagmires!" Klaus cried. "Olaf has them trapped inside that statue!" The orphans raced down the steps of the hall, and once again, you may find it more pleasant to put down this book, and close your eyes, and imagine a better ending to this tale than the one that I must write. You may imagine, for instance, that as the Baudelaires reached the truck, they heard the sound of the engine stalling, instead of the tooting of the horn as the hook-handed man drove his bosses away. You may imagine that the children heard the sounds of the Quagmires escaping from the statue of the herring, instead of the word "Toodle-oo!" coming from Esmé's villainous mouth. And you may imagine the sound of police sirens as Count Olaf was caught at last, instead of the weeping of the Baudelaire orphans as the black truck rounded the corner and disappeared from view.

But your imaginings would be ersatz, as all imaginings are. They are as untrue as the ersatz auctioneer who found the Baudelaires at the Squalors' penthouse, and the ersatz elevator outside their front door and the ersatz guardian who pushed them down the deep pit of the elevator shaft. Esmé hid her evil plan behind her reputation as the city's sixth most important financial advisor, and Count Olaf hid his identity behind a monocle and some black boots, and the dark passageway hid its secrets behind a pair of sliding elevator doors, but as much as it pains me to tell you that the Baudelaire orphans stood on the steps of Veblen Hall, weeping with anguish and frustration as Count Olaf rode away with the Quagmire triplets, I cannot hide the unfortunate truths of the Baudelaires' lives behind an ersatz happy ending.

The Baudelaire orphans stood on the steps of Veblen Hall, weeping with anguish and frustration as Count Olaf rode away with the Quagmire triplets, and the sight of Mr. Poe emerging from the award-winning door, with a doily in his hair and a look of panic in his eye, only made them weep harder.

"I'll call the police," Mr. Poe said, "and they'll capture Count Olaf in no time at all," but the Baudelaires knew that this statement was as ersatz as Gunther's improper English. They knew that Olaf was far too clever to be captured by the police, and I'm sorry to say that by the time two detectives found the big black pickup truck, abandoned outside St. Carl's Cathedral with the motor still running, Olaf had already transferred the Quagmires from the red herring to a shiny black instrument case, which he told the bus driver was a tuba he was bringing to his aunt. The three siblings watched Mr. Poe scurry back into Veblen Hall to ask members of the in crowd where he could find a phone booth, and they knew that the banker was not going to be of any help.

"I think Mr. Poe will be a great deal of help," Jerome said, as he walked out of Veblen Hall and sat down on the steps to try to comfort the children. "He's going to call the police, and give them a description of Olaf."

"But Olaf is always in disguise," Violet said miserably, wiping her eyes. "You never know what he'll look like until you see him."

"Well, I'm going to make sure you never see him again," Jerome promised. "Esmé may have left---and I'm not going to argue with her--but I'm still your guardian, and I'm going to take you far, far away from here, so far away that you'll forget all about Count Olaf and the Quagmires and everything else."

"Forget about Olaf?" Klaus asked. "How can we forget about him? We'll never forget his treachery, no matter where we live."

"And we'll never forget the Quagmires, either," Violet said. "I don't want to forget about them. We have to figure out where he's taking our friends, and how to rescue them."

"Tercul!" Sunny said, which meant something along the lines of "And we don't want to forget about everything else, either-like the underground hallway that led to our ruined mansion, and the real meaning of V.F.D.!"

"My sister is right," Klaus said. "We have to track down Olaf and learn all the secrets he's keeping from us."

"We're not going to track down Olaf," Jerome said, shuddering at the thought. "We'll be lucky if he doesn't track us down. As your guardian, I cannot allow you to try to find such a dangerous man. Wouldn't you rather live safely with me?"

"Yes," Violet admitted, "but our friends are in grave danger. We must go and rescue them."

"Well, I don't want to argue," Jerome said. "If you've made up your mind, then you've made up your mind. I'll tell Mr. Poe to find you another guardian."

"You mean you won't help us?" Klaus asked.

Jerome sighed, and kissed each Baudelaire on the forehead. "You children are very dear to me," he said, "but I don't have your courage. Your mother always said I wasn't brave enough, and I guess she was right. Good luck, Baudelaires. I think you will need it."

The children watched in amazement as Jerome walked away, not even looking back at the three orphans he was leaving behind. They found their eyes brimming with tears once more as they watched him disappear from sight. They would never see the Squalor penthouse again, or spend another night in their bedrooms, or spend even a moment in their oversized pinstripe suits. Though he was not as dastardly as Esmé or Count Olaf or the hook-handed man, Jerome was still an ersatz guardian, because a real guardian is supposed to provide a home, with a place to sleep and something to wear, and all Jerome had given them in the end was "Good luck." Jerome reached the end of the block and turned left, and the Baudelaires were once again alone in the world.

Violet sighed, and stared down the street in the direction Olaf had escaped. "I hope my inventing skills don't fail me," she said, "because we're going to need more than good luck to rescue the Quagmire triplets."

Klaus sighed, and stared down the street in the direction of the ashy remains of their first home. "I hope my research skills don't fail me," he said, "because we're going to need more than good luck to solve the mystery of the hallway and the Baudelaire mansion."

Sunny sighed, and watched as a lone doily blew down the stairs. "Bite," she said, and she meant that she hoped her teeth wouldn't fail her, because they'd need more than good luck to discover what V.F.D. really stood for.

The Baudelaires looked at one another with faint smiles. They were smiling because they didn't think Violet's inventing skills would fail, any more than Klaus's research skills would fail or Sunny's teeth would fail. But the children also knew that they wouldn't fail each other, as Jerome had failed them and as Mr. Poe was failing them now, as he dialed the wrong number and was talking to a Vietnamese restaurant instead of the police. No matter how many misfortunes had befallen them and no matter how many ersatz things they would encounter in the future, the Baudelaire orphans knew they could rely on each other for the rest of their lives, and this, at least, felt like the one thing in the world that was true.



LEMONY SNICKET'S extended family, if they were alive, would describe him as a distinguished scholar, an amateur connoisseur, and an outright gentleman. Unfortunately this description has been challenged of late, but HarperCollins continues to support his research and writing on the lives of the Baudelaire orphans.

BRETT HELQUIST was born in Ganado, Arizona, grew up in Orem, Utah, and now lives in New York City. He earned a bachelor's degree in fine arts from Brigham Young University and has been illustrating ever since. His art has appeared in many publications, including Cricket magazine and The New York Times.


To My Kind Editor,

I am sorry this paper is sopping wet, but I am writing this from the place where the Quagmire Triplets were hidden.

The next time you run out of milk, buy a new carton at Cash Register #19 of the Not-Very-Supermarket. When you arrive home, you will find my description of the Baudelaires' recent experiences in this dreadful town entitled THE VILE VILLAGE has been tucked into your grocery sack along with a burnt-out torch, the tip of a harpoon, and a chart of the migration paths of the V.F.D. crows. There is also a copy of the official portrait of the Council of Elders, to help Mr. Helquist with his illustrations.

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

With all due respect, Lemony Snicket

Chapter One

No matter who you are, no matter where you live, and no matter how many people are chasing you, what you don't read is often as important as what you do read. For instance, if you are walking in the mountains, and you don't read the sign that says "Beware of Cliff" because you are busy reading a joke book instead, you may suddenly find yourself walking on air rather than on a sturdy bed of rocks. If you are baking a pie for your friends, and you read an article entitled "How to Build a Chair" instead of a cookbook, your pie will probably end up tasting like wood and nails instead of like crust and fruity filling. And if you insist on reading this book instead of something more cheerful, you will most certainly find yourself moaning in despair instead of wriggling in delight, so if you have any sense at all you will put this book down and pick up another one. I know of a book, for instance, called The Littlest Elf, which tells the story of a teensy-weensy little man who scurries around Fairyland having all sorts of adorable adventures, and you can see at once that you should probably read The Littlest Elf and wriggle over the lovely things that happened to this imaginary creature in a made-up place, instead of reading this book and moaning over the terrible things that happened to the three Baudelaire orphans in the village where I am now typing these very words. The misery, woe, and treachery contained in the pages of this book are so dreadful that it is important that you don't read any more of it than you already have. The Baudelaire orphans, at the time this story begins, were certainly wishing that they weren't reading the newspaper that was in front of their eyes. A newspaper, as I'm sure you know, is a collection of supposedly true stories written down by writers who either saw them happen or talked to people who did. These writers are called journalists, and like telephone operators, butchers, ballerinas, and people who clean up after horses, journalists can sometimes make mistakes. This was certainly the case with the front page of the morning edition of The Daily Punctilio, which the Baudelaire children were reading in the office of Mr. Poe. "twins captured by count omar," the headline read, and the three siblings looked at one another in amazement over the mistakes that The Daily Punctilio's journalists had made.

"'Duncan and Isadora Quagmire,'" Violet read out loud, "'twin children who are the only known surviving members of the Quagmire family, have been kidnapped by the notorious Count Omar. Omar is wanted by the police for a variety of dreadful crimes, and is easily recognized by his one long eyebrow, and the tattoo of an eye on his left ankle. Omar has also kidnapped Esmé Squalor, the city's sixth most important financial advisor, for reasons unknown.' Ugh!" The word "Ugh!" was not in the newspaper, of course, but was something Violet uttered herself as a way of saying she was too disgusted to read any further. "If I invented something as sloppily as this newspaper writes its stories," she said, "it would fall apart immediately." Violet, who at fourteen was the eldest Baudelaire child, was an excellent inventor, and spent a great deal of time with her hair tied up in a ribbon to keep it out of her eyes as she thought of new mechanical devices.

"And if I read books as sloppily," Klaus said, "I wouldn't remember one single fact." Klaus, the middle Baudelaire, had read more books than just about anyone his own age, which was almost thirteen. At many crucial moments, his sisters had relied on him to remember a helpful fact from a book he had read years before.

"Krechin!" Sunny said. Sunny, the youngest Baudelaire, was a baby scarcely larger than a watermelon. Like many infants, Sunny often said words that were difficult to understand, like "Krechin!" which meant something along the lines of "And if I used my four big teeth to bite something as sloppily, I wouldn't even leave one toothmark!"

Violet moved the paper closer to one of the reading lamps Mr. Poe had in his office, and began to count the errors that had appeared in the few sentences she had read. "For one thing," she said, "the Quagmires aren't twins. They're triplets. The fact that their brother perished in the fire that killed their parents doesn't change their birth identity."

"Of course it doesn't," Klaus agreed. "And they were kidnapped by Count Olaf, not Omar. It's difficult enough that Olaf is always in disguise, but now the newspaper has disguised his name, too."

"Esmé!" Sunny added, and her siblings nodded. The youngest Baudelaire was talking about the part of the article that mentioned Esmé Squalor. Esmé and her husband, Jerome, had recently been the Baudelaires' guardians, and the children had seen with their own eyes that Esmé had not been kidnapped by Count Olaf. Esmé had secretly helped Olaf with his evil scheme, and had escaped with him at the last minute.

"And 'for reasons unknown' is the biggest mistake of all," Violet said glumly. "The reasons aren't unknown. We know them. We know the reasons Esmé, Count Olaf, and all of Olaf's associates have done so many terrible things. It's because they're terrible people." Violet put down The Daily Punctilio, looked around Mr. Poe's office, and joined her siblings in a sad, deep sigh. The Baudelaire orphans were sighing not only for the things they had read, but for the things they hadn't read. The article had not mentioned that both the Quagmires and the Baudelaires had lost their parents in terrible fires, and that both sets of parents had left enormous fortunes behind, and that Count Olaf had cooked up all of his evil plans just to get ahold of these fortunes for himself. The newspaper had failed to note that the Quagmire triplets had been kidnapped while trying to help the Baudelaires escape from Count Olaf's clutches, and that the Baudelaires had almost managed to rescue the Quagmires, only to find them snatched away once more. The journalists who wrote the story had not included the fact that Duncan Quagmire, who was a journalist himself, and Isadora Quagmire, who was a poet, each kept a notebook with them wherever they went, and that in their notebooks they had written down a terrible secret they had discovered about Count Olaf, but that all the Baudelaire orphans knew of this secret were the initials V.F.D., and that Violet, Klaus, and Sunny were always thinking of these three letters and what ghastly thing they could stand for. But most of all, the Baudelaire orphans had read no word about the fact that the Quagmire triplets were good friends of theirs, and that the three siblings were very worried about the Quagmires, and that every night when they tried to go to sleep, their heads were filled with terrible images of what could be happening to their friends, who were practically the only happy thing in the Baudelaires' lives since they received the news of the fire that killed their parents and began the series of unfortunate events that seemed to follow them wherever they went. The article in The Daily Punctilio probably did not mention these details because the journalist who wrote the story did not know about them, or did not think they were important, but the Baudelaires knew about them, and the three children sat together for a few moments and thought quietly about these very, very important details.

A fit of coughing, coming from the doorway of the office, brought them out of their thoughts, and the Baudelaires turned to see Mr. Poe coughing into a white handkerchief. Mr. Poe was a banker who had been placed in charge of the orphans' care after the fire, and I'm sorry to say that he was extremely prone to error, a phrase which here means "always had a cough, and had placed the three Baudelaire children in an assortment of dangerous positions." The first guardian Mr. Poe found for the youngsters was Count Olaf himself, and the most recent guardian he had found for them was Esmé Squalor, and in between he had placed the children in a variety of circumstances that turned out to be just as unpleasant. This morning they were supposed to learn about their new home, but so far all Mr. Poe had done was have several coughing fits and leave them alone with a poorly written newspaper.

"Good morning, children," Mr. Poe said. "I'm sorry I kept you waiting, but ever since I was promoted to Vice President in Charge of Orphan Affairs I've been very, very busy. Besides, finding you a new home has been something of a chore." He walked over to his desk, which was covered in piles of papers, and sat down in a large chair. "I've put calls in to a variety of distant relatives, but they've heard all about the terrible things that tend to happen wherever you go. Understandably, they're too skittish about Count Olaf to agree to take care of you. 'Skittish' means 'nervous,' by the way. There's one more — "

One of the three telephones on Mr. Poe's desk interrupted him with a loud, ugly ring. "Excuse me," the banker said to the children, and began to speak into the receiver. "Poe here. O.K. O.K. O.K. I thought so. O.K. O.K. Thank you, Mr. Fagin." Mr. Poe hung up the phone and made a mark on one of the papers on his desk. "That was a nineteenth cousin of yours," Mr. Poe said, "and a last hope of mine. I thought I could persuade him to take you in, just for a couple of months, but he refused. I can't say I blame him. I'm concerned that your reputation as troublemakers is even ruining the reputation of my bank."

"But we're not troublemakers," Klaus said. "Count Olaf is the troublemaker."

Mr. Poe took the newspaper from the children and looked at it carefully. "Well, I'm sure the story in The Daily Punctilio will help the authorities finally capture Olaf, and then your relatives will be less skittish."

"But the story is full of mistakes," Violet said. "The authorities won't even know his real name. The newspaper calls him Omar."

"The story was a disappointment to me, too," Mr. Poe said. "The journalist said that the paper would put a photograph of me next to the article, with a caption about my promotion. I had my hair cut for it especially. It would have made my wife and sons very proud to see my name in the papers, so I understand why you're disappointed that the article is about the Quagmire twins, instead of being about you."

"We don't care about having our names in the papers," Klaus said, "and besides, the Quagmires are triplets, not twins."

"The death of their brother changes their birth identity," Mr. Poe explained sternly, "but I don't have time to talk about this. We need to find — "

Another one of his phones rang, and Mr. Poe excused himself again. "Poe here," he said into the receiver. "No. No. No. Yes. Yes. Yes. I don't care. Good-bye." He hung up the phone and coughed into his white handkerchief before wiping his mouth and turning once more to the children. "Well, that phone call solved all of your problems," he said simply.

The Baudelaires looked at one another. Had Count Olaf been arrested? Had the Quagmires been saved? Had someone invented a way to go back in time and rescue their parents from the terrible fire? How could all of their problems have been solved with one phone call to a banker?

"Plinn?" Sunny asked.

Mr. Poe smiled. "Have you ever heard the aphorism," he said, "'It takes a village to raise a child'?"

The children looked at one another again, a little less hopefully this time. The quoting of an aphorism, like the angry barking of a dog or the smell of overcooked broccoli, rarely indicates that something helpful is about to happen. An aphorism is merely a small group of words arranged in a certain order because they sound good that way, but oftentimes people tend to say them as if they were saying something very mysterious and wise.

"I know it probably sounds mysterious to you," Mr. Poe continued, "but the aphorism is actually very wise. 'It takes a village to raise a child' means that the responsibility for taking care of youngsters belongs to everyone in the community."

"I think I read something about this aphorism in a book about the Mbuti pygmies," Klaus said. "Are you sending us to live in Africa?"

"Don't be silly," Mr. Poe said, as if the millions of people who lived in Africa were all ridiculous. "That was the city government on the telephone. A number of villages just outside the city have signed up for a new guardian program based on the aphorism 'It takes a village to raise a child.' Orphans are sent to these villages, and everyone who lives there raises them together. Normally, I approve of more traditional family structures, but this is really quite convenient, and your parents' will instructs that you be raised in the most convenient way possible."

"Do you mean that the entire town would be in charge of us?" Violet asked. "That's a lot of people."

"Well, I imagine they would take turns," Mr. Poe said, stroking his chin. "It's not as if you would be tucked into bed by three thousand people at once."

"Snoita!" Sunny shrieked. She meant something like "I prefer to be tucked into bed by my siblings, not by strangers!" but Mr. Poe was busy looking through his papers on his desk and didn't answer her.

"Apparently I was mailed a brochure about this program several weeks ago," he said, "but I guess it got lost somewhere on my desk. Oh, here it is. Take a look for yourselves."

Mr. Poe reached across his desk to hand them a colorful brochure, and the Baudelaire orphans took a look for themselves. On the front was the aphorism 'It takes a village to raise a child' written in flowery letters, and inside the brochure were photographs of children with such huge smiles that the Baudelaires' mouths ached just to look at them. A few paragraphs explained that 99 percent of the orphans participating in this program were overjoyed to have whole villages taking care of them, and that all the towns listed on the back page were eager to serve as guardians for any interested children who had lost their parents. The three Baudelaires looked at the grinning photographs and read the flowery aphorism and felt a little flutter in their stomachs. They felt more than a little nervous about having a whole town for a guardian. It was strange enough when they were in the care of various relatives. How strange would it feel if hundreds of people were trying to act as substitute Baudelaires?

"Do you think we would be safe from Count Olaf," Violet asked hesitantly, "if we lived with an entire village?"

"I should think so," Mr. Poe said, and coughed into his handkerchief. "With a whole village looking after you, you'll probably be the safest you've ever been. Plus, thanks to the story in The Daily Punctilio, I'm sure Omar will be captured in no time."

"0laf," Klaus corrected.

"Yes, yes," Mr. Poe said. "I meant to say 'Omar.' Now, what villages are listed in the brochure? You children can choose your new hometown, if you like."

Klaus turned the brochure over and read from the list of towns. "Paltryville," he said. "That's where the Lucky Smells Lumbermill was. We had a terrible time there."

"Calten!" Sunny cried, which meant something like "I wouldn't return there for all the tea in China!"

"The next village on the list is Tedia," Klaus said. "That name is familiar to me."

"That's near where Uncle Monty lived," Violet said. "Let's not live there — it'll make us miss Uncle Monty even more than we already do."

Klaus nodded in agreement. "Besides," he said, "the town is near Lousy Lane, so it probably smells like horseradish. Here's a village I've never heard of — Ophelia."

"No, no," Mr. Poe said. "I won't have you living in the same town as the Ophelia Bank. It's one of my least favorite banks, and I don't want to have to walk by it when I visit you."

"Zounce!" Sunny said, which meant "That's ridiculous!" but Klaus nudged her with his elbow and pointed to the next village listed on the brochure, and Sunny quickly changed her tune, a phrase which here means "immediately said 'Gounce!' instead, which meant something along the lines of 'Let's live there!'"

"Gounce indeed," Klaus agreed, and showed Violet what he and Sunny were talking about. Violet gasped, and the three siblings looked at one another and felt a little flutter in their stomachs again. But this was less of a nervous flutter and more of a hopeful one — a hope that maybe Mr. Poe's last phone call really had solved all their problems, and that maybe what they read right here in the brochure would turn out to be more important than what they didn't read in the newspaper. For at the bottom of the list of villages, below Paltryville and Tedia and Ophelia, was the most important thing they had read all morning. Printed in the flowery script, on the back page of the brochure Mr. Poe had given them, were the letters V.F.D.

Chapter Two

When you are traveling by bus, it is always difficult to decide whether you should sit in a seat by the window, a seat on the aisle, or a seat in the middle. If you take an aisle seat, you have the advantage of being able to stretch your legs whenever you like, but you have the disadvantage of people walking by you, and they can accidentally step on your toes or spill something on your clothing. If you take a window seat, you have the advantage of getting a clear view of the scenery, but you have the disadvantage of watching insects die as they hit the glass. If you take a middle seat, you have neither of these advantages, and you have the added disadvantage of people leaning all over you when they fall asleep. You can see at once why you should always arrange to hire a limousine or rent a mule rather than take the bus to your destination.

The Baudelaire orphans, however, did not have the money to hire a limousine, and it would have taken them several weeks to reach V.F.D. by mule, so they were traveling to their new home by bus. The children had thought that it might take a lot of effort to convince Mr. Poe to choose V.F.D. as their new village guardian, but right when they saw the three initials on the brochure, one of Mr. Poe's telephones rang, and by the time he was off the phone he was too busy to argue. All he had time to do was make arrangements with the city government and take them to the bus station. As he saw them off — a phrase which here means "put the Baudelaires on a bus, rather than doing the polite thing and taking them to their new home personally" — he instructed them to report to the Town Hall of V.F.D., and made them promise not to do anything that would ruin his bank's reputation. Before they knew it, Violet was sitting in an aisle seat, brushing dirt off her coat and rubbing her sore toes, and Klaus was sitting in a window seat gazing at the scenery through a layer of dead bugs. Sunny sat between them, gnawing on the armrest.

"No lean!" she said sternly, and her brother smiled.

"Don't worry, Sunny," he said. "We'll make sure not to lean on you if we fall asleep. We don't have much time for napping, anyway — we should be at V.F.D. any minute now."

"What do you think it could stand for?" Violet asked. "Neither the brochure nor the map at the bus station showed anything more than the three initials."

"I don't know," Klaus said. "Do you think we should have told Mr. Poe about the V.F.D. secret? Maybe he could have helped us."

"I doubt it," Violet said. "He hasn't been very helpful before. I wish the Quagmires were here. I bet they could help us."

"I wish the Quagmires were here even if they couldn't help us," Klaus said, and his sisters nodded in agreement. No Baudelaire had to say anything more about how worried they were about the triplets, and they sat in silence for the rest of the ride, hoping that their arrival at V.F.D. would bring them closer to saving their friends.

"V.F.D.!" the bus driver finally called out. "Next stop V.F.D.! If you look out the window, you can see the town coming up, folks!"

"What does it look like?" Violet asked Klaus.

Klaus peered out the window past the layer of dead bugs. "Flat," he said.

Violet and Sunny leaned over to look and saw that their brother had spoken the truth. The countryside looked as if someone had drawn the line of the horizon — the word "horizon" here means "the boundary where the sky ends and the world begins" — and then forgot to draw in anything else. The land stretched out as far as the eye could see, but there was nothing for the eye to look at but flat, dry land and the occasional sheet of newspaper stirred up by the passing of the bus.

"I don't see any town at all," Klaus said. "Do you suppose it's underground?"

"Novedri!" Sunny said, which meant "Living underground would be no fun at all!"

"Maybe that's the town over there," Violet said, squinting to try and see as far as she could. "You see? Way out by the horizon line, there's a hazy black blur. It looks like smoke, but maybe it's just some buildings seen from far away."

"I can't see it," Klaus said. "That smushed moth is blocking it, I think. But a hazy blur could just be fata morgana."

"Fata?" Sunny asked.

"Fata morgana is when your eyes play tricks on you, particularly in hot weather," Klaus explained. "It's caused by the distortion of light through alternate layers of hot and cool air. It's also called a mirage, but I like the name 'fata morgana' better."

"Me too," Violet agreed, "but let's hope it's not a mirage or fata morgana. Let's hope it's V.F.D."

"V.F.D.!" the bus driver called, as the bus came to a stop. "V.F.D.! Everyone off for V.F.D.!"

The Baudelaires stood up, gathered their belongings, and walked down the aisle, but when they reached the open door of the bus they stopped and stared doubtfully out at the flat and empty landscape.

"Is this really the stop for V.F.D.?" Violet asked the driver. "I thought V.F.D. was a town."

"It is," the driver replied. "Just walk toward that hazy black blur out there on the horizon. I know it looks like — well, I can't remember the phrase for when your eyes play tricks on you — but it's really the town."

"Couldn't you take us a little closer?" Violet asked shyly. "We have a baby with us, and it looks like a long way to walk."

"I wish I could help you," the bus driver said kindly, looking down at Sunny, "but the Council of Elders has very strict rules. I have to let off all passengers for V.F.D. right here; otherwise I could be severely punished."

"Who are the Council of Elders?" Klaus asked.

"Hey!" a voice called from the back of the bus. "Tell those kids to hurry up and get off the bus! The open door is letting bugs in!"

"Off you go, kids," the bus driver said, and the Baudelaires stepped out of the bus onto the flat land of V.F.D. The doors shut, and with a little wave the bus driver drove off and left the children alone on the empty landscape. The siblings watched the bus get smaller and smaller as it drove away, and then turned toward the hazy black blur of their new home.

"Well, now I can see it," Klaus said, squinting behind his glasses, "but I can't believe it. It's going to take the rest of the afternoon to walk all that way."

"Then we'd better get started," Violet said, hoisting Sunny up on top of her suitcase. "This piece of luggage has wheels," she said to her sister, "so you can sit on top of it and I can pull you along."

"Sanks!" Sunny said, which meant "That's very considerate of you!" and the Baudelaires began their long walk toward the hazy black blur on the horizon. After even the first few steps, the disadvantages of the bus ride seemed like small potatoes. "Small potatoes" is a phrase which has nothing to do with root vegetables that happen to be tiny in size. Instead, it refers to the change in one's feelings for something when it is compared with something else. If you were walking in the rain, for instance, you might be worried about getting wet, but if you turned the corner and saw a pack of vicious dogs, getting wet would suddenly become small potatoes next to getting chased down an alley and barked at, or possibly eaten. As the Baudelaires began their long journey toward V.F.D., dead bugs, stepped-on toes, and the possibility of someone leaning on them became small potatoes next to the far more unpleasant things they were encountering. Without anything else on the flat land to blow up against, the wind concentrated its efforts on Violet, a phrase which here means that before long her hair was so wildly tangled that it looked like it had never seen a comb. Because Klaus was standing behind Violet, the wind didn't blow on him much, but without anything else in the empty landscape to cling to, the dust on the ground concentrated its efforts on the middle Baudelaire, and soon he was dusty from head to toe, as if it had been years since he'd had a shower. Perched on top of Violet's luggage, Sunny was out of the way of the dust, but without anything else in the desolate terrain to shine on, the sun concentrated its efforts on her, which meant that she was soon as sunburned as a baby who had spent six months at the seashore, instead of a few hours on top of a suitcase.

But even as they approached the town, V.F.D. still looked as hazy as it did from far away. As the children drew closer and closer to their new home, they could see a number of buildings of different heights and widths, separated by streets both narrow and wide, and the Baudelaires could even see the tall skinny shapes of lampposts and flagpoles stretching out toward the sky. But everything they saw — from the tip of the highest building to the curve of the narrowest street — was pitch black, and seemed to be shaking slightly, as if the entire town were painted on a piece of cloth that was trembling in the wind. The buildings were trembling, and the lampposts were trembling, and even the very streets were shaking ever so slightly, and it was like no town the three Baudelaires had ever seen. It was a mystery, but unlike most mysteries, once the children reached the outskirts of V.F.D. and learned what was causing the trembling effect, they did not feel any better to have the mystery solved.

The town was covered in crows. Nearly every inch of nearly every object had a large black bird roosting on it and casting a suspicious eye on the children as they stood at the very edge of the village. There were crows sitting on the roofs of all the buildings, perching on the windowsills, and squatting on the steps and on the sidewalks. Crows were covering all of the trees, from the very top branches to the roots poking out of the crow-covered ground, and were gathered in large groups on the streets for crow conversations. Crows were covering the lampposts and flagpoles, and there were crows lying down in the gutters and resting between fence posts. There were even six crows crowded together on the sign that read "Town Hall," with an arrow leading down a crow-covered street. The crows weren't squawking or cawing, which is what crows often do, or playing the trumpet, which crows practically never do, but the town was far from silent. The air was filled with the sounds the crows made as they moved around. Sometimes one crow would fly from one perch to another, as if it had suddenly become bored roosting on the mailbox and thought it might be more fun to perch on the doorknob of a building. Occasionally, several crows would flutter their wings, as if they were stiff from sitting together on a bench and wanted to stretch a little bit. And almost constantly, the crows would shift in their places, trying to make themselves as comfortable as they could in such cramped quarters. All this motion explained why the town had looked so shivery in the distance, but it certainly didn't make the Baudelaires feel any better, and they stood together in silence for quite some time, trying to find the courage to walk among all the fluttering black birds.

"I've read three books on crows," Klaus said. "They're perfectly harmless."

"Yes, I know," Violet said. "It's unusual to see so many crows in one place, but they're nothing to worry about. It's small potatoes."

"Zimuster," Sunny agreed, but the three children still did not take a step closer to the crow-covered town. Despite what they had said to one another — that the crows were harmless birds, that they had nothing to worry about, and "Zimuster," which meant something along the lines of "It would be silly to be afraid of a bunch of birds" — the Baudelaires felt they were encountering some very large potatoes indeed.

If I had been one of the Baudelaires myself, I would have stood at the edge of town for the rest of my life, whimpering with fear, rather than take even one step into the crow-covered streets, but it only took the Baudelaires a few minutes to work up the courage to walk through all of the muttering, scuffling birds to Town Hall.

"This isn't as difficult as I thought it might be," Violet said, in a quiet voice so as not to disturb the crows closest to her. "It's not exactly small potatoes, but there's enough space between the groups of crows to step."

"That's true," Klaus said, his eyes on the sidewalk to avoid stepping on any crow tails. "And they tend to move aside, just a little bit, as we walk by."

"Racah," Sunny said, crawling as carefully as she could. She meant something along the lines of "It's almost like walking through a quiet, but polite, crowd of very short people," and her siblings smiled in agreement. Before too long, they had walked the entire block of the crow-lined street, and there at the far corner was a tall, impressive building that appeared to be made of white marble — at least, as far as the Baudelaires could tell, because it was as covered with crows as the rest of the neighborhood. Even the sign reading "Town Hall" looked like it read "wn Ha," because three enormous crows were perched on it, gazing at the Baudelaires with their tiny beady eyes. Violet raised her hand as if to knock on the door, but then paused.

"What's the matter?" Klaus said.

"Nothing," Violet replied, but her hand still hung in the air. "I guess I'm just a little skittish. After all, this is the Town Hall of V.F.D. For all we know, behind this door may be the secret we've been looking for since the Quagmires were first kidnapped."

"Maybe we shouldn't get our hopes up," Klaus said. "Remember, when we lived with the Squalors, we thought we had solved the V.F.D. mystery, but we were wrong. We could be wrong this time, too."

"But we could be right," Violet said, "and if we're right, we should be prepared for whatever terrible thing is behind this door."

"Unless we're wrong," Klaus pointed out. "Then we have nothing to be prepared for."

"Gaksoo!" Sunny said. She meant something along the lines of "There's no point in arguing, because we'll never know whether we're right or wrong until we knock on the door," and before her siblings could answer her she crawled around Klaus's legs and took the plunge, a phrase which here means "knocked firmly on the door with her tiny knuckles."

"Come in!" called a very grand voice, and the Baudelaires opened the door and found themselves in a large room with a very high ceiling, a very shiny floor, and a very long bench, with very detailed portraits of crows hanging on the walls. In front of the bench was a small platform where a woman in a motorcycle helmet was standing, and behind the platform were perhaps one hundred folding chairs, most of which had a person sitting on them who was staring at the Baudelaire orphans. But the Baudelaire orphans were not staring back. The three children were staring so hard at the people sitting on the bench that they scarcely glanced at the folding chairs at all.

On the bench, sitting stiffly side by side, were twenty-five people who had two things in common. The first thing was that they were all quite old — the youngest person on the bench, a woman sitting on the far end, looked about eighty-one years of age, and everyone else looked quite a bit older. But the second thing they had in common was far more interesting. At first glance it looked like a few crows had flown in from the streets and roosted on the bench-sitters' heads, but as the Baudelaires looked more closely, they saw that the crows did not blink their eyes, or flutter their wings or move at all in any way, and the children realized that they were nothing more than black hats, made in such a way as to resemble actual crows. It was such a strange kind of hat to be wearing that the children found themselves staring for quite a few minutes without noticing anything else.

"Are you the Baudelaire orphans?" asked one of the old men who was sitting on the bench, in a gravelly voice. As he talked, his crow head flapped slightly, which only made it look more ridiculous. "We've been expecting you, although I wasn't told you would look so terrible. You three are the most windswept, dusty, and sunburned children I have ever seen. Are you sure you're the children we've been waiting for?"

"Yes," Violet replied. "I'm Violet Baudelaire, and this is my brother, Klaus, and my sister, Sunny, and the reason why we — "

"Shush," one of the other old men said. "We're not discussing you right now. Rule #492 clearly states that the Council of Elders will only discuss things that are on the platform. Right now we are discussing our new Chief of Police. Are there any questions from the townspeople regarding Officer Luciana?"

"Yes, I have a question," called out a man in plaid pants. "I want to know what happened to our previous Chief of Police. I liked that guy."

The woman on the platform held up a white-gloved hand, and the Baudelaires turned to look at her for the first time. Officer Luciana was a very tall woman wearing big black boots, a blue coat with a shiny badge, and a motorcycle helmet with the visor pulled down to cover her eyes. The Baudelaires could see her mouth, below the edge of the visor, covered in bright red lipstick. "The previous Chief of Police has a sore throat," she said, turning her helmet to the man who had asked the question. "He accidentally swallowed a box of thumbtacks. But let's not waste time talking about him. I am your new Chief of Police, and I will make sure that any rulebreakers in town are punished properly. I can't see how there's anything more to discuss."

"I quite agree with you," said the first Elder who had spoken, as the people in folding chairs nodded. "The Council of Elders hereby ends the discussion of Officer Luciana. Hector, please bring the orphans to the platform for discussion."

A tall skinny man in rumpled overalls stood up from one of the folding chairs as the Chief of Police stepped off the platform with a lipsticked smile on. His eyes on the floor, the man walked over to the Baudelaires and pointed first at the Council of Elders sitting on the bench and then at the empty platform. Although they would have preferred a more polite method of communication, the children understood at once, and Violet and Klaus stepped up onto the platform and then lifted Sunny up to join them.

One of the women in the Council of Elders spoke up. "We are now discussing the guardianship of the Baudelaire orphans. Under the new government program, the entire town of V.F.D. will act as guardian over these three children because it takes a village to raise a child. Are there any questions?"

"Are these the same Baudelaires," came a voice from the back of the room, "who are involved in the kidnapping of the Quagmire twins by Count Omar?"

The Baudelaires turned around to see a woman dressed in a bright pink bathrobe and holding up a copy of The Daily Punctilio. "It says here in the newspaper that an evil count is coming after those children. I don't want someone like that in our town!"

"We've taken care of that matter, Mrs. Morrow," replied another member of the Council soothingly. "We'll explain in a moment. Now, when children have a guardian, the guardian makes them do chores, so it follows that you Baudelaires will do all the chores for the entire village. Beginning tomorrow, you three children will be responsible for anything that anyone asks you to do."

The children looked at each other in disbelief. "Begging your pardon," Klaus said timidly, "but there are only twenty-four hours in a day, and there appear to be several hundred townspeople. How will we find the time to do everyone's chores?"

"Hush!" several members of the Council said in unison, and then the youngest-looking woman spoke up. "Rule #920 clearly states that no one may talk while on the platform unless you are a police officer. You're orphans, not police officers, so shut up. Now, due to the V.F.D. crows, you will have to arrange your chore schedule as follows: In the morning, the crows roost uptown, so that's when you will do all the downtown chores, so the crows don't get in your way. In the afternoon, as you can see, the crows roost downtown, so you will do the uptown chores then. Please pay particular attention to our new fountain, which was just installed this morning. It's very beautiful, and needs to be kept as clean as possible. At night, the crows roost in Nevermore Tree, which is on the outskirts of town, so there's no problem there. Are there any questions?"

"I have a question," said the man in plaid pants. He stood up from his folding chair and pointed at the Baudelaires. "Where are they going to live? It may take a village to raise a child, but that doesn't mean that our homes have to be disturbed by noisy children, does it?"

"Yes," agreed Mrs. Morrow. "I'm all for the orphans doing our chores, but I don't want them cluttering up my house."

Several other townspeople spoke up. "Hear, hear!" they said, using an expression which here means "I don't want Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire to live with me, either!"

One of the oldest-looking Elders raised both his hands up in the air. "Please," he said. "There is no reason for all this fuss. The children will live with Hector, our handyman. He will feed them, clothe them, and make sure they do all the chores, and he is responsible for teaching them all of the rules of V.F.D., so they won't do any more terrible things, such as talking while on the platform."

"Thank goodness for that," muttered the man in plaid pants.

"Now, Baudelaires," said yet another member of the Council. She was sitting so far from the platform that she had to crane her head to look at the children, and her hat looked like it would fall off her head. "Before Hector takes you to his house, I'm sure you have some concerns of your own. It's too bad you're not allowed to speak right now, otherwise you could tell us what they were. But Mr. Poe sent us some materials regarding this Count Olaf person."

"Omar," corrected Mrs. Morrow, pointing to the headline in the newspaper.

"Silence!" the Elder said. "Now, Baudelaires, I'm sure you are very concerned about this Olaf fellow, but as your guardian, the town will protect you. That is why we have recently made up a new rule, Rule #19,833. It clearly states that no villains are allowed within the city limits."

"Hear, hear!" the townspeople cried, and the Council of Elders nodded in appreciation, bobbing their crow-shaped hats.

"Now, if there are no more questions," an Elder concluded, "Hector, please take the Baudelaires off the platform and take them to your house."

Still keeping his eyes on the floor, the man in overalls strode silently to the platform and led them out of the room. The children hurried to catch up with the handyman, who had not said one word all this time. Was he unhappy to be taking care of three children? Was he angry at the Council of Elders? Was he unable to speak at all? It reminded the Baudelaires of one of Count Olaf's associates, the one who looked like neither a man nor a woman and who never seemed to speak. The children kept a few steps behind Hector as he walked out of the building, almost afraid to get any closer to a man who was so strange and silent.

When Hector opened the door of Town Hall and led the children back out onto the crow-covered sidewalk, he let out a big sigh — the first sound the children had heard from him. Then he looked down at each Baudelaire and gave them a gentle smile. "I'm never truly relaxed," he said to them in a pleasant voice, "until I have left Town Hall. The Council of Elders makes me feel very skittish. All those strict rules! It makes me so skittish that I never speak during one of their council meetings. But I always feel much better the moment I walk out of the building. Now, it looks like we're going to be spending quite a bit of time together, so let's get a few things straight. Number one, call me Hector. Number two, I hope you like Mexican food, because that's my specialty. And number three, I want you to see something marvelous, and we're just in time. The sun is starting to set."

It was true. The Baudelaires hadn't noticed, when they stepped out of Town Hall, that the afternoon light had slipped away and that the sun was now just beginning to dip below the horizon. "It's lovely," Violet said politely, although she had never understood all the fuss about standing around admiring sunsets.

"Shh," Hector said. "Who cares about the sunset? Just be quiet for a minute, and watch the crows. It should happen any second now."

"What should happen?" Klaus said.

"Shh," Hector said again, and then it began to happen. The Council of Elders had already told the Baudelaires about the roosting habits of the crows, but the three children hadn't really given the matter a second thought, a phrase which here means "considered, even for a second, what it would look like when thousands of crows would fly together to a new location." One of the largest crows, sitting on top of the mailbox, was the first to fly up in the air, and with a rustle of wings he — or she; it was hard to tell from so far away — began to fly in a large circle over the children's heads. Then a crow from one of Town Hall's windowsills flew up to join the first crow, and then one from a nearby bush, and then three from the street, and then hundreds of crows began to rise up at once and circle in the air, and it was as if an enormous shadow was being lifted from the town. The Baudelaires could finally see what all the streets looked like, and they could gaze at each detail of the buildings as more and more crows left their afternoon roosts. But the children scarcely looked at the town. Instead they looked straight up, at the mysterious and beautiful sight of all those birds making a huge circle in the sky.

"Isn't it marvelous?" Hector cried. His long skinny arms were outstretched, and he had to raise his voice over the sound of all the fluttering wings. "Isn't it marvelous?"

Violet, Klaus, and Sunny nodded in agreement, and stared at the thousands of crows circling and circling above them like a mass of fluttering smoke or like black, fresh ink — such as the ink I am using now, to write down these events — that somehow had found its way to the heavens. The sound of the wings sounded like a million pages being flipped, and the wind from all that fluttering blew in their grinning faces. For a moment, with all that air rushing toward them, the Baudelaire orphans felt as if they too could fly up into the air, away from Count Olaf and all their troubles, and join the circle of crows in the evening sky.