A Series of Unfortunate Events
Book the Sixth
The Ersatz Elevator
Lemony Snicket


CHAPTER ONE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"In what?" Violet asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Obog," Sunny said doubtfully.

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

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

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

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


CHAPTER TWO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"That's a relief," Klaus said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


CHAPTER THREE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The In Auction?" Klaus asked.

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

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

"Smashi?" Sunny asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Who is Gunther?" Jerome asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Puictiw," Sunny agreed glumly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


CHAPTER FOUR

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Waran!" Sunny shrieked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I know that, dear," Jerome said. "I live with you."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Baudelaires looked at one another and smiled in relief. "Oh, thank
you, Jerome," Violet said. "What did you have in mind?" Jerome smiled,
and knelt down to help Violet roll up the legs of her suit. "I wonder
if you can guess," he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


CHAPTER FIVE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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 Esme' 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. "Esme' 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," Esme' 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," Esme' 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," Esme' 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," Esme' 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," Esme' 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 Esme'
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!" Esme' 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. Esme' 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. Esme' 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.
Esme' 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. Esme'--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 Esme' into the lobby.

"Hello, Jerome," Violet said. "Hello, Esme'."

"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," Esme' 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," Esme' 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."

Esme' 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," Esme' 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 Esme' 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," Esme' 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, Esme' 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 Esme''s very dull speech, of course, but
they listened closely at each curve of the staircase, doublechecking
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 Esme' was rattling off.

"Oh, and magenta wallpaper!" Esme' 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," Esme' 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. "Esme', don't you want to tuck the children
in?"

"Nope," Esme' 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, Esme'. 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!" Esme' 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 Esme''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 Esme' 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, pushbutton 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 Esme' 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.
"Esme' 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. Esme' 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. Esme' 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 Esme' 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," Esme' 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, Esme' 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," Esme' 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," Esme' 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," Esme' 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, Esme'."

"This is certainly a complicated plot," Esme' 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."

Esme' 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 Esme' 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," Esme' said.

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

Esme' 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.

Esme' 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 Esme' 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 Esme' 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." Esme''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," Esme' 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," Esme' 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," Esme' 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," Esme' 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?"

Esme''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 Esme' was scheming together
with Gunther the entire time. She's as ersatz as her elevator."

"Esme''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 runnerup 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 Cafe
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
Esme', 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 Esme', who smiled greedily and
handed her the vase in exchange. Watching Esme' 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 Esme' 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. Esme'
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 Esme' 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 Esme' 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 Esme' 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 mi sentence
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
Esme' and Gunther turned to look as he pointed at the three
Baudelaires. "The orphans are here!"

Esme' 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." Esme'
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," Esme' said dismissively. "I've made enough money today."

"I never thought I'd hear Esme' 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. Esme' 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 Esme'. 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
Esme' a monocled wink. "Please, sir, if--"

"Thousand!"

Gunther stopped at the sound of a new bidder for Lot #50. Esme''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
Esme', 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." Esme' 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!" Esme' 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 Esme' are trying to smuggle them out
of the country."

"What?" Jerome cried. "Esme', is this true?"

Esme' 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 aredoilies'" Violet cried. "This box is full ofdoilies!" 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," Esme' 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."

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

"Don't argue with me," Esme' 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," Esme' 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 Esme'. "We're not in. We're out--out of the city! Come on,
Esme'!"

With a shriek of laughter, Olaf took Esme''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 Esme' 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 Esme' 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
Esme', 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 Esme'
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 Esme' 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 Esme' looked at one another, and burst into laughter as they
slipped into the black truck. Esme' 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 Esme''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. Esme' 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. "Esme' 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 Esme' 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.

About the Author

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