“Then we know we’re on the right track,” Violet finished for him. “Let’s go right this minute.”
“If we go right this minute,” Klaus said, “we’ll have do it very quietly. The Squalors are not going to let three children poke around an elevator shaft.”
“It’s worth the risk, if it helps us figure out Gunther’s plan,” Violet said. I’m sorry to say that it turned out not to be worth the risk at all, but of course the Baudelaires had no way of knowing that, so they merely nodded in agreement and tiptoed toward the penthouse’s exit, peeking into each room before they went through to see if the Squalors were anywhere to be found. But Jerome and Esmé were apparently spending the evening in some room in another part of the apartment, because the Baudelaires didn’t see hide or hair of them—the expression “hide or hair of them” here means “even a glimpse of the city’s sixth most important financial advisor, or her husband”—on their way to the front door. They hoped the door would not squeak as they pushed it open, but apparently silent hinges were in, because the Baudelaires made no noise at all as they left the apartment and tiptoed over to the two pairs of sliding elevator doors.
“How do we know which elevator is which?” Violet whispered. “The pairs of doors look exactly alike.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Klaus replied. “If one of them is really a secret passageway, there must be some way to tell.”
Sunny tugged on the legs of her siblings’ pants, which was a good way to get their attention without making any noise, and when Violet and Klaus looked down to see what their sister wanted, she answered them just as silently. Without speaking, she reached out one of her tiny fingers and pointed to the buttons that were next to each set of sliding doors. Next to one pair of doors, there was a single button, with an arrow printed on it pointing down. But next to the second pair of doors, there were two buttons: one with a Down arrow, and one with an Up arrow. The three children looked at the buttons and considered.
“Why would you need an Up button,” Violet whispered, “if you were already on the top floor?” and without waiting for an answer to her question, she reached out and pressed it. With a quiet, slithery sound, the sliding doors opened, and the children leaned carefully into the doorway, and gasped at what they saw.
“Lakry,” Sunny said, which meant something like “There are no ropes.”
“Not only are there no ropes,” Violet said. “There’s no endlessly looped belt, push-button console, or electromagnetic braking system. I don’t even see an enclosed platform.”
“I knew it,” Klaus said, in hushed excitement. “I knew the elevator was ersatz!”
“Ersatz” is a word that describes a situation in which one thing is pretending to be another, the way the secret passageway the Baudelaires were looking at had been pretending to be an elevator, but the word might as well have meant “the most terrifying place the Baudelaires had ever seen.” As the children stood in the doorway and peered into the elevator shaft, it was as if they were standing on the edge of an enormous cliff, looking down at the dizzying depths below them. But what made these depths terrifying, as well as dizzying, was that they were so very dark. The shaft was more like a pit than a passageway, leading straight down into a blackness the likes of which the youngsters had never seen. It was darker than any night had ever been, even on nights when there was no moon. It was darker than Dark Avenue had been on the day of their arrival. It was darker than a pitch-black panther, covered in tar, eating black licorice at the very bottom of the deepest part of the Black Sea. The Baudelaire orphans had never dreamed that anything could be this dark, even in their scariest nightmares, and as they stood at the edge of this pit of unimaginable blackness, they felt as if the elevator shaft would simply swallow them up and they would never see a speck of light again.
“We have to go down there,” Violet said, scarcely believing the words she was saying.
“I’m not sure I have the courage to go down there,” Klaus said. “Look how dark it is. It’s terrifying.”
“Prollit,” Sunny said, which meant “But not as terrifying as what Gunther will do to us, if we don’t find out his plan.”
“Why don’t we just go tell the Squalors about this?” Klaus asked. “Then they can go down the secret passageway.”
“We don’t have time to argue with the Squalors,” Violet said. “Every minute we waste is a minute the Quagmires are spending in Gunther’s clutches.”
“But how are we going to go down?” Klaus asked. “I don’t see a ladder, or a staircase. I don’t see anything at all.”
“We’re going to have to climb down,” Violet said, “on a rope. But where can we find rope at this time of night? Most hardware stores close at six.”
“The Squalors must have some rope somewhere in their penthouse,” Klaus said. “Let’s split up and find some. We’ll meet back here in fifteen minutes.”
Violet and Sunny agreed, and the Baudelaires stepped carefully away from the elevator shaft and tiptoed back into the Squalor penthouse. They felt like burglars as they split up and began searching the apartment, although there have been only five burglars in the history of robbery who have specialized in rope. All five of these burglars were caught and sent to prison, which is why scarcely any people lock up their rope for safekeeping, but to their frustration, the Baudelaires learned that their guardians didn’t lock up their ropes at all, for the simple reason that they didn’t have any.
“I couldn’t find any ropes at all,” Violet admitted, as she rejoined her siblings. “But I did find these extension cords, which might work.”
“I took these curtain pulls down from some of the windows,” Klaus said. “They’re a little bit like ropes, so I thought they might be useful.”
“Armani,” Sunny offered, holding up an armful of Jerome’s neckties.
“Well, we have some ersatz ropes,” Violet said, “for our climb down the ersatz elevator. Let’s tie them all together with the Devil’s Tongue.”
“The Devil’s Tongue?” Klaus asked.
“It’s a knot,” Violet explained. “It was invented by female Finnish pirates in the fifteenth century. I used it to make my grappling hook, when Olaf had Sunny trapped in that cage, dangling from his tower room, and it’ll work here as well. We need to make as long a rope as possible—for all we know, the passageway goes all the way to the bottom floor of the building.”
“It looks like it goes all the way to the center of the earth,” Klaus said. “We’ve spent so much of our time trying to escape from Count Olaf. I can’t believe that now we’re trying to find him.”
“Me neither,” Violet agreed. “If it weren’t for the Quagmires, I wouldn’t go down there at all.”
“Bangemp,” Sunny reminded her siblings. She meant something along the lines of “If it weren’t for the Quagmires, we would have been in his clutches a long time ago,” and the two older Baudelaires nodded in agreement. Violet showed her siblings how to make the Devil’s Tongue, and the three children hurriedly tied the extension cords to the curtain pulls, and the curtain pulls to the neckties, and the last necktie to the sturdiest thing they could find, which was the doorknob of the Squalor penthouse. Violet checked her siblings’ handiwork and finally gave the whole rope a satisfied tug.
“I think this should hold us,” she said. “I only hope it’s long enough.”
“Why don’t we drop the rope down the shaft,” Klaus said, “and listen to see if it hits the bottom? Then we’ll know for sure.”
“Good idea,” Violet replied, and walked to the edge of the passageway. She threw down the edge of the furthermost extension cord, and the children watched as it disappeared into the blackness, dragging the rest of the Baudelaires’ line with it. The coils of cord and pull and necktie unwound quickly, like a long snake waking up and slithering down into the shaft. It slithered and slithered and slithered, and the children leaned forward as far as they dared and listened as hard as they could. Finally, they heard a faint, faint cli
nk!, 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 schem
es—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.”