“It must almost be morning,” Violet said, as she helped Sunny hoist herself out of the elevator doors. “We’d better untie our rope from the doorknob, and shut these doors, otherwise the Squalors will see what we’ve been up to.”
“Why shouldn’t they see?” Klaus asked. “Maybe then they’d believe us about Gunther.”
“No one ever believes us about Gunther, or any of Olaf’s other disguises,” Violet said, “unless we have some evidence. All we have now is an ersatz elevator, an empty cage, and three cooling fire tongs. That’s not evidence of anything.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Klaus said. “Well, why don’t you two untie the rope, and I’ll go straight to the library and start reading the catalog.”
“Good plan,” Violet said.
“Reauhop!” Sunny said, which meant “And good luck!” Klaus quietly opened the door of the penthouse and let himself in, and the Baudelaire sisters began pulling the rope back up the shaft. The end of the last extension cord clinked and clinked against the walls of the passageway as Sunny wound up the ersatz rope until it was a coil of extension cords, curtain pulls, and fancy neckties. Violet untied the last double knot to detach it from the doorknob, and turned to her sister.
“Let’s store this under my bed,” she said, “in case we need it later. It’s on the way to the library anyway.”
“Yallrel,” Sunny added, which meant “And let’s shut the sliding elevator doors, so the Squalors don’t see that we’ve been sneaking around an elevator shaft.”
“Good thinking,” Violet said, and pressed the Up button. The doors slid shut again, and after taking a good look around to make sure they hadn’t left anything behind, the two Baudelaires walked into the penthouse and followed their bread-crumb trail past a breakfast room, down a hallway, across a standing room, down a hallway, and finally to Violet’s room, where they stored the ersatz rope under the bed. They were about to head right to the library when Sunny noticed a note that had been left on Violet’s extra-fluffy pillow.
“‘Dear Violet,’” read Violet, “‘I couldn’t find you or your siblings this morning to say good-bye. I had to leave early to buy yellow paper clips before heading over to the In Auction. Esmé will take you to Veblen Hall at ten-thirty sharp, so be sure to be ready, or she’ll be very annoyed. See you then! Sincerely yours, Jerome Squalor.’”
“Yikes!” Sunny said, pointing to the nearest of the 612 clocks that the Squalors owned.
“Yikes is right,” Violet said. “It’s already ten o’clock. All that climbing up and down the elevator shaft took much longer than I thought.”
“Wrech,” Sunny added, which meant something like “Not to mention making those welding torches.”
“We’d better go to the library right away,” Violet said. “Maybe we can help Klaus speed up the research process in some way.”
Sunny nodded in agreement, and the two sisters walked down the hallway to the Squalor library. Since Jerome had first shown it to them, Violet and Sunny had scarcely been inside, and it looked like nobody else had used it much, either. A good library will never be too neat, or too dusty, because somebody will always be in it, taking books off the shelves and staying up late reading them. Even libraries that were not to the Baudelaires’ taste—Aunt Josephine’s library, for instance, only contained books on grammar—were comfortable places to be in, because the owners of the library used them so much. But the Squalor library was as neat and as dusty as could be. All of the dull books on what was in and what was out sat on the shelves in tidy rows, with layers of dust on top of them as if they hadn’t been disturbed since they’d first been placed there. It made the Baudelaire sisters a little sad to see all those books sitting in the library unread and unnoticed, like stray dogs or lost children that nobody wanted to take home. The only sign of life in the library was their brother, who was reading the catalog so closely that he didn’t look up until his sisters were standing at his side.
“I hate to disturb you when you’re researching,” Violet said, “but there was a note from Jerome on my pillow. Esmé is going to take us to Veblen Hall at ten-thirty sharp, and it’s just past ten o’clock now. Is there any way we can help you?”
“I don’t see how,” Klaus said, his eyes looking worried behind his glasses. “There’s only one copy of the catalog, and it’s pretty complicated. Each of the items for the auction is called a lot, and the catalog lists each lot with a description and a guess at what the highest bid may be. I’ve read up to Lot #49, which is a valuable postage stamp.”
“Well, Gunther can’t hide the Quagmires in a postage stamp,” Violet said. “You can skip that lot.”
“I’ve been skipping lots of lots,” Klaus said, “but I’m still no closer to figuring out where the triplets will be. Would Gunther hide them in Lot #14—an enormous globe? Would he hide them under the lid of Lot #25—a rare and valuable piano? Would he hide them in Lot #48—an enormous statue of a scarlet fish?” Klaus stopped and turned the page of a catalog. “Or would he hide them in Lot #50, which is—”
Klaus ended his sentence in a gasp, but his sisters knew immediately that he did not mean that the fiftieth item to be sold at the In Auction was a sharp intake of breath. He meant he’d discovered something remarkable in the catalog, and they leaned forward to read over his shoulder and see what it was.
“I can’t believe it,” Violet said. “I simply can’t believe it.”
“Toomsk,” Sunny said, which meant something like “This must be where the Quagmires will be hidden.”
“I agree with Sunny,” Klaus said, “even though there’s no description of the item. They don’t even write what the letters stand for.”
“We’ll find out what they stand for,” Violet said, “because we’re going to find Esmé right this minute, and tell her what’s going on. When she finds out, she’ll finally believe us about Gunther, and we’ll get the Quagmires out of Lot #50 before they leave the city. You were right, Klaus—the time was ripe for your researching skills.”
“I guess I was right,” Klaus said. “I can scarcely believe our luck.”
The Baudelaires looked again at the page of the catalog, making sure that it was neither a hallucination nor a phantasm. And it wasn’t. Right there, written in neat black type under the heading “Lot #50,” were three letters, and three punctuation marks, that seemed to spell out the solution to the Baudelaires’ problems. The children looked at one another and smiled. All three siblings could scarcely believe their luck. The Baudelaire orphans could scarcely believe that those three letters spelled out the hiding place of the Quagmires as clearly as it spelled out “V.F.D.”
CHAPTER
Ten
“…and one of the items in the catalog is listed as ‘V.F.D.,’ which is the secret that the Quagmires tried to tell us about right before they were kidnapped,” Klaus finished.
“This is terrible,” Esmé said, and took a sip of the parsley soda she had insisted on pouring for herself before the Baudelaire orphans could tell her everything they had discovered. Then she had insisted on settling herself on the innest couch in her favorite sitting room, and that the three children sit in three chairs grouped around her in a semicircle, before they could relate the story of Gunther’s true identity, the secret passageway behind the sliding elevator doors, the scheme to smuggle the Quagmires out of the city, and the surprising appearance of those three mysterious initials as the description of Lot #50. The three siblings were pleased that their guardian had not dismissed their findings, or argued with them about Gunther or the Quagmires or anything else, but instead had quietly and calmly listened to every detail. In fact, Esmé was so quiet and calm that it was disconcerting, a word which here means “a warning that the Baudelaire children did not heed in time.”
“This is the least smashing thing I have ever heard,” Esmé said, taking another sip of her in beverage. “Let me see if I have understood everything you have said. Gunther is in fact Count Olaf in disguise.”
/> “Yes,” Violet said. “His boots are covering up his tattoo, and his monocle makes him scrunch his face up to hide his one eyebrow.”
“And he has hidden away the Quagmires in a cage at the bottom of my elevator shaft,” Esmé said, putting her soda glass down on a nearby table.
“Yes,” Klaus said. “There’s no elevator behind those doors. Somehow Gunther removed it so he could use the shaft as a secret passageway.”
“And now he’s taken the Quagmires out of the cage,” Esmé continued, “and is going to smuggle them out of the city by hiding them inside Lot #50 of the In Auction.”
“Kaxret,” Sunny said, which meant “You got it, Esmé.”
“This is certainly a complicated plot,” Esmé said. “I’m surprised that young children such as yourself were able to figure it out, but I’m glad you did.” She paused for a moment and removed a speck of dust from one of her fingernails. “And now there’s only one thing to do. We’ll rush right to Veblen Hall and put a stop to this terrible scheme. We’ll have Gunther arrested and the Quagmires set free. We’d better leave right this minute.”
Esmé stood up, and beckoned to the children with a faint smile. The children followed her out of the sitting room and past twelve kitchens to the front door, exchanging puzzled glances. Their guardian was right, of course, that they should go to Veblen Hall and expose Gunther and his treachery, but they couldn’t help wondering why the city’s sixth most important financial advisor was so calm when she said it. The children were so anxious about the Quagmires that they felt as if they were jumping out of their skin, but Esmé led the Baudelaires out of the penthouse as if they were going to the grocery store to purchase whole wheat flour instead of rushing to an auction to stop a horrible crime. As she shut the door of the apartment and turned to smile at the children again, the three siblings could see no sign of anxiousness on her face, and it was disconcerting.
“Klaus and I will take turns carrying you, Sunny,” Violet said, lifting her sister up. “That way the trip down the stairs will be easier for you.”
“Oh, we don’t have to walk down all those stairs,” Esmé said.
“That’s true,” Klaus said. “Sliding down the banisters will be much quicker.”
Esmé put one arm around the children and began walking them away from the front door. It was nice to receive an affectionate gesture from their guardian, but her arm was wrapped around them so tightly that they could scarcely move, which was also disconcerting. “We won’t have to slide down the banisters, either,” she said.
“Then how will we get down from the penthouse?” Violet asked.
Esmé stretched out her other arm, and used one of her long fingernails to press the Up button next to the sliding doors. This was the most disconcerting thing of all, but by now, I’m sorry to say, it was too late. “We’ll take the elevator,” she said, as the doors slid open, and then with one last smile she swept her arm forward and pushed the Baudelaire orphans into the darkness of the elevator shaft.
Sometimes words are not enough. There are some circumstances so utterly wretched that I cannot describe them in sentences or paragraphs or even a whole series of books, and the terror and woe that the Baudelaire orphans felt after Esmé pushed them into the elevator shaft is one of those most dreadful circumstances that can be represented only with two pages of utter blackness. I have no words for the profound horror the children felt as they tumbled down into the darkness. I can think of no sentence that can convey how loudly they screamed, or how cold the air was as it whooshed around them while they fell. And there is no paragraph I could possibly type that would enable you to imagine how frightened the Baudelaires were as they plunged toward certain doom.
But I can tell you that they did not die. Not one hair on their heads had been harmed by the time the children finally stopped tumbling through the darkness. They survived the fall from the top of the shaft for the simple reason that they did not reach the bottom. Something broke their fall, a phrase which here means that the Baudelaires’ plunge was stopped halfway between the sliding elevator doors and the metal cage where the Quagmires had been locked up. Something broke their fall without even injuring them, and though it at first felt like a miracle, when the children understood that they were alive, and no longer falling, they reached out their hands and soon realized that it felt a lot more like a net. While the Baudelaires were reading the catalog of the In Auction, and telling Esmé what they had learned, someone had stretched a rope net across the entire passageway, and it was this net that had stopped the children from plunging to their doom. Far, far above the orphans was the Squalor penthouse, and far, far below them was the cage in the tiny, filthy room with the hallway leading out of it. The Baudelaire orphans were trapped.
But it is far better to be trapped than to be dead, and the three children hugged each other in relief that something had broken their fall. “Spenset,” Sunny said, in a voice hoarse from screaming.
“Yes, Sunny,” Violet said, holding her close. “We’re alive.” She sounded as if she were talking as much to herself as to her sister.
“We’re alive,” Klaus said, hugging them both. “We’re alive, and we’re O.K.”
“I wouldn’t say you were O.K.” Esmé’s voice called down to them from the top of the passageway. Her voice echoed off the walls of the passageway, but the children could still hear every cruel word. “You’re alive, but you’re definitely not O.K. As soon as the auction is over and the Quagmires are on their way out of the city, Gunther will come and get you, and I can guarantee that you three orphans will never be O.K. again. What a wonderful and profitable day! My former acting teacher will finally get his hands on not one but two enormous fortunes!”
“Your former acting teacher?” Violet asked in horror. “You mean you’ve known Gunther’s true identity the entire time?”
“Of course I did,” Esmé said. “I just had to fool you kids and my dim-witted husband into thinking he was really an auctioneer. Luckily, I am a smashing actress, so it was easy to trick you.”
“So you’ve been working together with that terrible villain?” Klaus called up to her. “How could you do that to us?”
“He’s not a terrible villain,” Esmé said. “He’s a genius! I instructed the doorman not to let you out of the penthouse until Gunther came and retrieved you, but Gunther convinced me that throwing you down there was a better idea, and he was right! Now there’s no way you’ll make it to the auction and mess up our plans!”
“Zisalem!” Sunny shrieked.
“My sister is right!” Violet cried. “You’re our guardian! You’re supposed to be keeping us safe, not throwing us down elevator shafts and stealing our fortune!”
“But I want to steal from you,” Esmé said. “I want to steal from you the way Beatrice stole from me.”
“What are you talking about?” Klaus asked. “You’re already unbelievably wealthy. Why do you want even more money?”
“Because it’s in, of course,” Esmé said. “Well, toodle-oo, children. ‘Toodle-oo’ is the in way of saying good-bye to three bratty orphans you’re never going to see again.”
“Why?” Violet cried. “Why are you treating us so terribly?”
Esmé’s answer to this question was the cruelest of all, and like a fall down an elevator shaft, there were no words for her reply. She merely laughed, a loud rude cackle that bounced off the walls of the passageway and then faded into silence as their guardian walked away. The Baudelaire orphans looked at one another—or tried to look at one another, in the darkness—and trembled in disgust and fear, shaking the net that had trapped them and saved them at the same time.
“Dielee?” Sunny said miserably, and her siblings knew that she meant “What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know,” Klaus said, “but we’ve got to do something.”
“And we’ve got to do it quickly,” Violet added, “but this is a very difficult situation. There’s no use climbing up or down—the walls feel to
o 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.”
“Tholc?” 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.”