The children looked out the windows of the van and found that they could only half agree with the bearded man, for the simple reason that Heimlich Hospital was only half a building, or at best two thirds. The left side of the hospital was a shiny white structure, with a row of tall pillars and small carved portraits of famous doctors over each window. In front of the building was a neatly mowed lawn, with occasional patches of brightly colored wildflowers. But the right side of the hospital was scarcely a structure at all, let alone a beautiful one. There were a few boards nailed together into rectangles, and a few planks nailed down for floors, but there were no walls or windows, so it looked like a drawing of a hospital rather than a hospital itself. There was no sign of any pillars and not even one carved doctor portrait on this half-finished side, just a few sheets of plastic fluttering in the wind, and instead of a lawn there was just an empty field of dirt. It was as if the architect in charge of constructing the building had decided halfway through that he’d rather go on a picnic, and had never returned. The driver parked the van underneath a sign that was half finished, too: the word “Heimlich” was in fancy gold letters on a clean white square of wood, but the word “Hospital” was scrawled in ballpoint pen on a piece of cardboard ripped from an old box.
“I’m sure they’ll finish it someday,” the bearded man continued. “But in the meantime, we can picture the other half, and picturing something makes it so. Now, let’s picture ourselves getting out of the van.”
The three Baudelaires did not have to picture it, but they followed the bearded man and the rest of the volunteers out of the van and onto the lawn in front of the prettier half of the hospital. The members of V.F.D. were stretching their arms and legs after the long drive, and helping the bearded man remove a big bunch of heart-shaped balloons from the back of the van, but the children merely stood around anxiously and tried to figure out what to do next.
“Where should we go?” Violet asked. “If we walk around the hallways of the hospital singing to people, someone will recognize us.”
“That’s true,” Klaus said. “The doctors, nurses, administrators, and patients can’t all believe that no news is good news. I’m sure some of them have read this morning’s Daily Punctilio.”
“Aronec,” Sunny said, which meant “And we’re not getting any closer to learning anything about V.F.D., or Jacques Snicket.”
“That’s true,” Violet agreed. “Maybe we need to find a Library of Records, like the bearded man said.”
“But where can we find one?” Klaus asked. “We’re in the middle of nowhere.”
“No walk!” Sunny said.
“I don’t want to start all that walking again either,” Violet said, “but I don’t see what else we can do.”
“O.K., volunteers!” the bearded man said. He took his guitar out of the van and began playing some cheerful and familiar chords. “Everyone take a heart-shaped balloon and start singing!
“We are Volunteers Fighting Disease,
And we’re cheerful all day long,
If someone said that we were sad,
That person would be—”
“Attention!” interrupted a voice that seemed to come from the sky. The voice was female but very scratchy and faint, as if the voice were that of a woman talking with a piece of aluminum foil over her mouth. “Your attention please!”
“Shh, everybody!” the bearded man said, stopping the song. “That’s Babs, the Head of Human Resources at the hospital. She must have an important announcement.”
“Attention!” the voice said. “This is Babs, Head of Human Resources. I have an important announcement.”
“Where is she?” Klaus asked him, worried that she might recognize the three accused murderers hiding in V.F.D.
“In the hospital someplace,” the bearded man replied. “She prefers communicating over the intercom.”
The word “intercom” here refers to someone talking into a microphone someplace and having their voice come out of speakers someplace else, and sure enough the children noticed a small row of square speakers placed on the finished half of the building, just above the doctor portraits. “Attention!” the voice said again, and it became even scratchier and fainter, as if the woman with the piece of aluminum foil over her mouth had fallen into a swimming pool filled with fizzy soda. This is not a pleasant way to hear someone talk, and yet as soon as Babs made her announcement, the savage breasts of the Baudelaire orphans were instantly soothed, as if the scratchy and faint voice were a calming piece of music. But the Baudelaires did not feel better because of the way Babs’s voice sounded. The announcement soothed the children’s savage breasts because of what it said.
“I need three members of the Volunteers Fighting Disease who are willing to be given a new assignment,” said the voice. “Those three volunteers should report immediately to my office, which is the seventeenth door on the left as you enter the finished half of the building. Instead of walking around the hallways of the hospital singing to people, these three volunteers will be working in the Library of Records here at Heimlich Hospital.”
CHAPTER
Four
Whether you have been sent to see the principal of your school for throwing wet paper towels at the ceiling to see if they stick, or taken to the dentist to plead with him to hollow out one of your teeth so you can smuggle a single page of your latest book past the guards at the airport, it is never a pleasant feeling to stand outside the door of an office, and as the Baudelaire orphans stood at the door reading “Office of the Head of Human Resources” they were reminded of all the unpleasant offices they had recently visited. On their very first day at Prufrock Preparatory School, before they had even met Isadora and Duncan Quagmire, the Baudelaires had visited the office of Vice Principal Nero and learned about all of the academy’s strict and unfair rules. When they worked at Lucky Smells Lumbermill, the siblings had been summoned to the office of the owner, who made clear just how dreadful their situation really was. And, of course, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny had been many, many times to Mr. Poe’s office at the bank, where he coughed and talked on the phone and made decisions about the Baudelaires’ future that had not proved to be good ones. But even if the children had not had all these unfortunate experiences in offices, it was perfectly understandable that the Baudelaire children had to stand for a few moments in front of the seventeenth door on the left, and gather their courage to knock.
“I’m not sure we should take this risk,” Violet said. “If Babs has read this morning’s edition of The Daily Punctilio, she’ll recognize us as soon as we walk through the door. We might as well be knocking on the door of our jail cell.”
“But the Library of Records might be our only hope,” Klaus said. “We need to find out who Jacques Snicket really was—where he worked, and how he knew us. If we get some evidence, we can convince people that Count Olaf is still alive and that we’re not murderers.”
“Curoy,” Sunny added, which meant “Besides, the Quagmire triplets are far, far away, and we have only a few pages of their notebooks. We need to find the real meaning of V.F.D.”
“Sunny’s right,” Klaus said. “In the Library of Records, we might even solve the mystery of that underground passageway that led from Jerome and Esmé Squalor’s apartment to the ashy remains of the Baudelaire mansion.”
“Afficu,” Sunny said. She meant something like “And the only way we’ll get into the Library of Records is if we talk to Babs, so it’s a risk we have to take.”
“All right,” Violet said, looking down at her sister and smiling. “You’ve convinced me. But if Babs begins looking at us suspiciously, we’ll leave, agreed?”
“Agreed,” Klaus said.
“Yep,” Sunny said, and knocked on the door.
“Who is it?” Babs’s voice called out.
“It’s three members of Volunteers Fighting Disease,” Violet replied. “We’re here to volunteer at the Library of Records.”
“Come in,” Babs commanded, an
d the children opened the door and walked into the office. “I was wondering when someone would show up,” the Head of Human Resources continued. “I was just finishing up reading this morning’s paper. These three terrible children are running around killing people.”
The Baudelaires looked at one another and were about to run back out the door when they saw something in the office that changed their minds. The office of the Head of Human Resources at Heimlich Hospital was a small one, with a small desk, two small chairs, and a small window decorated with two small curtains. On the windowsill was a small vase of yellow flowers and on the wall was a small tasteful portrait of a man leading a horse to a small pond of fresh water. But it was not the furnishings, the flower arrangement, or the tasteful artwork that made the three orphans stop.
Babs’s voice had come from the direction of the desk, which the Baudelaires had expected, but what they hadn’t expected was that Babs was not sitting behind the desk, or on the desk or even beneath it. Instead, a small square intercom speaker—just like the ones on the outside of the hospital—had been placed in the middle of the desk, and it was from this speaker that the speaking had been spoken. It was strange to hear speaking from a speaker instead of from the person who was speaking, but the children realized they could not be recognized if Babs could not see them, so they did not run out of the room.
“We’re three children, too,” Violet said to the speaker, trying to be as honest as she could, “but we’d much rather volunteer in the hospital than embark on a life of crime.”
“If you’re children, then be silent!” Babs’s voice said rudely. “In my opinion, children should be seen and not heard. I’m an adult, so it follows that I should be heard and not seen. That’s why I work exclusively over the intercom. You will be working exclusively with the most important thing we do in this hospital. Can you guess what it is?”
“Healing sick people?” Klaus guessed.
“Be silent!” the speaker commanded. “Children should be seen and not heard, remember? Just because I can’t see you doesn’t mean you should start babbling about sick people. You’re wrong, anyway. The most important thing we do at the hospital is paperwork, and you will be working at the Library of Records, filing paperwork. I’m sure this will be difficult for you, because children never have any administrative experience.”
“Hend,” said Sunny in disagreement. Violet was about to explain that her sister meant something along the lines of “Actually, I worked as an administrative assistant at Prufrock Preparatory School,” but the intercom speaker was too busy reproving the Baudelaires, a phrase which here means “shouting ‘Be silent!’” at every opportunity.
“Be silent!” the speaker shouted. “Instead of chattering away, report to the Library of Records at once. The Library of Records is located in the basement, at the very bottom of the staircase next to this office. You’ll go straight there every morning when the van arrives at Heimlich Hospital, and you’ll return straight to the van at the end of each day. The van will take you back home. Are there any questions?”
The Baudelaires had plenty of questions, of course, but they did not ask them. They knew that if they said even one word, the intercom speaker would command them to be silent, and besides, they were eager to get to the Library of Records, where they hoped to answer the most important questions of their lives.
“Excellent!” the speaker said. “You’re learning to be seen instead of heard. Now, get out of this office.”
The children got out of that office and quickly found the staircase the speaker had mentioned. The Baudelaires were glad that the route to the Library of Records was so easy to remember, because Heimlich Hospital seemed like a place where it would be very easy to get lost. The staircase curved this way and that, leading to many doors and corridors, and every ten feet or so, nailed to the wall just below an intercom speaker there was a complicated map of the hospital, filled with arrows, stars, and other symbols the Baudelaires did not recognize. Every so often, the children would see someone from the hospital walking toward them. Although neither the Volunteers Fighting Disease nor the Head of Human Resources had recognized the three children, it was certain that someone in the hospital must have read The Daily Punctilio, and the Baudelaires did not want to be seen or heard, and they would have to turn and face the wall, pretending to consult the map so anyone walking by would not see their faces.
“That was close,” Violet sighed in relief, when a group of chatting doctors had gone by without even glancing at the youngsters.
“It was close,” Klaus agreed, “and we don’t want it to get any closer. I don’t think we should get back on the van at the end of the day—or any other day. Sooner or later we’re bound to be recognized.”
“You’re right,” Violet said. “We’d have to walk back through the hospital every day, just to get to the van. But where will we go at night? People will think it is odd if three children are sleeping in the Library of Records.”
“Half,” Sunny suggested.
“That’s a pretty good idea,” Violet replied. “We could sleep in the unfinished half of the hospital. Nobody will go there at night.”
“Sleep all by ourselves, in a half-finished room?” Klaus asked. “It’ll be cold and dark.”
“It can’t be much worse than the Orphans Shack at Prufrock Prep,” Violet said.
“Danya,” Sunny said, which meant “Or the bedroom at Count Olaf’s house.”
Klaus shuddered, remembering how terrible it was when Count Olaf had been their guardian. “You’re right,” he said, stopping at a door which read “Library of Records.” “The unfinished wing of the hospital can’t be that bad.”
The Baudelaires knocked on the door, which opened almost immediately to reveal one of the oldest men they had ever met, wearing one of the tiniest pairs of glasses they had ever seen. Each lens was scarcely bigger than a green pea, and the man had to squint in order to look at them.
“My eyesight isn’t what it used to be,” he said, “but you appear to be children. And you’re very familiar children, too. I’m certain I’ve seen your faces somewhere before.”
The Baudelaires looked at one another in panic, not knowing whether to dash out of the room or to try to convince the man he was mistaken.
“We’re new volunteers,” Violet said. “I don’t think we’ve ever met before.”
“Babs assigned us to work in the Library of Records,” Klaus said.
“Well, you’ve come to the right place,” the old man said with a wrinkled smile. “My name is Hal, and I’ve worked here in the Library of Records for more years than I’d like to count. I’m afraid my eyesight isn’t what it used to be, so I asked Babs if some volunteers could help me.”
“Wolick,” Sunny said.
“My sister says we’re very happy to be of assistance,” Violet said, “and we are.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” Hal said. “Because there’s a lot of work to be done. Come on in and I’ll explain what you have to do.”
The Baudelaires walked through the door and found themselves in a small room with nothing much in it but a small table that held a bowl of fresh fruit. “This is the library?” Klaus said.
“Oh no,” the man said. “This is just an antechamber, a small room I’m using to store my fruit. If you get hungry during the day, you may help yourself to something out of that bowl. Also, this is where the intercom is, so we’ll have to report here whenever Babs makes an announcement.” He led them across the room to a small door and took a loop of string out of the pocket of his coat. On the loop of string were hundreds of keys, which made tiny clanging noises as they jostled one another. Hal quickly found the right key to unlock the door. “This,” he said with a small smile, “is the Library of Records.”
Hal ushered the children inside a dim room with very low ceilings—so low that Hal’s gray hair almost brushed against the top. But although the room was not very tall, it was enormous. The Library of Records stretched out so fa
r in front of the Baudelaires that they could scarcely see the opposite wall, or, as the children looked from side to side, the right and left walls. All they could see were big metal file cabinets, with neatly labeled drawers describing the files contained inside. The file cabinets were placed in row after row, as far as the eye could see. The rows were placed very close together, so that the siblings had to walk behind Hal in single file as he gave them the tour of the room.
“I’ve organized everything myself,” he explained. “The Library of Records contains information not only from Heimlich Hospital, but from all over the area. There’s information about everything from poetry to pills, from picture frames to pyramids, and from pudding to psychology—and that’s just in the P aisle, which we’re walking down right now.”
“What an amazing place,” Klaus said. “Just think of everything we can learn from reading all these files.”
“No, no, no,” Hal said, shaking his head sternly. “We’re supposed to file this information, not read it. I don’t want to see you touching any of these files except when you’re working with them. That’s why I keep all these file cabinets locked up tight. Now, let me show you exactly where you’ll be working.”
Hal led them to the far wall and pointed out a small rectangular hole, just wide enough for Sunny or maybe Klaus to crawl through. Beside the hole was a basket with a large stack of paper in it, and a bowl filled with paper clips. “Authorities deposit information into the information chute, which begins outside the hospital and ends right here,” he explained, “and I need two people to help me file these deposits in the right place. Here’s what you do. First, you remove the paper clips and put them in this bowl. Then you glance at the information and figure out where it goes. Remember, try to read as little as possible.” He paused, unclipped a small stack of paper, and squinted at the top page. “For instance,” he continued. “You only have to read a few words to see that these paragraphs are about the weather last week at Damocles Dock, which is on the shore of some lake someplace. So you would ask me to unlock cabinets in aisle D, for Damocles, or W, for weather, or even P, for paragraphs. It’s your choice.”