A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Slippery Slope (5 page)

Chapter Five

When you have many questions on your mind, and you suddenly have an opportunity to ask them, the questions tend to crowd together and trip over one another, much like passengers on a crowded train when it reaches a popular station. With Bruce and the Snow Scouts asleep, the two elder Baudelaires finally had an opportunity to talk with the mysterious scout in the sweater, but everything they wanted to ask seemed hopelessly entangled. "How... " Violet started, but the question "How did you know we were the Baudelaires?" stumbled against the question "Who are you?" and fell back against the questions "Are you a member of V.F.D.?" and "What does V.F.D. stand for?" "Do... " Klaus said, but the question "Do you know where our sister is?" tripped over the question "Do you know if one of our parents is alive?" which was already struggling with "How can we get to the headquarters?" and "Will my sisters and I ever find a safe place to live without constantly being threatened by Count Olaf and his troupe as they hatch plan after plan to steal the Baudelaire fortune?" although the middle Baudelaire knew that his last question was unlikely to be answered at all. "I'm sure you have lots of questions," the boy whispered, "but we can't talk here. Bruce is a light sleeper, and he's caused V.F.D. enough trouble already without learning another of our secrets. I promise all your questions will be answered, but first we've got to get to the headquarters. Come with me." Without another word, the sweatered scout turned around, and the Baudelaires saw he was wearing a backpack inscribed with an insignia they had seen at Caligari Carnival. At first glance, this insignia merely appeared to be an eye, but the children had discovered that if you looked closely you could see the initials V.F.D., cleverly hidden in the drawing. The scout began to walk, and the two siblings got out of their blankets as quietly as they could and followed him. To their surprise, he did not lead them toward the cave entrance, but to the back of the cave, where the Snow Scouts' fire had been. Now it was nothing more than a pile of gray ashes, although it was still very warm, and the smell of smoke was still in the air. The sweatered scout reached into his pocket and brought out a flashlight. "I had to wait for the fire to die down before I showed you," he said, and with a nervous glance at the sleeping scouts, turned the flashlight on and shone it above them. "Look." Violet and Klaus looked, and saw that there was a hole in the ceiling, big enough for a person to crawl through. The last wisps of smoke from the fire were floating up into the hole. "A chimney," Klaus murmured. "I was wondering why the fire didn't fill the cave with smoke." "The official name is Vertical Flame Diversion," the scout whispered. "It serves as a chimney and as a secret passageway. It runs from this cave to the Valley of Four Drafts. If we climb up there, we can reach headquarters within hours, instead of hiking all the way up the mountain. Years ago, there was a metal pole that ran down the center of the hole, so people could slide down and hide in this cave in case of an emergency. The pole is gone now, but there should be carved toeholds in the sides to climb all the way up." He shone the flashlight on the cave wall, and sure enough, the Baudelaires could see two rows of small carved holes, perfect for sticking one's feet and hands into. "How do you know all this?" Violet asked. The scout looked at her for a moment, and it seemed to the Baudelaires that he was smiling behind his mask. "I read it," he said, "in a book called Remarkable Phenomena of the Mortmain Mountains." "That sounds familiar," Klaus said. "It should," the scout replied. "I borrowed it from Dr. Montgomery's library." Dr. Montgomery was one of the Baudelaires' first guardians, and at the mention of his name Violet and Klaus found they had several more questions they wanted to ask. "When... " Violet started. "Why... " Klaus started. "Carm... " Another voice startled the Baudelaires and the scout, the voice of Bruce, waking up halfway at the sound of the conversation. All three children froze for a moment, as Bruce turned over on his blanket, and with a long sigh, went back to sleep. "We'll talk when we reach the headquarters " the scout whispered. "The Vertical Flame Diversion is very echoey, so we'll have to be absolutely silent as we climb, or the echoing noise will alert Bruce and the Snow Scouts. It'll be very dark inside, so you'll have to feel against the wall for the footholds, and the air will be smoky, but if you keep your masks on they'll filter the air and make it easier to breathe. I'll go first and lead the way. Are you ready?" Violet and Klaus turned toward one another. Even though they could not see each other's faces through the masks, both siblings knew that they were not at all ready. Following a complete stranger into a secret passageway through the center of the mountains, toward a headquarters they could not even be sure existed, did not seem like a very safe thing to do. The last time they had agreed to take a risky journey, their baby sister had been snatched away from them. What would happen this time, when they were all alone with a mysterious masked figure in a dark and smoky hole? "I know it must be hard to trust me, Baudelaires," said the sweatered scout, "after so many people have done you wrong." "Can you give us a reason to trust you?" Violet said. The scout looked down for a moment, and then turned his mask to face both Baudelaires. "One of you mentioned the word 'xenial,'" he said, "when you were talking with Bruce about that silly pledge. 'Xenial' is a word which refers to the giving of gifts to a stranger." "He's right," Klaus murmured to his sister. "I know that having a good vocabulary doesn't guarantee that I'm a good person," the boy said. "But it does mean I've read a great deal. And in my experience, well-read people are less likely to be evil." Violet and Klaus looked at one another through their masks. Neither of them were entirely convinced by what the masked scout had said. There are, of course, plenty of evil people who have read a great many books, and plenty of very kind people who seem to have found some other method of spending their time. But the Baudelaires knew that there was a kind of truth to the boy's statement, and they had to admit that they preferred to take their chances with a stranger who knew what the word "xenial" meant, rather than exiting the cave and trying to find the headquarters all by themselves. So the siblings turned back to the scout, nodded their masks, and followed him to the footholds in the wall, making sure they still had all the items from the caravan with them. The footholds were surprisingly easy to use, and in a short time the Baudelaires were following the mysterious scout into the dark and smoky entrance of the passageway. The Vertical Flame Diversion that connected the Mortmain Mountain headquarters to this particular Volunteer Feline Detectives cave was once one of the most heavily guarded secrets in the world. Anyone who wanted to use it had to correctly answer a series of questions concerning the force of gravity, the habits of carnivorous beasts, and the central themes of Russian novels, so very few people even knew the passageway's exact whereabouts. Until the two Baudelaires' journey, the passageway had not been used for many years, ever since one of my comrades removed the pole in order to use it in the construction of a submarine. So it would be accurate to say that the Vertical Flame Diversion was a road less traveled, even less traveled than the path through the Mortmain Mountains on which this book began. While the elder Baudelaires had a very good reason to be on the road less traveled, as they were in a great hurry to reach the headquarters and rescue their sister from the clutches of Count Olaf, there is no reason whatsoever why you should be on the road less traveled and choose to read the rest of this woeful chapter, which describes their dark and smoky journey. The ashen air from the Snow Scouts' fire was difficult to breathe, even through the masks, and Violet and Klaus had to struggle not to cough, knowing that the coughing sound would echo down the passageway and wake up Bruce, but there is no reason for you to struggle through my dismal description of this problem. A number of spiders had noticed the footholds were not being used lately, and had moved in and converted them into spider condominiums, but you are under no obligation to read what happens when spiders are suddenly woken up by the sudden appearance of a climbing foot in their new homes. And as the Baudelaires followed the scout farther and farther up, the strong freezing winds from the top of the mountain would rush through the passageway, and all three youngsters would cling to the footholds with their very lives, hoping that the wind would not blow them back down to the cave floor, but although the Baudelaires found it necessary to keep climbing through the rest of the dark day so they could reach the headquarters as quickly as possible, and I find it necessary to finish describing it, so my account of the Baudelaire case is as accurate and as complete as possible, it is not necessary for you to finish reading the rest of this chapter, so you can be as miserable as possible. My description of the Baudelaires' journey up through the road less traveled begins on the next page, but I beg you not to travel along with them. Instead, you may take a page from Bruce's book, and skip ahead to Chapter Six, and find my report on Sunny Baudelaire's tribulations, a word which here means "opportunities to eavesdrop while cooking for a theater troupe", with Count Olaf, or you may skip ahead to Chapter Seven, when the elder Baudelaires arrive at the site of the V.F.D. headquarters and unmask the stranger who led them there, or you may take the road very frequently traveled and skip away from this book altogether, and find something better to do with your time besides finishing this unhappy tale and becoming a weary, weeping, and well-read person. The Baudelaires' journey up the Vertical Flame Diversion was so dark and treacherous that it is not enough to write "The Baudelaires' journey up the Vertical Flame Diversion was so dark and treacherous that it is not enough to write 'The Baudelaires' journey up the Vertical Flame Diversion was so dark and treacherous that it is not enough to write "The Baudelaires' journey up the Vertical Flame Diversion was so dark and treacherous that it is not enough to write 'The Baudelaires' journey up the Vertical Flame Diversion was so dark and treacherous that it is not enough to write

"My dear sister, I am taking a great risk in hiding a letter to you inside one of my books, but I am certain that even the most melancholy and well-read people in the world have found my account of the lives of the three Baudelaire children even more wretched than I had promised, and so this book will stay on the shelves of libraries, utterly ignored, waiting for you to open it and find this message. As an additional precaution, I placed a warning that the rest of this chapter contains a description of the Baudelaires' miserable journey up the Vertical Flame Diversion, so anyone who has the courage to read such a description is probably brave enough to read my letter to you. I have at last learned the whereabouts of the evidence that will exonerate me, a phrase which here means "prove to the authorities that it is Count Olaf, and not me, who has started so many fires." Your suggestion, so many years ago at that picnic, that a tea set would be a handy place to hide anything important and small in the event of a dark day, has turned out to be correct. (Incidentally, your other picnic suggestion, that a simple combination of sliced mango, black beans, and chopped celery mixed with black pepper, lime juice, and olive oil would make a delicious chilled salad also turned out to be correct.) I am on my way now to the Valley of Four Drafts, in order to continue my research on the Baudelaire case. I hope also to retrieve the aforementioned evidence at last. It is too late to restore my happiness, of course, but at least I can clear my name. From the site of V.F.D. headquarters, I will head straight for the Hotel Denouement. I should arrive by, well, it wouldn't be wise to type the date, but it should be easy for you to remember Beatrice's birthday. Meet me at the hotel. Try to get us a room without ugly curtains.

With all due respect,

Lemony Snicket

P.S. If you substitute the chopped celery with hearts of palm, it is equally delicious.

Chapter Six

In the very early hours of the morning, while the two elder Baudelaires struggled to find their footing as they climbed up the Vertical Flame Diversion and I sincerely hope that you did not read the description of that journey, the youngest Baudelaire found herself struggling with a different sort of footing altogether. Sunny had not enjoyed the long, cold night on Mount Fraught. If you have ever slept in a covered casserole dish on the highest peak of a mountain range, then you know that it is an uncomfortable place to lay one's head, even if you find a dishtowel inside it that can serve as a blanket. All night long, the chilly mountain winds blew through the tiny holes inside the top of the cover, making it so cold inside the dish that Sunny's enormous teeth chattered all night, giving her tiny cuts on her lips and making such a loud noise that it was impossible to sleep. Finally, when the first rays of the morning sun shone through the holes and made it warm enough to doze, Count Olaf left his tent and kicked open the cover of the dish to begin ordering Sunny around. "Wake up, you dentist's nightmare!" he cried. Sunny opened one exhausted eye and found herself staring at the villain's footing, particularly the tattoo on Olaf's left ankle, a sight that was enough to make her wish her eyes were still closed. Tattooed on Olaf's ankle was the image of an eye, and it seemed to Sunny that this eye had been watching the Baudelaires throughout all of their troubles, from the day on Briny Beach when they learned of the terrible fire that destroyed their home. Time after time, Count Olaf had tried to hide this eye so the authorities would not recognize him, so the children were always uncovering it from behind his ridiculous disguises, and the Baudelaires had begun seeing the eye in other places, such as at the office of an evil hypnotist, on the side of a carnival tent, on Esme Squalor's purse, and on a necklace owned by a mysterious fortune-teller. It was almost as if this eye had replaced the eyes of their parents, but instead of keeping watch over the children and making sure that they were safe from harm, this eye merely gave them a blank stare, as if it did not care about the children's troubles, or could do nothing about them. If you looked very closely, you could find the letters V.F.D. half-hidden in the eye, and this reminded Sunny of all the sinister secrets that surrounded the three siblings, and how far they were from understanding the web of mystery in which they found themselves. But it is hard to think about mysteries and secrets first thing in the morning, particularly if someone is yelling at you, and Sunny turned her attention to what her captor was saying. "You'll be doing all the cooking and cleaning for us, orphan," Count Olaf said, "and you can start by making us breakfast. We have a big day ahead of us, and a good breakfast will give me and my troupe the energy we need to perform unspeakable crimes." "Plakna?" Sunny asked, which meant "How am I supposed to cook breakfast on the top of a freezing mountain?" but Count Olaf just gave her a nasty smile. "Too bad your brain isn't as big as your teeth, you little monkey," he said. "You're talking nonsense, as usual." Sunny sighed, frustrated that there was no one on top of the Mortmain Mountains who understood what she was trying to say. "Translo," she said, which meant "Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean that it's nonsense." "There you go, babbling again," Olaf said, and tossed Sunny the car keys. "Get the groceries out of the trunk of the car and get to work." Sunny suddenly thought of something that might cheer her up a little bit. "Sneakitawc," she said, which was her way of saying "Of course, because you don't understand me, I can say anything I want to you, and you'll have no idea what I'm talking about." "I'm getting quite tired of your ridiculous speech impediment," Count Olaf said. "Brummel," Sunny said, which meant "In my opinion, you desperately need a bath, and your clothing is a shambles." "Be quiet this instant," Olaf ordered. "Busheney," Sunny said, which meant something along the lines of, "You're an evil man with no concern whatsoever for other people." "Shut up!" Count Olaf roared. "Shut up and get cooking!" Sunny got out of the casserole dish and stood up, looking down at the snowy ground so the villain would not see she was smiling. It is not nice to tease people, of course, but the youngest Baudelaire felt that it was all right to enjoy a joke at the expense of such a murderous and evil man, and she walked to Olaf's car with a spring in her step, a phrase which here means "in a surprisingly cheerful manner considering she was in the clutches of a ruthless villain on top of a mountain so cold that even the nearby waterfall was frozen solid." But when Sunny Baudelaire opened the trunk of the car her smile faded. Under normal circumstances, it is not safe to keep groceries in the trunk of a car for an extended period of time, because some foods will spoil without being refrigerated. But Sunny saw that the temperatures of the Mortmain Mountains had caused the groceries to become over-refrigerated. A thin layer of frost covered every item, and Sunny had to crawl inside and wipe the frost off with her bare hands to see what she might make for the troupe. There was a variety of well-chilled food that Olaf had stolen from the carnival, but none of it seemed like the makings of a good breakfast. There was a bag of coffee beans beneath a harpoon gun and a frozen hunk of spinach, but there was no way to grind the beans into tiny pieces to make coffee. Near a picnic basket and a large bag of mushrooms was a jug of orange juice, but it had been close to one of the bullet holes in the trunk, and so had frozen completely solid in the cold. And after Sunny moved aside three chunks of cold cheese, a large can of water chestnuts, and an eggplant as big as herself, she finally found a small jar of boysenberry jam, and a loaf of bread she could use to make toast, although it was so cold it felt more like a log than a breakfast ingredient. "Wake up!" Sunny peeked out of the trunk and saw Count Olaf calling through the door of one of the tents she had assembled. "Wake up and get dressed for breakfast!" "Can't we sleep ten minutes more?" asked the whiny voice of the hook-handed man. "I was having a lovely dream about sneezing without covering my nose and mouth, and giving everybody germs." "Absolutely not!" Olaf replied. "I have lots of work for you to do." "But Olaf," said Esme Squalor, emerging from the tent she had shared with Count Olaf. Her hair was in curlers and she was wearing a long robe and a pair of fuzzy slippers. "I need a little while to choose what I'm going to wear. It's not in to burn down a headquarters without wearing a fashionable outfit." Sunny gasped in the trunk. She had known that Olaf was eager to reach the V.F.D. headquarters as soon as possible, in order to get his hands on the rest of some crucial evidence, but it had not occurred to her that he would combine this evidence-grabbing with his usual pyromania, a word which here means "a love of fire, usually the product of a deranged mind." "I can't imagine why you need all this time," was Count Olaf's grumpy reply to his girlfriend. "After all, I wear the same outfit for weeks at a time, except when I'm in disguise, and I look almost unbearably handsome. Well, I suppose you have a few minutes before breakfast is ready. Slow service is one of the disadvantages of having infants for slaves." Olaf strode over to the car and peered in at Sunny, who was still clutching the loaf of bread. "Hurry up, bigmouth," he growled at Sunny. "I need a nice hot meal to take the chill out of the morning." "Unfeasi!" Sunny cried. By "Unfeasi" she meant "To make a hot meal without any electricity, I'd need a fire, and expecting a baby to start a fire all by herself on top of a snowy mountain is cruelly impossible and impossibly cruel," but Olaf merely frowned. "Your baby talk is really beginning to annoy me," he said. "Hygiene," Sunny said, to make herself feel better. She meant something along the lines of, "Additionally, you ought to be ashamed of yourself for wearing the same outfit for weeks at a time without washing," but Olaf merely scowled at her and walked back into his tent. Sunny looked at the cold ingredients and tried to think. Even if she had been old enough to start a fire by herself, Sunny had been nervous around flames since the fire that had destroyed the Baudelaire mansion. But as she thought of the fire that destroyed her own home, she remembered something her mother had told her once. They had both been busy in the kitchen, Sunny's mother was busy preparing for a fancy luncheon, and Sunny was busy dropping a fork on the floor over and over again to see what sort of sound it made. The luncheon was due to start any minute, and Sunny's mother was quickly mixing up a salad of sliced mango, black beans, and chopped celery mixed with black pepper, lime juice, and olive oil. "This isn't a very complicated recipe, Sunny," her mother had said, "but if I arrange the salad very nicely on fancy plates, people will think I've been cooking all day. Often, when cooking, the presentation of the food can be as important as the food itself." Thinking of what her mother had said, she opened the picnic basket in Olaf's trunk and found that it contained a set of elegant plates, each emblazoned with the familiar eye insignia, and a small tea set. Then she rolled up her sleeves, an expression which here means "focused very hard on the task at hand, but did not actually roll up her sleeves, because it was very cold on the highest peak of the Mortmain Mountains" and got to work as Count Olaf and his comrades started their day. "I'll use these blankets for a tablecloth," Sunny heard Olaf say in the tent, over the sound her own teeth were making. "Good idea," she heard Esme reply. "It's very in to dine al fresco." "What does that mean?" Olaf asked. "It means 'outside,' of course," Esme explained. "It's fashionable to eat your meals in the fresh air." "I knew what it meant," Count Olaf replied. "I was just testing you." "Hey boss," Hugo called from the next tent. "Colette won't share the dental floss." "There's no reason to use dental floss," Count Olaf said, "unless you're trying to strangle someone with a very weak neck." "Kevin, would you do me a favor?" the hook-handed man asked, as Sunny struggled to open the jug of juice. "Will you help me comb my hair? These hooks can make it difficult sometimes." "I'm jealous of your hooks," Kevin replied. "Having no hands is better than having two equally strong hands." "Don't be ridiculous," one of the white-faced women replied. "Having a white face is worse than both of your situations." "But you have a white face because you put makeup on," Colette said, as Sunny climbed back out of the trunk and knelt down in the snow. "You're putting powder on your face right now." "Must you bicker every single morning?" Count Olaf asked, and stomped back out of his tent carrying a blanket covered in images of eyes. "Somebody take this blanket and set the table over there on that flat rock." Hugo walked out of the tent and smiled at his new boss. "I'd be happy to," he said. Esme stepped outside, having changed into a bright red snowsuit, and put her arm around Olaf. "Fold the blanket into a large triangle," she said to Hugo. "That's the in way to do it." "Yes ma'am," Hugo said, "and, if you don't mind my saying so, that's a very handsome snowsuit you are wearing." The villainous girlfriend turned all the way around to show off her outfit from every angle. Sunny looked up from her cooking and noticed that the letter B was sewn onto the back of it, along with the eye insignia. "I'm glad you like it, Hugo," Esme said. "It's stolen." Count Olaf glanced at Sunny and quickly stepped in front of his girlfriend. "What are you staring at, toothy?" he asked. "Are you done making breakfast?" "Almost," Sunny replied. "That infant never makes any sense," Hugo said. "No wonder she fooled us into thinkine she was a carnival freak." Sunny sighed, but no one heard her over the scornful laughter of Olaf's troupe. One by one, the villain's wretched employees emerged from the tent and strolled over to the flat rock where Hugo was laying out the blanket. One of the white-faced women glanced at Sunny and gave her a small smile, but nobody offered to help her finish with the breakfast preparations, or even to set the table with the eye-patterned dishes. Instead, they gathered around the rock talking and laughing until Sunny carefully carried the breakfast over to them, arranged on a large eye-shaped tray that she'd found in the bottom of the picnic basket. Although she was still frightened to be in Olaf's clutches and worried about her siblings, Sunny could not help but be a little proud as Count Olaf and his comrades looked at the meal she had prepared. Sunny had kept in mind what her mother had said about presentation being as important as the food itself, and managed to put together a lovely breakfast despite the difficult circumstances. First, she had opened the jug of frozen orange juice and used a small spoon to chip away at the ice until she had a large heap of juice shavings, which she arranged into tiny piles on each plate to make orange granita, a cold and delicious concoction that is often served at fancy dinner parties and masked balls. Then, Sunny had rinsed her mouth out with melted snow so it would be as clean as possible, and chopped some of the coffee beans with her teeth. She placed a bit of the ground coffee inside each cup and combined it with more snow she had melted in her own hands to make iced coffee, a delicious beverage I first enjoyed when visiting Thailand to interview a taxi driver. Meanwhile, the youngest Baudelaire had put the chilled bread underneath her shirt to warm it up, and when it was warm enough to eat she put one slice on each plate, and using a small spoon, spread some boysenberry jam on each piece of bread. She did her best to spread the jam in the shape of an eye, to please the villains who would be eating it, and as a finishing touch she found a bouquet of ivy, which Count Olaf had given his girlfriend not so long ago, and placed it in the small pitcher of the tea set used for cream. There was no cream, but the ivy would help the presentation of the food by serving as a centerpiece, a word which here means "a decoration placed in the middle of a table, often used to distract people from the food." Of course, orange granita and iced coffee are not often served at al fresco breakfasts on cold mountain peaks, and bread with jam is more traditionally prepared as toast, but without a source of heat or any other cooking equipment, Sunny had done the best she could, and she hoped that Olaf and
his troupe might appreciate her efforts. "Caffefredde, sorbet, toast tartar," she announced. "What is this?" Count Olaf said suspiciously, peering into his coffee cup. "It looks like coffee, but it's freezing cold!" "And what is this orange stuff?" Esme asked suspiciously. "I want fashionable, in food, not a handful of ice!" Colette picked up a piece of the bread and stared at it suspiciously. "This toast feels raw," she said. "Is it safe to eat raw toast?" "Of course not," Hugo said. "I bet that baby is trying to poison us." "Actually, the coffee isn't bad," one of the white-faced women said, "even if it is a little bitter. Could someone pass the sugar, please?" 'Sugar?" shrieked Count Olaf, erupting in anger. He stood up, grabbed one end of the blanket, and pulled as hard as he could, scattering all of Sunny's hard work. Food, beverages, and dishes fell everywhere, and Sunny had to duck to avoid getting hit on the head with a flying fork. "All the sugar in the world couldn't save this terrible breakfast!" he roared, and then leaned down so that his shiny, shiny eyes stared right into Sunny's. "I told you to make a nice, hot breakfast, and you gave me cold, disgusting nonsense!" he said, his smelly breath making a cloud in the chilly air. "Don't you see how high up we are, you sabertoothed papoose? If I threw you off Mount Fraught, you'd never survive!" "Olaf!" Esme said. "I'm surprised at you! Surely you remember that we'll never get the Baudelaire fortune if we toss Sunny off the mountain. We have to keep Sunny alive for the greater good." "Yes, yes," Count Olaf said. "I remember. I'm not going to throw the orphan off the mountain. I just wanted to terrify her." He gave Sunny a cruel smirk, and then turned to the hook-handed man. "Walk over to that frozen waterfall," he said, "and crack a hole in the ice with your hook. The stream is full of Stricken Salmon. Catch enough for all of us, and we'll have the baby prepare us a proper meal." "Good idea, Olaf," the hook-handed man said, standing up and walking toward the icy slope. "You're as smart as you are intelligent." "Sakesushi," Sunny said quietly, which meant "I don't think you'll enjoy salmon if it's not cooked." "Stop your baby talk and wash these dishes," Olaf ordered. "They're covered in lousy food." "You know, Olaf," said the white-faced woman who had asked for sugar, "it's none of my business, but we might put someone else in charge of cooking. It was probably difficult for a baby to prepare a hot breakfast without a fire." "But there is a fire," said a deep, low voice, and everyone turned around to see who had arrived. Having an aura of menace is like having a pet weasel, because you rarely meet someone who has one, and when you do it makes you want to hide under the coffee table. An aura of menace is simply a distinct feeling of evil that accompanies the arrival of certain people, and very few individuals are evil enough to produce an aura of menace that is very strong. Count Olaf, for example, had an aura of menace that the three Baudelaires had felt the moment they met him, but a number of other people never seemed to sense that a villain was in their midst, even when Olaf was standing right next to them with an evil gleam in his eye. But when two visitors arrived at the highest peak of the Mortmain Mountains, their aura of menace was unmistakable. Sunny gasped when she saw them. Esme Squalor shuddered in her snowsuit. The members of Olaf's troupe, all except the hook-handed man, who was busy fishing for salmon and so was lucky enough to miss the visitors' arrival, gazed down at the snowy ground rather than take a further look at them. Count Olaf himself looked a bit nervous as the man, the woman, and their aura of menace drew closer and closer. And even I, after all this time, can feel their aura of menace so strongly, just by writing about these two people, that I dare not say their names, and will instead refer to them the way everyone who dares refer to them refers to them, as "the man with a beard, but no hair" and "the woman with hair, but no beard." "It's good to see you, Olaf," continued the deep voice, and Sunny realized that the voice belonged to the sinister-looking woman. She was dressed in a suit made of a strange blue fabric that was very shiny, decorated with two large pads, one on each shoulder. She was dragging a wooden toboggan, a word which here means "a sled big enough to hold several people," which made an eerie scraping sound against the cold ground. "I was worried that the authorities might have captured you." "You look well," said the man with a beard but no hair. He was dressed identically to the woman with hair but no beard, but his voice was very hoarse, as if he had been screaming for hours and could hardly talk. "It's been a long time since we've laid eyes on one another." The man gave Olaf a grin that made it seem even colder on the mountain peak, and then stopped and helped the woman lean the toboggan against the rock where Sunny had served breakfast. The youngest Baudelaire saw that the toboggan was painted with the familiar eye insignia, and had a few long leather straps, presumably used for steering. Count Olaf coughed lightly into his hand, which is something people often do when they cannot think of what to say. "Hello," he said, a bit nervously. "Did I hear you say something about a fire?" The man with a beard but no hair and the woman with hair but no beard looked at one another and shared a laugh that made Sunny cover her ears with her hands. "Haven't you noticed," the woman said, "that there are no snow gnats around?" "We had noticed that," Esme said. "I thought maybe snow gnats were no longer in." "Don't be ridiculous, Esme," said the man with a beard but no hair. He reached out and kissed Esme's hand, which Sunny could see was trembling. "The gnats aren't around because they can smell the smoke." "I don't smell anything," said Hugo. "Well, if you were a tiny insect, you'd smell something," replied the woman with hair but no beard. "If you were a snow gnat, you'd smell the smoke from the V.F.D. headquarters." "We did you a favor, Olaf," the man said. "We burned the entire place down." "No!" Sunny cried, before she could stop herself. By "No!" she meant "I certainly hope that isn't true, because my siblings and I hoped to reach V.F.D. headquarters, solve the mysteries that surround us, and perhaps find one of our parents," but she had not planned to say it out loud. The two visitors looked down at the youngest Baudelaire, casting their aura of menace in her direction. "What is that?" asked the man with a beard but no hair. "That's the youngest Baudelaire," replied Esme. "We've eliminated the other two, but we're keeping this one around to do our bidding until we can finally steal the fortune." The woman with hair but no beard nodded. "Infant servants are so troublesome," she said. "I had an infant servant once, a long time ago, before the schism." "Before the schism?" Olaf said, and Sunny wished Klaus were with her, because the baby did not know what the word "schism" meant. "That is a long time ago. That infant must be all grown up by now." "Not necessarily," the woman said, and laughed again, while her companion leaned down to gaze at Sunny. Sunny could not bear to look into the eyes of the man with a beard but no hair, and instead looked down at his shiny shoes. "So this is Sunny Baudelaire," he said in his strange, hoarse voice. "Well, well, well. I've heard so much about this little orphan. She's caused almost as many problems as her parents did." He stood up again and looked around at Olaf and his troupe. "But we know how to solve problems, don't we? Fire can solve any problem in the world." He began to laugh, and the woman with hair but no beard laughed along with him. Nervously, Count Olaf began to laugh, too, and then glared at his troupe until they laughed along with him, and Sunny found herself surrounded by tall, laughing villains. "Oh, it was wonderful," said the woman with hair but no beard. "First we burned down the kitchen. Then we burned down the dining room. Then we burned down the parlor, and then the disguise center, the movie room, and the stables. Then we moved on to the gymnasium and the training center, and the garage and all six of the laboratories. We burned down the dormitories and schoolrooms, the lounge, the theater, and the music room, as well as the museum and the ice cream shop. Then we burned down the rehearsal studios and the testing centers and the swimming pool, which was very hard to burn down. Then we burned down all the bathrooms, and then finally, we burned down the V.F.D. library last night. That was my favorite part, books and books and books, all turned to ashes so no one could read them. You should have been there, Olaf! Every morning we lit fires and every evening we celebrated with a bottle of wine and some finger puppets. We've been wearing these fireproof suits for almost a month. It's been a marvelous time." "Why did you burn it down gradually?" Count Olaf asked. "Whenever I burn something down, I do it all at once." "We couldn't have burned down the entire headquarters at once," said the man with a beard but no hair. "Someone would have spotted us. Remember, where there's smoke there's fire." "But if you burned the headquarters down room by room," Esme said, "didn't all of the volunteers escape?" "They were gone already," said the man, and scratched his head where his hair might have been. "The entire headquarters were deserted. It was as if they knew we were coming. Oh well, you can't win them all." "Maybe we'll find some of them when we burn down the carnival," said the woman, in her deep, deep voice. "Carnival?" Olaf asked nervously. "Yes," the woman said, and scratched the place where her beard would have been, if she had one. "There's an important piece of evidence that V.F.D. has hidden in a figurine sold at Caligari Carnival, so we need to go burn it down." "I burned it down already," Count Olaf said. "The whole place?" the woman said in surprise. "The whole place," Olaf said, giving her a nervous smile. "Congratulations," she said, in a deep purr. "You're better than I thought, Olaf." Count Olaf looked relieved, as if he had not been sure whether the woman was going to compliment him or kick him. "Well, it's all for the greater good," he said. "As a reward," the woman said, "I have a gift for you, Olaf." Sunny watched as the woman reached into the pocket of her shiny suit and drew out a stack of paper, tied together with thick rope. The paper looked very old and worn, as if it had been passed around to a variety of different people, hidden in a number of secret compartments, and perhaps even divided into different piles, driven around a city in horse-drawn carriages, and then put back together at midnight in the back room of a bookstore disguised as a cafe disguised as a sporting goods store. Count Olaf's eyes grew very wide and very shiny, and he reached his filthy hands toward it if it were the Baudelaire fortune itself. "The Snicket file!" he said, in a hushed whisper. "It's all here," the woman said. "Every chart, every map and every photograph from the only file that could put us all in jail." "It's complete except for page thirteen, of course," the man said. "We understand that the Baudelaires managed to steal that page from Heimlich Hospital." The two visitors glared down at Sunny Baudelaire, who couldn't help whimpering in fear. "Surchmi," she said. She meant something along the lines of, "I don't have it, my siblings do," but she did not need a translator. "The older orphans have it," Olaf said, "but I'm fairly certain they're dead." "Then all of our problems have gone up in smoke," said the woman with hair but no beard. Count Olaf grabbed the file and held it to his chest as if it were a newborn baby, although he was not the sort of person to treat a newborn baby very kindly. "This is the most wonderful gift in the world," he said. "I'm going to go read it right now." "We'll all read it together," said the woman with hair but no beard. "It contains secrets we all ought to know." "But first," said the man with a beard but no hair, "I have a gift for your girlfriend, Olaf." "For me?" Esme asked. "I found these in one of the rooms of headquarters," the man said. "I've never seen one before, but it has been quite some time since I was a volunteer." With a sly smile, he reached into his pocket and took out a small green tube. "What's that?" Esme asked. "I think it's a cigarette," the man said. "A cigarette!" Esme said, with a smile as big as Olaf's. "How in!" "I thought you'd enjoy them," the man said. "Here, try it. I happen to have quite a few matches right here." The man with a beard but no hair struck a match, lit the end of the green tube, and offered it to the wicked girlfriend, who grabbed it and held it to her mouth. A bitter smell, like that of burning vegetables, filled the air, and Esme Squalor began to cough. "What's the matter?" asked the woman in her deep voice. "I thought you liked things that are in." "I do," Esme said, and then coughed quite a bit more. Sunny was reminded of Mr. Poe, who was always coughing into a handkerchief, as Esme coughed and coughed and finally dropped the green tube to the ground where it spewed out a dark green smoke. "I love cigarettes," she explained to the man with a beard but no hair, "but I prefer to smoke them with a long holder because I don't like the smell or taste and because they're very bad for you." "Never mind that now," Count Olaf said impatiently. "Let's go into my tent and read the file." He started to walk toward the tent but stopped and glared at his comrades, who were beginning to follow him. "The rest of you stay out here," he said. "There are secrets in this file that I do not want you to know." The two sinister visitors began to laugh, and followed Count Olaf and Esme into the tent closing the flap behind them. Sunny stood with Hugo, Colette, Kevin, and the two white-faced women and stared after them in silence, waiting for the aura of menace to disappear. "Who were those people?" asked the hook-handed man, and everyone turned to see that he had returned from his fishing expedition. Four salmon hung from each of his hooks, dripping with the waters of the Stricken Stream. "I don't know," said one of the white-faced women, "but they made me very nervous." "If they're friends of Count Olaf's," Kevin said, "how bad could they be?" The members of the troupe looked at one another, but no one answered the ambidextrous person's question. "What did that man mean when he said 'Where there's smoke there's fire'?" Hugo asked. "I don't know," Colette said. A chilly wind blew, and Sunny watched her contort her body in the breeze until it looked almost as curvy as the smoke from the green tube Esme had dropped. "Forget those