A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Slippery Slope (8 page)

Chapter Nine

The two elder Baudelaires stood for a moment with Quigley, gazing up at the small plume, a word which here means "mysterious cloud of green smoke." After the long, strange story he had told them about surviving the fire and what he had learned about V.F.D., they could scarcely believe that they were confronting another mystery. "It's a Verdant Flammable Device," Quigley said. "There's someone at the top of the waterfall, sending a signal." "Yes," Violet said, "but who?" "Maybe it's a volunteer, who escaped from the fire," Klaus said. "They're signaling to see if there are any other volunteers nearby." "Or it could be a trap," Quigley said. "They could be luring volunteers up to the peak in order to ambush them. Remember, the codes of V.F.D. are used by both sides of the schism." "It hardly seems like a code," Violet said. "We know that someone is communicating, but we don't have the faintest idea who they are, or what they're saying." "This is what it must be like," Klaus said thoughtfully, "when Sunny talks to people who don't know her very well." At the mention of Sunny's name, the Baudelaires were reminded of how much they missed her. "Whether it's a volunteer or a trap," Violet said, "it might be our only chance to find our sister." "Or my sister and brother," Quigley said. "Let's signal back," Klaus said. "Do you still have those Verdant Flammable Devices, Quigley?" "Of course," Quigley said, taking the box of green tubes out of his backpack, "but Bruce saw my matches and confiscated them, because children shouldn't play with matches." "Confiscated them?" Klaus said. "Do you think he's an enemy of V.F.D.?" "If everyone who said that children shouldn't play with matches was an enemy of V.F.D.," Violet said with a smile, "then we wouldn't have a chance of survival." "But how are we going to light these without matches?" Quigley asked. Violet reached into her pocket. It was a bit tricky to tie her hair up in a ribbon, as all four drafts in the Valley of Four Drafts were blowing hard, but at last her hair was out of her eyes, and the gears and levers of her inventing mind began to move as she gazed up at the mysterious signal. But of course this signal was neither a volunteer nor a trap. It was a baby, with unusually large teeth and a way of talking that some people found confusing. When Sunny Baudelaire had said "lox," for example, the member of Count Olaf's troupe had assumed she was simply babbling, rather than explaining how she was going to cook the salmon that the hook-handed man had caught. "Lox" is a word which refers to smoked salmon, and it is a delicious way to enjoy freshly caught fish, particularly if one has the appropriate accoutrements, a phrase which here means "bagels, cream cheese, sliced cucumber, black pepper, and capers, which can be eaten along with the lox for an enjoyable meal." Lox also has an additional benefit of producing quite a bit of smoke as it is prepared, and this is the reason Sunny chose this method of preparing salmon, as opposed to gravlax, which is salmon marinated for several days in a mixture of spices, or sashimi, which is salmon cut into pleasing shapes and simply served raw. Remembering what Count Olaf had said about being able to see everything and everyone from the peak where he had brought her, the youngest Baudelaire realized that the phrase "where there's smoke there's fire" might be able to help her. As Violet and Klaus heard Quigley's extraordinary tale at the bottom of the frozen waterfall, Sunny hurried to prepare lox and send a signal to her siblings, who she hoped were nearby. First, she nudged the Verdant Flammable Device, which she, like everyone at the peak, believed was a cigarette, into a small patch of weeds, in order to increase the smoke. Then she dragged over the covered casserole dish that she had been using as a makeshift bed, and placed the salmon inside it. In no time at all, the fish caught by the hook-handed man were absorbing the heat and smoke from the simmering green tube, and a large plume of green smoke was floating up into the sky above Mount Fraught. Sunny gazed up at the signal she made and couldn't help smiling. The last time she had been separated from her siblings, she had simply waited in the birdcage for them to come and rescue her, but she had grown since then, and was able to take an active part in defeating Count Olaf and his troupe while still having time to prepare a seafood dish "Something smells delicious," said one of the white-faced women, walking by the casserole dish. "I must admit, I had some doubts that an infant should be in charge of the cooking, but your salmon recipe seems like it will be very tasty indeed." "There's a word for the way she's preparing the fish," the hook-handed man said, "but I can't remember what it is." "Lox," Sunny said, but no one heard her over the sound of Count Olaf storming out of his tent, followed by Esme and the two sinister visitors. Olaf was clutching the Snicket file and glaring down at Sunny with his shiny, shiny eyes. "Put that smoke out at once!" he ordered. "I thought you were a terrified orphan prisoner, but I'm beginning to think you're a spy!" "What do you mean, Olaf?" asked the other white-faced woman. "She's using Esme's cigarette to cook us some fish." "Someone might see the smoke," Esme snarled, as if she had not been smoking herself just moments ago. "Where there's smoke, there's fire." The man with a beard but no hair picked up a handful of snow and threw it onto the weeds, extinguishing the Verdant Flammable Device. "Who are you signaling to, baby?" he asked, in his strange, hoarse voice. "If you're a spy, we're going to toss you off this mountain." "Goo goo," Sunny said, which meant something along the lines of "I'm going to pretend I'm a helpless baby, instead of answering your question." "You see?" the white-faced woman said, looking nervously at the man with a beard but no hair. "She's just a helpless baby." "Perhaps you're right," said the woman with hair but no beard. "Besides, there's no reason to toss a baby off a mountain unless you absolutely have to." "Babies can come in handy," Count Olaf agreed. "In fact, I've been thinking about recruiting more young people into my troupe. They're less likely to complain about doing my bidding." "But we never complain," the hook-handed man said. "I try to be as accommodating as possible." "Enough chitchat," said the man with a beard but no hair. "We have a lot of scheming to do, Olaf. I have some information that might help you with your recruiting idea, and according to the Snicket file, there's one more safe place for the volunteers to gather." "The last safe place," said the sinister woman. "We have to find it and burn it down." "And once we do," Count Olaf said, "the last evidence of our plans will be completely destroyed. We'll never have to worry about the authorities again." "Where is this last safe place?" asked Kevin. Olaf opened his mouth to answer, but the woman with hair but no beard stopped him with a quick gesture and a suspicious glance down at Sunny. "Not in front of the toothy orphan," she said, in her deep, deep voice. "If she learned what we were up to, she'd never sleep again, and you need your infant servant full of energy. Send her away, and we'll make our plans." "Of course," Olaf said, smiling nervously at the sinister visitors. "Orphan, go to my car and remove all of the potato chip crumbs from the interior by blowing as hard as you can." "Futil," Sunny said, which meant something like, "That is an absolutely impossible chore," but she walked unsteadily toward the car while Olaf's troupe laughed and gathered around the flat rock to hear the new scheme. Passing the extinguished fire and the covered casserole dish where she would sleep that night, Sunny sighed sadly, thinking that her signal plan must have failed. But when she reached Olaf's car and gazed down at the frozen waterfall, she saw something that lightened her spirits, a phrase which here means "an identical plume of green smoke, coming from the very bottom of the slope." The youngest Baudelaire looked down at the smoke and smiled. "Sibling," she said to herself. Sunny, of course, could not be certain that it was Violet and Klaus who were signaling to her, but she could hope it was so, and hope was enough to cheer her up as she opened the door of the car and began blowing at the crumbs Olaf and his troupe had scattered all over the upholstery. But at the bottom of the frozen waterfall, the two elder Baudelaires did not feel nearly as hopeful as they stood with Quigley and watched the green smoke disappear from the highest peak. "Someone put out the Verdant Flammable Device," Quigley said, holding the green tube to one side so he wouldn't smell the smoke. "What do you think that means?" "I don't know," Violet said, and sighed. "This isn't working." "Of course it's working," Klaus said. "It's working perfectly. You noticed that the afternoon sun was reflecting off the frozen waterfall, and it gave you the idea to use the scientific principles of the convergence and refraction of light , just like you did on Lake Lachrymose, when we were battling the leeches. So you used Colette's hand mirror to catch the sun's rays and reflect them onto the end of the Verdant Flammable Device, so we could light it and send a signal." "Klaus is right," Quigley said. "It couldn't have worked better." "Thank you," Violet said, "but that's not what I mean. I mean this code isn't working. We still don't know who's up on the peak, or why they were signaling us, and now the signal has stopped, but we still don't know what it means." "Maybe we should extinguish our Verdant Flammable Device, too," Klaus said. "Maybe," Violet agreed, "or maybe we should go up to the top of the waterfall and see for ourselves who is there." Quigley frowned, and took out his commonplace book. "The only way up to the highest peak," he said, "is the path that the Snow Scouts are taking. We'd have to go back through the Vernacularly Fastened Door, back down the Vertical Flame Diversion, back into the Volunteer Feline Detective cave, rejoin the scouts and hike for a long time." "That's not the only way up to the peak," Violet said with a smile. "Yes, it is," Quigley insisted. "Look at the map." "Look at the waterfall," Violet replied, and all three children looked up at the shiny slope. "Do you mean," Klaus said, "that you think you can invent something which can get us up a frozen waterfall?" But Violet was already tying her hair out of her eyes again, and looking around at the ruins of the V.F.D. headquarters. "I'll need that ukulele that you took from the caravan," she said to Klaus, "and that half-melted candelabra over there by the dining room table." Klaus took the ukulele from his coat pocket and handed it to his sister, and then walked over to the table to retrieve the strange, melted object. "Unless you need any further assistance," he said, "I think I might go examine the wreckage of the library and see if any documents have survived. We might as well learn as much from this headquarters as we can." "Good idea," Quigley said, and reached into his backpack. He brought out a notebook much like his own, except it had a dark blue cover. "I have a spare notebook," he said. "You might be interested in starting a commonplace book of your own." "That's very kind of you," Klaus said. "I'll write down anything I find. Do you want to join the search?" "I think I'll stay here," Quigley said, looking at Violet. "I've heard quite a bit about Violet Baudelaire's marvelous inventions, and I'd like to see her at work." Klaus nodded, and walked off to the iron archway marking the entrance of the ruined library, while Violet blushed and leaned down to pick up one of the forks that had survived the fire. It is one of the great sadnesses of the Baudelaire case that Violet never got to meet a man named C. M. Kornbluth, an associate of mine who spent most of his life living and working in the Valley of Four Drafts as a mechanical instructor at the V.F.D. headquarters. Mr. Kornbluth was a quiet and secretive man, so secretive that no one ever knew who he was, where he came from, or even what the C or the M stood for, and he spent much of his time holed up in his dormitory room writing strange stories, or gazing sadly out the windows of the kitchen. The one thing that put Mr. Kornbluth in a good mood would be a particularly promising mechanical student. If a young man showed an interest in deep sea radar, Mr. Kornbluth would take off his glasses and smile. If a young woman brought him a staple gun she had built, Mr. Kornbluth would clap his hands in excitement. And if a pair of twins asked him how to properly reroute some copper wiring, he would take a paper bag out of his pocket and offer some pistachio nuts to anyone who happened to be around. So, when I think of Violet Baudelaire standing in the wreckage of the V.F.D. headquarters, carefully taking the strings off the ukulele and bending some of the forks in half, I can imagine Mr. Kornbluth, even though he and his pistachios are long gone, turning from the window, smiling at the Baudelaire inventor, and saying, "Beatrice, come over here! Look at what this girl is making!" "What are you making?" Quigley asked. "Something that will get us up that waterfall," Violet replied. "I only wish that Sunny were here. Her teeth would be perfect to slice these ukulele strings into halves." "I might have something that could help " Quigley said, looking through his backpack "When I was in Dr. Orwell's office, I found these fake fingernails. They're a horrible shade of pink, but they're quite sharp." Violet took a fingernail from Quigley and looked at it carefully. "I think Count Olaf was wearing these," she said, "as part of his receptionist disguise. It's so strange that you have been following in our footsteps all this time, and yet we never even knew you were alive." "I knew you were alive," Quigley said. "Jacques Snicket told me all about you, Klaus, Sunny, and even your parents. He knew them quite well before you were born." "I thought so," Violet said, cutting the ukulele strings. "In the photograph we found, my parents are standing with Jacques Snicket and another man." "He's probably Jacques's brother," Quigley aid. "Jacques told me that he was working closely with his two siblings on an important file." "The Snicket file," Violet said. "We were hoping to find it here." Quigley looked up at the frozen waterfall. "Maybe whoever signaled us will know where it is," he said. "We'll find out soon enough," Violet said. "Please take off your shoes." "My shoes?" Quigley asked. "The waterfall will be very slippery," Violet explained, "so I'm using the ukulele strings to tie these bent forks to the toe area, to make fork-assisted climbing shoes. We'll hold two more forks in our hands. Tines of the forks
are almost as sharp as Sunny's teeth, so the fork-assisted climbing shoes will easily dig into the ice with each step, and enable us to keep our balance." "But what's the candelabra for?" Quigley asked, unlacing his shoes. "I'm going to use it as an ice tester," Violet said. "A moving body of water, such as a waterfall, is rarely completely frozen. There are probably places on that slope where there is only a thin layer of ice, particularly with False Spring on its way. If we stuck our forks through the ice and hit water, we'd lose our grip and fall. So I'll tap on the ice with the candelabra before each step, to find the solid places we should climb." "It sounds like a difficult journey," Quigley said. "No more difficult than climbing up the Vertical Flame Diversion," Violet said, tying a fork onto Quigley's shoe. "I'm using the Sumac knot, so it should hold tight. Now, all we need is Klaus's shoes, and..." "I'm sorry to interrupt, but I think this might be important," Klaus said, and Violet turned to see that her brother had returned. He was holding the dark blue notebook in one hand and a small, burnt piece of paper in the other. "I found this scrap of paper in a pile of ashes," he said. "It's from some kind of code book." "What does it say?" Violet asked. "'In the e flagration resulting in the destruction of a sanc ,'" Klaus read, "' teers should avail themselves of Verbal Fri Dialogue, which is concealed accordingly.'" "That doesn't make any sense," Quigley said. "Do you think it's in code?" "Sort of," Klaus said. "Parts of the sentence are burned away, so you have to figure the sentence out as if it's encoded. 'Flagration' is probably the last part of the word 'conflagration,' a fancy word for fire, and 'sanc' is probably the beginning of the word 'sanctuary,' which means a safe place. So the sentence probably began something like, 'In the event of a conflagration resulting in the destruction of a sanctuary.'" Violet stood up and looked over his shoulder. "'Teers,'" she said, "is probably 'volunteers,' but I don't know what 'avail themselves' means." "It means 'to make use of,'" Klaus said, 'like you're availing yourself of the ukulele and those forks. Don't you see? This says that in case a safe place burns down, they'll leave some sort of message, 'Verbal Fri Dialogue.'" "But what could 'Verbal Fri Dialogue' be?" Quigley asked. "Friends? Frisky?" "Frilly?" Violet guessed. "Frightening?" "But it says that it's concealed accordingly," Klaus pointed out. "That means that the dialogue is hidden in a logical way. If it were Verbal Waterfall Dialogue, it would be hidden in the waterfall. So none of those words can be right. Where would someone leave a message where fire couldn't destroy it?" "But fire destroys everything," Violet said. "Look at the headquarters. Nothing is left standing except the library entrance, and . . ." ". . . and the refrigerator," Klaus finished. "Or, we might say, the fridge." "Verbal Fridge Dialogue!" Quigley said. "The volunteers left a message," said Klaus, who was already halfway to the refrigerator, "in the only place they knew wouldn't be affected by the fire." "And the one place their enemies wouldn't think of looking," Quigley said. "After all, there's never anything terribly important in the refrigerator." What Quigley said, of course, is not entirely true. Like an envelope, a hollow figurine, and a coffin, a refrigerator can hold all sorts of things, and they may turn out to be very important depending on what kind of day you are having. A refrigerator may hold an icepack, for example, which would be important if you had been wounded. A refrigerator may hold a bottle of water, which would be important if you were dying of thirst. And a refrigerator may hold a basket of strawberries, which would be important if a maniac said to you, "If you don't give me a basket of strawberries right now, I'm going to poke you with this large stick." But when the two elder Baudelaires and Quigley Quagmire opened the refrigerator, they found nothing that would help someone who was wounded, dying of thirst, or being threatened by a strawberry-crazed, stick-carrying maniac or anything that looked important at all. The fridge was mostly empty, with just a few of the usual things people keep in their refrigerators and rarely use, including a jar of mustard, a container of olives, three jars of different kinds of jam, a bottle of lemon juice, and one lonely pickle in a small glass jug. "There's nothing here," Violet said. "Look in the crisper," Quigley said, pointing to a drawer in the refrigerator traditionally used for storing fruits and vegetables. Klaus opened the drawer and pulled out a few strands of a green plant with tiny, skinny leaves. "It smells like dill," Klaus said, "and it's quite crisp, as if it were picked yesterday." "Very Fresh Dill," Quigley said. "Another mystery," Violet said, and tears filled her eyes. "We have nothing but mysteries. We don't know where Sunny is. We don't know where Count Olaf is. We don't know who's signaling to us at the top of the waterfall, or what they're trying to say, and now here's a mysterious message in a mysterious ode in a mysterious refrigerator, and a bunch of mysterious herbs in the crisper. I'm tired of mysteries. I want someone to help us." "We can help each other," Klaus said. "We have your inventions, and Quigley's maps, and my research." "And we're all very well-read," Quigley said. "That should be enough to solve any mystery." Violet sighed, and kicked at something that lay on the ashen ground. It was the small shell of a pistachio nut, blackened from the fire that destroyed the headquarters. "It's like we're members of V.F.D. already," she said. "We're sending signals, and breaking codes, and finding secrets in the ruins of a fire." "Do you think our parents would be proud of us," Klaus asked, "for following in their footsteps?" "I don't know," Violet said. "After all, they kept V.F.D. a secret." "Maybe they were going to tell us later," Klaus said. "Or maybe they hoped we would never find out," Violet said. "I keep wondering the same thing," Quigley said. "If I could travel back in time to the moment my mother showed me the secret passageway under the library, I would ask her why she was keeping these secrets." "That's one more mystery," Violet said sadly, and looked up at the slippery slope. It was getting later and later in the afternoon, and the frozen waterfall looked less and less shiny in the fading sunlight, as if time were running out to climb to the top and see who had been signaling to them. "We should each investigate the mystery we're most likely to solve," she said. "I'll climb up the waterfall, and solve the mystery of the Verdant Flammable Device by learning who's up there, and what they want. You should stay down here, Klaus, and solve the mystery of the Verbal Fridge Dialogue, by learning the code and discovering what the message is." "And I'll help you both," Quigley said, taking out his purple notebook. "I'll leave my commonplace book with Klaus, in case it's any help with the codes. And I'll climb up the waterfall with you, Violet, in case you need my help." "Are you sure?" Violet asked. "You've already taken us this far, Quigley. You don't have to risk your life any further." "We'll understand," Klaus said, "if you want to leave and search for your siblings." "Don't be absurd," Quigley said. "We're all part of this mystery, whatever it is. Of course I'm going to help you." The two Baudelaires looked at one another and smiled. It is so rare in this world to meet a trustworthy person who truly wants to help you, and finding such a person can make you feel warm and safe, even if you are in the middle of a windy valley high up in the mountains. For a moment, as their friend smiled back at them, it seemed as if all the mysteries had been solved already, even with Sunny still separated from them, and Count Olaf still at large, and the abandoned V.F.D. headquarters still in ashes around them. Just knowing that they had found a person like Quigley Quagmire made Violet and Klaus feel as if every code made sense, and every signal was clear. Violet stepped forward, her fork-assisted climbing shoes making small, determined noises on the ground, and took Quigley's hand. "Thank you," she said, "for volunteering."