“Salt lung?”
“That’s what the bell is for,” she explained. “When the wind rises, it carries salt deposits left behind on the floor of the sea, which can be dangerous to breathe. The masks filter the salt out of the air.”
“I heard the masks were for water pressure,” I said.
Moxie frowned into her mask. “Where did you hear that?”
“From S. Theodora Markson,” I said. “Where did you hear about salt lung?”
“Some society put out a pamphlet,” Moxie said, gesturing to the stuffed drawer. We put on our masks and faced each other. “I don’t much like talking with these on,” she said. “Shall we read until we hear the all-clear?”
I gave her a masked nod of agreement, and she led me into a small room where the walls were stuffed with bookshelves, and a large floor lamp stood in the middle. A big bulb cast a bright circle of light from under a shade decorated with a creature I was getting tired of looking at. There were two large chairs to sit in, one piled with more typewritten pages and the other surrounded by thick, sad-looking books on the decline of the newspaper industry and how to raise a daughter all by yourself. On the carpet I could see marks on the floor where a third chair had been dragged away. Moxie sat in her chair and put her typewritten notes in her lap and told me to help myself. I found a book that did nothing to relax my nerves. The story took place in some big woods where a little house was home to a medium-sized family who liked to make things. First they made maple syrup. Then they made butter. Then they made cheese, and I shut the book. It was more interesting to think about stealing a statue and making my way down a hill on a hawser high above the ground. “Interesting” is a word which here means that it made me nervous. I walked over to the window and tried to see how far it was from the lighthouse to the Sallis mansion, but the sun was long down, and outside was as black as the Bombinating Beast itself. It wasn’t much of a view, but I stared at it for quite some time. After a while the bell clanged the all-clear from the island tower, and I took off my mask and realized Moxie had fallen asleep behind hers. I slipped her mask off and found a blanket to put on her and went back to my staring. I thought maybe if I stared hard enough, I could see the lights of the city I had left so very far behind. This was nonsense, of course, but there’s nothing wrong with occasionally staring out the window and thinking nonsense, as long as the nonsense is yours.
Before long the clock was bombinating twelve times, but it was a quiet buzzing, so I heard Theodora’s roadster outside without a problem. Moxie didn’t stir, so I shook her shoulder slightly until her eyes flickered open.
“Is it time?” she said.
“It’s time,” I said, “but you would do me a great favor if you went to bed.”
“And miss all the fun?” she said. “Not on your life, Lemony Snicket.”
“You said yourself there’s something going on we can’t see,” I said. “It might be something dangerous.”
“In any case, it’s something interesting,” Moxie said, “and I’m going to find out all about it.”
“Moxie, we can’t burgle you if you’re standing around watching. At least hide yourself.”
She stood up. “Where?”
“You grew up in this lighthouse,” I said. “You know all the best hiding places.”
She nodded, packed up her typewriter, and walked out of the room. I put out the lights and then opened the front door. The roadster was parked in front of the lighthouse, but I couldn’t see Theodora. I walked a few steps out and called her name.
My chaperone emerged from the night, crouching along the ground as she made her way. She had changed her clothes and was wearing black pants and a black turtleneck sweater, with black slippers on her feet and a small black mask over her eyes. Her immense hair was tied up in a complication of black ribbons, and her face was dusted with something black to help her blend in. I once saw a cat run up a chimney and then immediately come back down covered in soot to ruin the living room furniture, and I noticed several striking similarities between this memory and the woman who was moving stealthily toward me.
“There are burglary clothes in your suitcase,” she hissed. “Why aren’t you wearing them? We don’t want to attract attention.”
“Perhaps you should have parked someplace else,” I said, pointing to the roadster.
“Keep your voice down,” she said. “We’ll wake people up.”
One way to keep one’s voice down is to stop talking altogether, which is also one way not to argue with somebody. I beckoned to Theodora, and we slipped into the house and made our way up the spiral staircase, Theodora pressing herself against the walls of the lighthouse and swiveling her head this way and that, and me walking like a normal person. I led her into the newsroom, removed the sheet, and pointed to the statue of the Bombinating Beast. She gestured to me that I should be the one to take it. I gestured back that she was the chaperone and the leader of this caper. She gestured to me that I shouldn’t argue with her. I gestured to her that I was the one who had gotten us into the house in the first place. She gestured to me that my predecessor knew that the apprentice should never argue with the chaperone or complain and that I might model my own behavior after his. I gestured to her asking what the S stood for in her name, and she replied with a very rude gesture, and I grabbed the statue and tucked it into my vest. It was lighter than I thought it would be, and I felt less like a burglar and more like someone who was simply carrying an object from one place to another.
I opened the window and reached a hand down into the darkness until I could feel the hawser rough and cold against my palm. This made me feel more like a burglar. I held it steady for Theodora to grab with both hands, and then I lowered myself after her. I couldn’t reach to shut the window, but I figured Moxie would do it once she came out of hiding. I wondered if she could see us now as we began to climb, hand over hand, along the hawser toward the Sallis mansion at the bottom of the hill. We must have been strange shadows against the round, white moon. The rustling of the Clusterous Forest grew softer as we got farther and farther away, and the still night air filled my throat. I was not as high up as I thought I would be, and the hawser stayed steady as we continued our descent. In the moonlight I could see the trees below us, the thin branches all folded together like laced-up shoes, and the leaves looking lonely and uncomfortable. I could see the small white cottage, with something glinting in one of its windows—some small object that was reflecting the light of the moon. What I did not see was a candle, as Theodora had told me there would be, to signal that all was clear.
“Snicket,” Theodora said, “this would be a good time to ask me a question.”
“Why?” I tried.
“Because I am somewhat afraid of heights,” she answered, “and answering an apprentice’s questions would be a good way to distract me.”
“OK,” I said, and thought for a moment. “Do you think this is the way the statue was stolen?”
“Absolutely,” Theodora said. “The Mallahans must have climbed down the hawser, grabbed the statue, and gone back out the way they came.”
“I thought you said they came in from the parlor,” I said, “by sawing a hole in the ceiling and letting gravity do the rest.”
“That was an early theory of mine, yes,” Theodora said, “but at least I was half-right: Gravity is involved. This would be a much harder climb if we were going up this hill instead of down.”
What Theodora said was true—it would have been much harder to move hand over hand up the cable—but she had also said the thieves had gone back out the way they had come. Arguing with my chaperone, however, probably would not have distracted her from her condition. There was a word for a fear of heights, I knew, but I couldn’t think of it. Something-phobia. “How do you think the thieves got into the Sallis mansion?” I asked.
“Through one of the windows of the library, of course,” Theodora said. “The hawser goes right there.”
“Mrs. Sallis said the windows
are always latched,” I reminded her.
“Well, they’re not latched now,” Theodora said. “Look. The butler is giving us the signal that all is clear.”
Sure enough, I could see the faint shape of the open window, right where the hawser ended, and in the middle of that shape was a faint light. Hydrophobia? I thought. No, Snicket. That’s the fear of water. The light did not look like a candle, as it was not flickering, and it was bright red in color. A bright red light reminded me of something that I also could not quite remember. Agoraphobia, I thought. No, Snicket. That’s the fear of wide-open spaces.
“We’re almost there,” Theodora said. “In a minute the Bombinating Beast will be returned to its rightful owner, and this case will be closed.”
I did not answer, because it had come to me all at once, like a light turning on. It was the red flashlight the Officers Mitchum had on top of their car. And “acrophobia” is the word for a fear of heights. I let go of the hawser and fell straight down into the trees.
CHAPTER SEVEN
It was pitch-black everywhere around me, and I felt as if I had fallen into the path of an enormous shadow. I had learned how to do it, in what you would probably call an exercise class, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t difficult or frightening to fall that way. It was difficult and frightening. The fall was quick and dark, and I landed in the tree on my back, with many twigs and leaves poking at me in annoyance. Still I felt it. Then I relaxed, as I had been trained to do, and lay out on the top of the tree, letting it support my weight, but still I felt the enormous shadow cast upon me. It was not the shadow of the hawser, or of any of the other trees nearby. It was the face that appeared next to me, the face of a girl about my age. I could also see her hands, clutching the top of a ladder she must have leaned against the tree. Somehow I knew, as she blinked at me on top of the ladder, that the girl in question had already begun to cast an enormous shadow across my life and times.
“That was quite a stunt,” she said. “Where did you learn to fall into a tree like that?”
“I’ve had an unusual education,” I said.
“Did they teach you how to get down?”
“The best way is to wait for someone with a ladder.”
“Someone?” she repeated. “Who, exactly?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know her name.”
“Hello,” she said, “I’m Ellington Feint,” and I sat up to get a better look at her. It was not so dark that I couldn’t see her strange, curved eyebrows, each one coiled over like a question mark. Green eyes she had, and hair so black it made the night look pale. She had long fingers, with nails just as black, and they poked out of a black shirt with long, smooth sleeves. And right before she started climbing down the ladder, I saw her smile, shadowy in the moonlight. It was a smile that might have meant anything. She was a little older than me, or maybe just a little taller. I followed her down.
When I reached the ground, Ellington Feint looked me over and then brushed a few leaves from my collar before offering her hand. The statue felt solid against my chest, and my hands were a little raw from the hawser. I could not see Theodora above me. It was possible she did not even know I was no longer behind her. “You haven’t told me your name,” Ellington said.
I shook her hand and told her.
“Lemony Snicket,” she repeated. “Well, follow me, Mr. Snicket. I live in that white cottage you passed over. You can rest there from your flight.”
She led the way through the trees to the cottage I had seen from the road and from the hawser. Curiously, it looked even smaller now that we were close up, with a few windows here and there and a creaky-looking door and a white brick chimney puffing gray smoke into the night. A small arch over the door read HANDKERCHIEF HEIGHTS in faded letters. “They say a washerwoman used to live here,” Ellington said when she saw me looking at the sign. “She used to hang handkerchiefs out to dry in the backyard, and that gave the cottage its name.”
“Who lives here now?” I asked.
“Just me,” she said, and opened the door. The cottage was no more than one small room, and most of that room appeared to be a fireplace with a colorful fire lighting every corner. The crackles of the fire mixed with music in the room, music I’d never heard and liked very much. There was a small cot in the far corner, with some rumpled blankets and pillows, and a large striped suitcase open on the floor, with all sorts of clothing tossed all sorts of ways. I spotted a long, fancy evening gown, some heavy hiking boots, an apron that a chef might wear, a red wig, a long, zippered green tube that might have been a purse, and two small hats I’d seen on the heads of Frenchmen in old photographs, both dirty, both worn, and both the color of a raspberry. In the opposite corner were a small sink and a short wooden table, completely bare, with one stool tucked under it. Sitting on a windowsill was a dented pair of binoculars, and on the floor in the center of the room was a small box with a crank on its side and a funnel on top. It took me a moment to realize that it was an old-fashioned record player, with the music I had never heard before winding out of the funnel. The music sounded interesting and complicated, and I wanted to ask the name of the tune. There were no books in the room as far as I could see. I should have known better.
“Have a seat,” Ellington said to me, gesturing to the stool. “I’ll make us some coffee. That should be restorative.”
“Coffee?” I said, my voice louder and higher than I had planned. “I don’t drink coffee.”
“What do you drink?”
“Water,” I said. “Tea. Milk sometimes. Orange juice in the morning. Root beer if I can find it.”
“But not coffee?”
“People our age don’t usually drink coffee,” I said.
“Nor do they usually drop into trees,” Ellington said. “I guess we’ve both had unusual educations.”
I pulled out the stool and sat down, and Ellington busied herself at the sink with a metal coffeepot, rinsing it out and then filling it with water before adding several scoops of ground coffee from a paper bag stenciled with the shadow of a black cat. “Black Cat Coffee,” she told me. “Corner of Caravan and Parfait. It’s one of the last businesses left in Stain’d-by-the-Sea, and one of the only reasons I venture into town at all.” She sighed. “Mostly I stay right here.”
“And what do you do here?” I asked.
She gave me a small smile. “You first,” she said. “Why are you flying through the air in the middle of the night?”
I reached into my vest and put down the Bombinating Beast on the table, a little too hard so it made a loud thunk. Ellington glanced at it briefly and then reached for a pair of creaky iron tongs, used for moving burning logs around in a fireplace. She used the tongs to pick up the coffeepot and then held it over the flames before looking back at me.
“What is that?” she asked. “Some kind of toy?”
I took a long, close look at the statue for the first time. The Bombinating Beast still looked like a sea horse, if a sea horse could be a nasty, frightening animal. The eyes of the statue were actually small holes, as was the mouth, with its lips drawn back and the tiny, sharp teeth making thin lines over the hole. The entire statue was hollow, I realized, and for a moment I wondered if it had been carved to fit over a candle, so that the fire might shine through the eyes and mouth to create an eerie effect. I turned it over to look at the base of the statue, which had a strange slit cut into the wood. There was a small, thick piece of paper pasted over the slit like a patch. The paper patch felt curious to the touch, like the paper wrappings on cookies in the bakery. I shook the statue to see if there was anything inside, but it did not make a sound. “I don’t know what it is,” I said finally. “I’ve been told it’s worth a lot of money.”
“And someone’s going to give you this money,” she asked me, “in return for your stealing it?”
“Something like that,” I said, remembering my promises.
“Then why did you drop into a tree?”
“Somet
hing was going wrong,” I said.
“What was going wrong?”
“You’d know better than I would,” I said. “You were watching me the whole time.”
The coffeepot began to gurgle, and Ellington removed it from the fireplace and set it down, bubbling, on the table before fetching two cups and two saucers from a rack next to the sink. She poured two cups of coffee and let them steam in front of us for a moment on the table. The steam lingered in the air along with the odd, jumpy music. It was dark out the window, but I knew had it been daytime that we would have had a wide view of the Clusterous Forest. Ellington grabbed a pillow from the cot and knelt on the floor before replying.
“How did you know I was watching?” she asked quietly.
“I saw something glinting at me from the window of the cottage,” I said, “right where those binoculars are sitting. You were watching me and my associate on the hawser. Why?”
“I’ve been watching this area for days,” she said, and took a sip of her coffee. I left mine alone. It wasn’t that I thought she had slipped laudanum into it. It was simply that I didn’t like coffee. I didn’t even like the way it smelled, dark and earthy like soil, but Ellington smiled a little as she sipped.
“What are you looking for?” I asked, and pointed to the Bombinating Beast. “This?”
She put down her coffee and smirked at the statue. The statue frowned back in reply. “I’m looking for something much more important than some silly statue,” she said. “I’m looking for my father.”
“What happened to him?”
She stood up. “Somebody took him—some terrible man. My father and I lived together in Killdeer Fields, a town farther up the road a ways.”
“I’ve heard of it.”
“It’s a nice enough place,” Ellington said, “although something was going on that was bothering my father, I could tell. And then one day I came home from school and he wasn’t there. He wasn’t there by dinnertime, and he wasn’t there by bedtime, and in the morning a man called with a fearsome voice. He introduced himself as Hangfire and told me I’d never see my father again. That was six months ago. I’ve been looking the whole time, and I’m beginning to believe that what Hangfire told me was the truth.” She walked to the cot and reached under it to show me an enormous, messy pile of notebooks, newspapers, envelopes, and parcels. “This is what I do,” she said. “I’ve been following any lead I can find. I’ve interviewed dozens of people. I’ve checked on hundreds of rumors. I’ve written letters and telegrams, made phone calls, and knocked on doors. I’ve sent countless packages to people he knew, most of whom left Killdeer Fields after the flood. I send photographs of my father, copies of articles he’s written, anything that might help people tell me where he is. A while ago I heard that Hangfire was hiding out here in Stain’d-by-the-Sea.”
Who Could That Be at This Hour? Page 6
