The Austere Academy

by Lemony Snicket

  CHAPTER Thirteen

  "Where are they?" Violet cried as Coach Genghis stepped into the shack. "What have you done with them?" Normally, of course, one should begin conversations with something more along the lines of "Hello, how are you," but the eldest Baudelaire was far too distressed to do so.

  Genghis's eyes were shining as brightly as could be, but his voice was calm and pleasant. "Here they are," he said, holding up the ribbon and glasses. "I thought you might be worried about them, so I brought them over first thing

  "We don't mean these them!" Klaus said, taking the items from Genghis's scraggly hands. "We mean them them!"

  "I'm afraid I don't understand all those thems," Coach Genghis said, shrugging at the adults. "The orphans ran laps last night as part of my S.O.R.E. program, but they had to dash off in the morning to take their exams. In their hurry, Violet dropped her ribbon and Klaus dropped his glasses. But the baby-"

  "You know very well that's not what happened," Violet interrupted. "Where are the Quagmire triplets? What have you done with our friends?"

  "What have you done with our friends?" Vice Principal Nero said in his mocking tone. "Stop talking nonsense, orphans."

  "I'm afraid it's not nonsense," Genghis said, shaking his turbaned head and continuing his story. "As I was saying before the little girl interrupted me, the baby didn't dash off with the other orphans. She just sat there like a sack of flour. So I walked over to her and gave her a kick to get her moving."

  "Excellent idea!" Nero said. "What a wonderful story this is! And then what happened?"

  "Well, at first it seemed like I'd kicked a big hole in the baby," Genghis said, his eyes shining, "which seemed lucky, because Sunny was a terrible athlete and it would have been a blessing to put her out of her misery."

  Nero clapped his hands. "I know just what you mean, Genghis," he said. "She's a terrible secretary as well."

  "But she did all that stapling," Mr. Remora protested.

  "Shut up and let the coach finish his story," Nero said.

  "But when I looked down," Genghis continued, "I saw that I hadn't kicked a hole in a baby. I'd kicked a hole in a bag of flour! I'd been tricked!"

  "That's terrible!" Nero cried.

  "So I ran after Violet and Klaus," Genghis continued, "and I found that they weren't Violet and Klaus after all, but those two other orphans- the twins."

  "They're not twins!" Violet cried. "They're triplets!"

  "They're triplets!" Nero mocked. "Don't be an idiot. Triplets are when four babies are born at the same time, and there are only two Quagmires."

  "And these two Quagmires were pretending to be the Baudelaires, in order to give the Baudelaires extra time to study."

  "Extra time to study?" Nero said, grinning in delight. "Hee hee hee! Why, that's cheating!"

  "That's not cheating!" Mrs. Bass said.

  "Skipping gym class to study is cheating," Nero insisted.

  "No, it's just good time management," Mr. Remora argued. "There's nothing wrong with athletics, but they shouldn't get in the way of your schoolwork."

  "Look, I'm the vice principal," the vice principal said. "I say the Baudelaires were cheating, and therefore-hooray!-I can expel them. You two are merely teachers, so if you disagree with me, I can expel you, too."

  Mr. Remora looked at Mrs. Bass, and they both shrugged. "You're the boss, Nero," Mr. Remora said finally, taking another banana out of his pocket. "If you say they're expelled, they're expelled."

  "Well, I say they're expelled," Nero said. "And Sunny loses her job, too."

  "Rantaw!" Sunny shrieked, which meant something along the lines of "I never wanted to work as a secretary, anyway!"

  "We don't care about being expelled," Violet said. "We want to know what happened to our friends."

  "Well, the Quagmires had to be punished for their part in the cheating," Coach Genghis said, "so I brought them over to the cafeteria and put those two workers in charge of them. They'll be whisking eggs all day long."

  "Very sensible," Nero agreed.

  "That's all they're doing?" Klaus said suspiciously. "Whisking eggs?"

  "That's what I said," Genghis said and leaned so close to the Baudelaires that all they could see were his shiny eyes and the crooked curve of his wicked mouth. "Those two Quagmires will whisk and whisk until they are simply whisked away."

  "You're a liar," Violet said.

  "Insulting your coach," Nero said, shaking his pigtailed head. "Now you're doubly expelled."

  "What's this?" said a voice from the doorway. "Doubly expelled?"

  The voice stopped to have a long, wet cough, so the Baudelaires knew without looking that it was Mr. Poe. He was standing at the Orphans Shack holding a large paper sack and looking busy and confused. "What are all of you doing here?" he said. "This doesn't look like a proper place to have a conversation. It's just an old shack."

  "What are you doing here?" Nero asked. "We don't allow strangers to wander around Prufrock Preparatory School."

  "Poe's the name," Mr. Poe said, shaking Nero's hand. "You must be Nero. We've talked on the phone. I received your telegram about the twenty-eight bags of candy and the ten pairs of earrings with precious stones. My associates at Mulctuary Money Management thought I'd better deliver them in person, so here I am. But what's this about expelled?"

  "These orphans you foisted on me," Nero said, using a nasty word for "gave," "have proven to be terrible cheaters, and I'm forced to expel them."

  "Cheaters?" Mr. Poe said, frowning at the three siblings. "Violet, Klaus, Sunny, I'm very disappointed in you. You promised me that you'd be excellent students."

  "Well, actually, only Violet and Klaus were students," Nero said. "Sunny was an administrative assistant, but she was terrible at it as well."

  Mr. Poe's eyes widened in surprise as he paused to cough into his white handkerchief. "An administrative assistant?" he repeated. "Why, Sunny's only a baby. She should be in preschool, not an office environment."

  "Well, it doesn't matter now," Nero said. "They're all expelled. Give me that candy."

  Klaus looked down at his hands, which were still clutching the Quagmire notebooks. He was afraid that the notebooks might be the only sign of the Quagmires he would ever see again. "We don't have any time to argue about candy!" he cried. "Count Olaf has done something terrible to our friends!"

  "Count Olaf?" Mr. Poe said, handing Nero the paper sack. "Don't tell me he's found you here!"

  "No, of course not," Nero said. "My advanced computer system has kept him away, of course. But the children have this bizarre notion that Coach Genghis is actually Olaf in disguise."

  "Count Olaf," Genghis said slowly. "Yes,

  I've heard of him. He's supposed to be the best actor in the whole world. I'm the best gym teacher in the whole world, so we couldn't possibly be the same person."

  Mr. Poe looked Coach Genghis up and down, then shook his hand. "A pleasure to meet you," he said, and then turned to the Baudelaires. "Children, I'm surprised at you. Even without an advanced computer system, you should be able to tell that this man isn't Count Olaf. Olaf has only one eyebrow, and this man is wearing a turban. And Olaf has a tattoo of an eye on his ankle, and this man is wearing expensive running shoes. They are quite handsome, by the way."

  "Oh, thank you," Coach Genghis said. "Unfortunately, thanks to these children, they have flour all over them, but I'm sure it'll wash off."

  "If he removes his turban and his shoes," Violet said impatiently, "you will be able to see that he's Olaf."

  "We've been through this before," Nero said. "He can't take off his running shoes because he's been exercising and his feet smell."

  "And I can't take off my turban for religious reasons," Genghis added.

  "You're not wearing a turban for religious reasons!" Klaus said in disgust, and Sunny shrieked something in agreement. "You're wearing it as a disguise! Please, Mr. Poe, make him take it off!"

  "Now, Klaus," Mr. Poe said sternly. "You have to learn
to be accepting of other cultures. I'm sorry, Coach Genghis. The children aren't usually prejudiced."

  "That's quite all right," Genghis said. "I'm used to religious persecution."

  "However," Mr. Poe continued, after a brief coughing spell, "I would ask you to remove your running shoes, if only to set the Baudelaires' minds at ease. I think we can all stand a little smelliness if it's in the cause of criminal justice."

  "Smelly feet," Mrs. Bass said, wrinkling her nose. "Ew, gross."

  "I'm afraid I cannot take off my running shoes," Coach Genghis said, taking a step toward the door. "I need them."

  "Need them?" Nero asked. "For what?"

  Coach Genghis took a long, long look at the three Baudelaires and smiled a terrible, toothy grin. "For running, of course," he said, and ran out the door.

  The orphans were startled for a moment, not only because he had started running so suddenly but also because it seemed like he had given up so easily. After his long, elaborate plan-disguising himself as a gym teacher, forcing the Baudelaires to run laps, getting them expelled-he was suddenly racing across the lawn without even glancing back at the children he'd been chasing for such a long time. The Baudelaires stepped out of the Orphans Shack, and Coach Genghis turned back to sneer at them.

  "Don't think I've given up on you, orphans!" he called to them. "But in the meantime, I have two little prisoners with a very nice fortune of their own!"

  He began to run again, but not before pointing a bony finger across the lawn. The Bau-delaires gasped. At the far end of Prufrock Prep, they saw a long, black car with dark smoke billowing out of its exhaust pipes. But the children were not gasping at air pollution. The two cafeteria workers were walking toward the car, but they had taken off their metal masks at last, and the three youngsters could see that they were the two powder-faced women who were comrades of Count Olaf's. But this was not what the children were gasping at either, although it was a surprising and distressing turn of events. What they were gasping at was what each of the women was dragging toward the car. Each powder-faced woman was dragging one of the Quagmire triplets, who were struggling desperately to get away.

  "Put them in the back seat!" Genghis called. "I'll drive! Hurry!"

  "What in the world is Coach Genghis doing with those children?" Mr. Poe asked, frowning.

  The Baudelaires did not even turn to Mr. Poe to try and explain. After all their S.O.R.E. training sessions, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny found that their leg muscles could respond instantly if they wanted to run. And the Baudelaire orphans had never wanted to run more than they did now.

  "After them!" Violet cried, and the children went after them. Violet ran, her hair flying wildly behind her. Klaus ran, not even bothering to drop the Quagmire notebooks. And Sunny crawled as fast as her legs and hands could carry her. Mr. Poe gave a startled cough and began running after them, and Nero, Mr. Remora, and Mrs. Bass began running after Mr. Poe. If you had been hiding behind the archway, spying on what was going on, you would have seen what looked like a strange race on the front lawn, with Coach Genghis running in front, the Baudelaire orphans right behind, and assorted adults huffing and puffing behind the children. But if you continued watching, you would have seen an exciting development in the race, a phrase which here means that the Baudelaires were gaining on Genghis. The coach had much longer legs than the Baudelaires, of course, but he had spent the last ten nights standing around blowing a whistle. The children had spent those nights running hundreds of laps around the luminous circle, and so their tiny, strong legs-and, in Sunny's case, arms-were overcoming Genghis's height advantage.

  I hate to pause at such a suspenseful part of the story, but I feel I must intrude and give you one last warning as we reach the end of this miserable tale. You were probably thinking, as you read that the children were catching up to their enemy, that perhaps this was the time in the lives of the Baudelaire orphans when this terrible villain would finally be caught, and that perhaps the children would find some kind guardians and that Violet, Klaus, and Sunny would spend the rest of their lives in relative happiness, possibly creating the printing business that they had discussed with the Quagmires. And you are free to believe that this is how the story turns out, if you want. The last few events in this chapter of the Baudelaire orphans' lives are incredibly unfortunate, and quite terrifying, and so if you would prefer to ignore them entirely you should put this book down now and think of a gentle ending to this horrible story. I have made a solemn promise to write the Baudelaire history exactly as it occurred, but you have made no such promise- at least as far as I know-and you do not need to endure the wretched ending of this story, and this is your very last chance to save yourself from the woeful knowledge of what happened next.

  Violet was the first to reach Coach Genghis, and she stretched her arm out as far as she could, grabbing part of his turban. Turbans, you probably know, consist of just one piece of cloth, wrapped very tightly and in a complicated way around someone's head. But Genghis had cheated, not knowing the proper way to tie a turban, because he was wearing it as a disguise and not for religious reasons. He had merely wrapped it around his head the way you might wrap a towel around yourself when getting out of the shower, so when Violet grabbed the turban, it unraveled immediately. She had been hoping that grabbing his turban would stop the coach from running, but all it did was leave her with a long piece of cloth in her hands. Coach Genghis kept running, his one eyebrow glistened with sweat over his shiny eyes.

  "Look!" Mr. Poe said, who was far behind the Baudelaires but close enough to see. "Genghis has only one eyebrow, like Count Olaf!"Sunny was the next Baudelaire to reach Genghis, and because she was crawling on the ground, she was in a perfect position to attack his shoes. Using all four of her sharp teeth, she bit one pair of his shoelaces, and then the other.

  The knots came undone immediately, leaving tiny, bitten pieces of shoelace on the brown lawn. Sunny had been hoping that untying his shoes would make the coach trip, but Genghis merely stepped out of his shoes and kept running. Like many disgusting people, Coach Genghis was not wearing socks, so with each step his eye tattoo glistening with sweat on his left ankle.

  "Look!" Mr. Poe said, who was still too far to help but close enough to see. "Genghis has an eye tattoo, like Count Olaf! In fact, I think he is Count Olaf!"

  "Of course he is!" Violet cried, holding up the unraveled turban.

  "Merd!" Sunny shrieked, holding up a tiny piece of shoelace. She meant something like "That's what we've been trying to tell you."

  Klaus, however, did not say anything. He was putting all of his energy toward running, but he was not running toward the man we can finally call by his true name, Count Olaf. Klaus was running toward the car. The powder-faced women were just shoving the Quagmires into the back seat, and he knew this might be his only chance to rescue them.

  "Klaus! Klaus!" Isadora cried as he reached the car. Klaus dropped the notebooks to the ground and grabbed his friend's hand. "Help us!"

  "Hang on!" Klaus cried and began to drag Isadora back out of the car. Without a word, one of the powder-faced women leaned forward and bit Klaus's hand, forcing him to let go of the triplet. The other powder-faced woman leaned across Isadora's lap and began pulling the car door closed.

  "No!" Klaus cried and grabbed the door handle. Back and forth, Klaus and Olaf's associate tugged on the door, forcing it halfway open and halfway shut.

  "Klaus!" Duncan cried, from behind Isadora. "Listen to me, Klaus! If anything goes wrong-"

  "Nothing will go wrong," Klaus promised, pulling on the car door as hard as he could.

  "You'll be out of here in a second!"

  "If anything goes wrong," Duncan said again, "there's something you should know. When we were researching the history of Count Olaf, we found out something dreadful!"

  "We can talk about this later," Klaus said, struggling with the door.

  "Look in the notebooks!" Isadora cried. "The-" The first powder-faced woman put her hand over Is
adora's mouth so she couldn't speak. Isadora turned her head roughly and slipped from the woman's grasp. "The-" The powdery hand covered her mouth again.

  "Hang on!" Klaus called desperately. "Hang on!"

  "Look in the notebooks! V.F.D." Duncan screamed, but the other woman's powdery hand covered his mouth before he could continue.

  "What?" Klaus said.

  Duncan shook his head vigorously and freed himself from the woman's hand for just one moment. "V.F.D." he managed to scream again, and that was the last Klaus heard. Count Olaf, who had been running slower without his shoes, had reached the car, and with a deafening roar, he grabbed Klaus's hand and pried it loose from the car door. As the door slammed shut, Olaf kicked Klaus in the stomach, sending him falling to the ground and landing with a rough thump! near the Quagmire notebooks he had dropped. The villain towered over Klaus and gave him a sickening smile, then leaned down, picked up the notebooks, and tucked them under his arm.

  "No!" Klaus screamed, but Count Olaf merely smiled, stepped into the front seat, and began driving away just as Violet and Sunny reached their brother.

  Clutching his stomach, Klaus stood up and tried to follow his sisters, who were trying to chase the long, black car. But Olaf was driving over the speed limit and it was simply impossible, and after a few yards the Baudelaires had to stop. The Quagmire triplets climbed over the powder-faced women and began to pound on the rear window of the car. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny could not hear what the Quagmires were screaming through the glass; they only saw their desperate and terrified faces. But then the powdery hands of Olaf's assistants grabbed them and pulled them back from the window. The faces of the Quagmire triplets faded to nothing, and the Baudelaires saw nothing more as the car pulled away.