The Slippery Slope asoue-10

by Lemony Snicket

  The Vernacularly Fastened Door did not open onto a kitchen, not anymore. When the Baudelaires followed the mysterious scout through the doorway, they found themselves standing in what at first seemed to be a large field, growing a black and ruined harvest in a valley as cold and drafty as its name. But slowly, they saw the charred remains of the grand and impressive building that had stood where the three children were standing. Nearby was a handful of silverware that had survived the blaze, scattered in front of the remnants of a stove, and a refrigerator stood to one side, as if it were guarding the ashen remains of the rest of the kitchen. To one side was a pile of burnt wood that had probably once been a large dining table, with a half-melted candelabra sticking out of the top like a baby tree. Farther away, they could see the mysterious shapes of other objects that had survived the fire — a trombone, the pendulum of a grandfather clock, what looked like a periscope, or perhaps a spyglass, an ice cream scoop, lying forlornly in a pile of ashes encrusted with burnt sugar, and an iron archway emblazoned with the words "V.F.D. Library," but there was nothing beyond the archway but piles and piles of blackened remains. It was a devastating sight, and it made Violet and Klaus feel as if they were all alone in a world that had been completely ruined. The only thing they could see that seemed untouched by the fire was a sheer, white wall, beyond the refrigerator, that rose up as far as two siblings could see. It took the Baudelaires a few moments to realize that it was a frozen waterfall, rising up in a slippery slope toward the source of the Stricken Stream on Mount Fraught, so shiny and white that it made the ruined headquarters look even darker.

  "It must have been beautiful," the sweatered scout said, in a quivering voice. He walked toward the waterfall, his feet churning up black dust with every step. "I read that there was a large window," he said, moving his gloved hand in the air as if it were still there. "When it was your turn to cook, you could look out at the waterfall while you were chopping vegetables or simmering a sauce. It was supposed to be very peaceful. And there was a mechanism just outside the window that turned some of the water from the pool into steam. The steam rose up and covered the headquarters, so it couldn't be seen through the blanket of mist."

  The Baudelaires walked to where the scout was standing, and looked into the frozen pool at the bottom of the waterfall. The pool branched off into two tributaries, a word which here means "divisions of a river or stream, each twisting off in a different direction past the ruins of the headquarters, and curving around the Mortmain Mountains until they disappeared from view." Violet and Klaus gazed sadly at the icy swirls of black and gray they had noticed when they were walking alongside the Stricken Stream. "It was ashes" Klaus said quietly. "Ashes from the fire fell into the pool at the bottom of the waterfall, and the stream carried them down the river."

  Violet found that it was easier to discuss a small, specific matter than think about her immense disappointment. "But the pool is frozen solid," she said. "The stream couldn't have carried the ashes anywhere."

  "It wouldn't have been frozen when it happened," Klaus replied. "The heat from the fire would have thawed the pool."

  "It must have been awful to see," the sweatered scout said. Violet and Klaus stood with him, imagining the inferno, a word which here means "enormous fire that destroyed a secret headquarters high in the mountains." They could almost hear the shattering of glass as the windows fell away, and the crackle of the fire as it consumed everything it could. They could almost smell the thick smoke as it floated upward and blackened the sky, and they could almost see the books in the library, falling from the burning shelves and tumbling into ashes The only thing they could not picture was who might have been at the headquarters when the fire began, running out into the freezing cold to avoid the flames.

  "Do you think," Violet said, "any of the volunteers. ."

  "There's no sign that anyone was here," the scout said quickly.

  "But how can we know for sure?" Klaus asked. "There could be a survivor someplace right now."

  "Hello?" Violet called, looking around her at the rubble. "Hello?" She found that her eyes were filling with tears, as she called out for the people she knew in her heart were nowhere nearby. The eldest Baudelaire felt as if she had been calling for these people since that terrible day on the beach, and that if she called them enough they might appear before her. She thought of all the times she had called them, back when she lived with her siblings in the Baudelaire mansion.

  Sometimes she called them when she wanted them to see something she had invented. Sometimes she called them when she wanted them to know she had arrived home. And sometimes she called them just because she wanted to know where they were. Sometimes Violet just wanted to see them, and feel that she was safe as long as they were around. "Mother!" Violet Baudelaire called. "Father!"

  There was no answer.

  "Mom!" Klaus called. "Dad!"

  The Baudelaires heard nothing but the rush of all four of the valley's drafts, and a long creak as the Vernacularly Fastened Door blew shut. They saw that the door had been made to look just like the side of the mountain, so that they could scarcely see where they had come from, or the way to get back. Now they were truly alone.

  "I know we were all hoping to find people at the headquarters," the sweatered scout said gently, "but I don't think anyone is here. I think we're all by ourselves."

  "That's impossible!" Klaus cried, and Violet could hear that he was crying. He reached through his layers of clothing until he found his pocket, and pulled out page thirteen from the Snicket file, which he had been carrying with him since the Baudelaires had found it at Heimlich Hospital. The page had a photograph of their parents, standing with Jacques Snicket and another man the Baudelaires had been unable to identify, and above the photograph was a sentence Klaus had memorized from reading it so many times. '"Because of the evidence discussed on page nine,'" he recited tearfully, "'experts now suspect that there may in fact be one survivor of the fire, but the survivor's whereabouts are unknown.'" He walked up to the scout and shook the page in his face. "We thought the survivor would be here," he said.

  "I think the survivor is here," the scout said quietly, and removed his mask to reveal his face at last. "I'm Quigley Quagmire," he said, "I survived the fire that destroyed my home, and I was hoping to find my brother and sister."

  Chapter Eight

  If is one of the peculiar truths of life that people often say things that they know full well are ridiculous. If someone asks you how you are, for example, you might automatically say "Fine, thank you," when in fact you have just failed an examination or been trampled by an ox. A friend might tell you, "I've looked everywhere in the world for my keys," when you know that they have actually only looked in a few places in the immediate area. Once I said to a woman I loved very much, "I'm sure that this trouble will end soon, and you and I will spend the rest of our lives together in happiness and bliss," when I actually suspected that things were about to get much worse. And so it was with the two elder Baudelaires, when they stood face-to-face with Quigley Quagmire and found themselves to be saying things they knew were absurd.

  "You're dead," Violet said, and took off her mask to make sure she was seeing things clearly. But there was no mistaking Quigley, even though the Baudelaires had never seen him before. He looked so much like Duncan and Isadora that he could only be the third Quagmire triplet.

  "You perished in a fire along with your parents," Klaus said, but as he took off his mask he knew this wasn't so. Quigley was even giving the two Baudelaires a small smile that looked exactly like his siblings'.

  "No," Quigley said. "I survived, and I've been looking for my siblings ever since."

  "But how did you survive?" Violet asked. "Duncan and Isadora said that the house burned to the ground."

  "It did," Quigley said sadly. He looked out at the frozen waterfall and sighed deeply. "I suppose I should start at the beginning. I was in my family's library, studying a map of the Finite Forest, when I heard a shattering of
glass, and people shouting. My mother ran into the room and said there was a fire. We tried to go out the front door but the main hall was filled with smoke, so she took me back into the library and lifted a corner of the rug. There was a secret door underneath. She told me to wait down below while she fetched my siblings, and she left me there in the dark. I remember hearing the house falling to pieces above me, and the sound of frantic footsteps, and my siblings screaming." Quigley put his mask down on the ground and looked at the two Baudelaires. "But she never came back," he said. "Nobody came back, and when I tried to open the door, something had fallen on top of it and it wouldn't budge."

  "How did you get out?" Klaus asked.

  "I walked," Quigley said. "When it became clear that no one was going to rescue me, I felt around in the dark and realized I was in a sort of passageway. There was nowhere else to go so I started walking. I've never been so frightened in my life, walking alone in some dark passageway my parents had kept secret. I couldn't imagine where it would lead."

  The two Baudelaires looked at one another. They were thinking about the secret passageway they had discovered underneath their home, which they had discovered when they were under the care of Esmé Squalor and her husband. "And where did it lead?" Violet said.

  "To the house of a herpetologist," Quigley said. "At the end of the passageway was a secret door that opened into an enormous room, made entirely of glass. The room was filled with empty cages, but it was clear that the room had once housed an enormous collection of reptiles."

  "We've been there!" Klaus cried in amazement. "That's Uncle Monty's house! He was our guardian until Count Olaf arrived, disguised as — "

  "As a lab assistant," Quigley finished. "I know. His suitcase was still there."

  "There was a secret passageway under our house, too," Violet said, "but we didn't discover it until we lived with Esmé Squalor."

  "There are secrets everywhere," Quigley said. "I think everyone's parents have secrets. You just have to know where to look for them."

  "But why would our parents, and yours, have tunnels underneath their homes leading to a fancy apartment building and a herpetologist's home?" Klaus said. "It doesn't make any sense."

  Quigley sighed, and put his backpack on the ashen ground, next to his mask. "There's a lot that doesn't make sense," he said. "I was hoping to find the answers here, but now I don't know if I'll ever find them." He took out his purple notebook and opened it to the first page.

  "All I can tell you is what I have here in this commonplace book."

  Klaus gave Quigley a small smile, and reached into his pockets to retrieve all of the papers he had stored there. "You tell us what you know," he said, "and we'll tell you what we know. Perhaps together we can answer our own questions."

  Quigley nodded in agreement, and the three children sat in a circle on what was once the kitchen floor. Quigley opened his backpack and took out a bag of salted almonds, which he passed around. "You must be hungry from the climb up the Vertical Flame Diversion," he said. "I know I am. Let's see, where was I?"

  "In the Reptile Room," Violet said, "at the end of the passageway."

  "Well, nothing happened for a while," Quigley said. "On the doorstep of the house was a copy of The Daily Punctilio, which had an article about the fire. That's how I learned that my parents were dead. I spent days and days there, all by myself. I was so sad, and so scared, and I didn't know what else to do. I suppose I was waiting for the herpetologist to show up for work, and see if he was a friend of my parents and might be of some assistance. The kitchen was filled with food, so I had enough to eat, and every night I slept at the bottom of the stairs, so I could hear if anyone came in."

  The Baudelaires nodded sympathetically, and Violet put a comforting hand on Quigley's shoulder. "We were the same way," Violet said, "right when we heard the news about our parents. I scarcely remember what we did and what we said."

  "But didn't anyone come looking for you?" Klaus asked.

  "'The Daily Punctilio said that I died in the fire, too," Quigley said. "The article said that my sister and brother were sent off to Prufrock Preparatory School, and that my parents' estate was under the care of the city's sixth most important financial advisor."

  "Esmé Squalor" Violet and Klaus said simultaneously, a word which here means "in a disgusted voice, and at the exact same time."

  "Right," Quigley said, "but I wasn't interested in that part of the story. I was determined to go to the school and find my siblings again. I found an atlas in Dr. Montgomery's library, and studied it until I found Prufrock Preparatory School. It wasn't too far, so I started to gather whatever supplies I could find around his house."

  "Didn't you think of calling the authorities?" Klaus asked.

  "I guess I wasn't thinking very clearly," Quigley admitted. "All I could think of was finding my siblings."

  "Of course," Violet said. "So what happened then?"

  "I was interrupted," Quigley said. "Someone walked in just as I was putting the atlas in a totebag I found. It was Jacques Snicket, although I didn't know who he was, of course. But he knew who I was, and was overjoyed that I was alive after all."

  "How did you know you could trust him?" Klaus asked.

  "Well, he knew about the secret passageway," Quigley said. In fact, he knew quite a bit about my family, even though he hadn't seen my parents in years. And. ."

  "And?" Violet said.

  Quigley gave her a small smile. "And he was very well-read," he said. "In fact, he was at Dr. Montgomery's house to do a bit more reading. He said there was an important file that was hidden someplace on the premises, and he had to stay for a few days to try and complete his investigation."

  "So he didn't take you to the school?" Violet asked.

  "He said it wasn't safe for me to be seen," Quigley said. "He explained that he was part of a secret organization, and that my parents had been a part of it, too."

  "V.F.D.," Klaus said, and Quigley nodded in agreement.

  "Duncan and Isadora tried to tell us about V.F.D.," Violet said, "but they never got the chance. We don't even know what it stands for."

  "It seems to stand for many things," Quigley said, flipping pages in his notebook. "Nearly everything the organization uses, from the Volunteer Feline Detectives to the Vernacularly Fastened Door, has the same initials."

  "But what is the organization?" Violet asked. "What is V.F.D.?"

  "Jacques wouldn't tell me," Quigley said, "but I think the letters stand for Volunteer Fire Department."

  "Volunteer Fire Department," Violet repeated, and looked at her brother. "What does that mean?"

  "In some communities," Klaus said, "there's no official fire department, and so they rely on volunteers to extinguish fires."

  "I know that," Violet said, "but what does that have to do with our parents, or Count Olaf, or anything that has happened to us? I always thought that knowing what the letters stood for would solve the mystery, but I'm as mystified as I ever was."

  "Do you think our parents were secretly fighting fires?" Klaus asked.

  "But why would they keep it a secret?" Violet asked. "And why would they have a secret passageway underneath the house?"

  "Jacques said that the passageways were built by members of the organization," Quigley said. "In the case of an emergency, they could escape to a safe place."

  "But the tunnel we found connects our house to the home of Esmé Squalor," Klaus said. "That's not a safe place."

  "Something happened," Quigley said. "Something that changed everything." He flipped through a few pages of his commonplace book until he found what he was looking for. "Jacques Snicket called it a 'schism,'" he said, "but I don't know what that word means."

  "A schism," Klaus said, "is a division of a previously united group of people into two or more oppositional parties. It's like a big argument, with everybody choosing sides."

  "That makes sense," Quigley said. "The way Jacques talked, it sounded like the entire organization was in c
haos. Volunteers who were once working together are now enemies. Places that were once safe are now dangerous. Both sides are using the same codes, and the same disguises. Even the V.F.D. insignia used to represent the noble ideals everyone shared, but now it's all gone up in smoke."

  "But how did the schism start?" Violet asked. "What was everyone fighting over?"

  "I don't know," Quigley said. "Jacques didn't have much time to explain things to me."

  "What was he doing?" Klaus asked.

  "He was looking for you," Quigley replied. "He showed me a picture of all three of you, waiting at the dock on some lake, and asked me if I'd seen you anywhere. He knew that you'd been placed in Count Olaf's care, and all the terrible things that had happened there. He knew that you had gone to live with Dr. Montgomery. He even knew about some of the inventions you made, Violet, and the research you did, Klaus, and some of Sunny's tooth-related exploits. He wanted to find you before it was too late."

  "Too late for what?" Violet said.

  "I don't know," Quigley said with a sigh. "Jacques spent a long time at Dr. Montgomery's house, but he was too busy conducting his investigation to explain everything to me. He would stay up all night reading and copying information into his notebook, and then sleep all day, or disappear for hours at a time. And then one day, he said he had to go interview someone in the town of Paltryville, but he never came back. I waited weeks and weeks for him to return. I read books in Dr. Montgomery's library, and started a commonplace book of my own. At first it was difficult to find any information on V.F.D., but I took notes on anything I could find. I must have read hundreds of books, but Jacques never returned. Finally, one morning, two things happened that made me decide not to wait any longer. The first was an article in The Daily Punctilio saying that my siblings had been kidnapped from the school. I knew I had to do something. I couldn't wait for Jacques Snicket or for anyone else."