A Series of Unfortunate Events Box: The Complete Wreck

by Lemony Snicket

  “Please,” Sunny said, joining her sisters. The villain did not move, but standing together, the three Baudelaires walked closer and closer to the harpoon gun, shielding Dewey all the while.

  “Seven!”

  “Please,” the youngest Baudelaire said again. The Baudelaires walked slowly but steadily toward the harpoon gun, their echoing footsteps the only sound in the silent lobby except for Olaf’s shrieking of higher and higher numbers.

  “Eight!”

  They walked closer.

  “Nine!”

  The children took one last step, and silently put their hands on the harpoon gun, which felt ice cold, even through their white gloves. They tried to pull the weapon out of Olaf’s hands, but their first guardian did not let go, and for a long moment the youngsters and the adult were gathered around the terrible weapon in silence. Violet stared at the hooked tip of one harpoon that was pressed against her chest. Klaus stared straight ahead at the bright red trigger that could press at any moment, and Sunny stared into Olaf’s shiny, shiny eyes for even the smallest sign of nobility.

  “What else can I do?” the villain asked, so quietly the children could not be sure they had heard him correctly.

  “Give us the gun,” Violet said. “It’s not your destiny to do this treacherous deed.”

  “Give us the gun,” Klaus said. “It’s not your destiny to be a wicked person.”

  “La Forza del Destino,” Sunny said, and then nobody said anything more. It was so quiet in the lobby that the Baudelaires could hear Olaf draw breath as he got ready to shout the word “ten.”

  But then, in an instant, they heard another sound, specifically a very loud cough, and in an instant everything changed, which is the wicked way of the world. In an instant, you can light a match and start a fire that can destroy the lives of countless people. In an instant, you can remove a cake from the oven and provide dessert for countless others, assuming that the cake is very large, and the others are not very hungry. In an instant, you can change a few words in a poem by Robert Frost and communicate with your associates through a code known as Verse Fluctuation Declaration, and in an instant, you can realize where something is hidden and decide whether you are going to retrieve it or let it stay hidden, where it might never be found and eventually be forgotten by all but a few very well-read and very distraught figures, who are themselves forgotten by all but a few very well-read and very distraught figures, who in turn are forgotten, and so on, and so on, and so on, and a few more so ons besides. All this can happen in an instant, as if a single instant is an enormous container, capable of holding countless secrets safely, securely, and attractively, such as the countless secrets held in the Hotel Denouement, or in the hidden underwater catalog in its rippling reflection. But in this instant, in the hotel’s enormous lobby, the Baudelaire orphans heard a cough, as loud as it was familiar, and in this instant Count Olaf turned to see who was walking into the lobby, and hurriedly pushed the harpoon gun into the Baudelaires’ hands when he saw a figure wearing pajamas with drawings of money all over them and a bewildered expression on his face. In this instant, the three siblings grasped the weapon, feeling its heavy, dark weight in their hands, and in this instant the gun slipped from their hands and clattered to the green wooden floor, and in this instant they heard the red trigger click!, and in this instant the penultimate harpoon was fired with a swoosh! and sailed through the enormous, domed room and struck someone a fatal blow, a phrase which here means “killed one of the people in the room.”

  “What’s going on?” Mr. Poe demanded, for it was not his destiny to be slain by a harpoon, at least not on this particular evening. “I could hear people arguing all the way from Room 174. What in the world—” and in that instant he stopped, and gazed in horror at the three siblings. “Baudelaires!” he gasped, but he was not the only person gasping. Violet gasped, and Klaus gasped, and Sunny gasped, and Justice Strauss and Jerome Squalor gasped, and Hugo, Colette, and Kevin—who were accustomed to violence from their days as carnival employees and as henchmen to a villain—gasped, and Carmelita Spats gasped, and Esmé Squalor gasped, and even Count Olaf gasped, although it is unusual for a villain to gasp unless he is discovering a crucial secret, or suffering very great pain. But it was Dewey Denouement who gasped loudest of all, louder even than the Wrong!s that thundered through the hotel as the clock struck two. Wrong! Wrong! the clock thundered, but all the Baudelaires heard was Dewey’s pained, choking gasp, as he stumbled backward through the lobby, one hand on his chest, and the other clutching the tail end of the harpoon, which stuck out from his body at an odd angle, like a drinking straw, or a reflection of one of Dewey’s skinny arms.

  “Dewey!” Violet cried.

  “Dewey!” Klaus cried.

  “Denouement!” Sunny cried, but the sub-sub-librarian did not answer, and stumbled backward out of the hotel in silence. For a moment, the children were too shocked to move as they watched him disappear into the cloud of steam rising from the laundry room funnel, but then they ran after him, hurrying down the stairs as they heard a splash! from the edge of the pond. By the time the Baudelaires reached him, he was already beginning to sink, his trembling body making ripples in the water. There are those who say that the world is like a calm pond, and that anytime a person does even the smallest thing, it is as if a stone has dropped into the pond, spreading circles of ripples further and further out, until the entire world has been changed by one tiny action, but the Baudelaires could not bear to think of the tiny action of the trigger of the harpoon gun, or how the world had changed in just one instant. Instead, they frantically rushed to the edge of the pond as the sub-sub-librarian began to sink. Klaus grabbed one hand, and Sunny grabbed the other, and Violet reached for his face, as if she were comforting someone who had begun to cry.

  “You’ll be O.K.,” Violet cried. “Let us get you out of the water.”

  Dewey shook his head, and then gave the children a terrible frown, as if he were trying to speak but unable to find the words.

  “You’ll survive,” Klaus said, although he knew, both from reading about dreadful events and from dreadful events in his own life, that this simply was not true.

  Dewey shook his head again. By now, only his head was above the surface of the water, and his two trembling hands. The children could not see his body, or the harpoon, which was a small mercy.

  “We failed you,” Sunny said.

  Dewey shook his head one more time, this time very wildly in violent disagreement. He opened his mouth, and reached one hand out of the water, pointing past the Baudelaires toward the dark, dark sky as he struggled to utter the word he most wanted to say. “Kit,” he whispered finally, and then, slipping from the grasp of the children, he disappeared into the dark water, and the Baudelaire orphans wept alone for the mercies denied them, and for the wicked, wicked way of the world.

  CHAPTER

  Ten

  “What was that?” a voice called out.

  “It sounded like a harpoon gun being fired!” cried another voice.

  “A harpoon gun?” asked a third voice. “This is supposed to be a hotel, not a shooting gallery!”

  “I heard a splash!” cried someone.

  “Me too!” agreed someone else. “It sounded like somebody fell into the pond!”

  The Baudelaire orphans gazed at the settling surface of the pond and saw the reflections of shutters and windows opening on every story of the Hotel Denouement. Lights went on, and the silhouettes of people appeared, leaning out of the windows and pointing down at the weeping children, who were too upset to pay much attention to all the shouting.

  “What’s all this shouting about?” asked another voice. “I was fast asleep!”

  “It’s the middle of the night!” complained someone else. “Why is everybody yelling?”

  “I’ll tell you why there’s yelling!” yelled someone. “Someone was shot with a harpoon gun and then fell into the pond!”

  “Come back to bed, Bruce,” s
aid someone else.

  “I can’t sleep if there’s murderers on the loose!” cried another guest.

  “Amen, brother!” said another person. “If a crime has been committed, then it’s our duty to stand around in our pajamas in the name of justice!”

  “I can’t sleep anyway!” said somebody. “That lousy Indian food has kept me up all night!”

  “Somebody tell me what’s going on!” called a voice. “The readers of The Daily Punctilio will want to know what’s happened.”

  The sound of the voice of Geraldine Julienne, and the mention of her inaccurate publication, forced the children to stop crying, if only for a moment. They knew it would be wise to postpone their grief—a phrase which here means “mourn the death of Dewey Denouement at a later time”—and make sure that the newspaper printed the truth.

  “There’s been an accident,” Violet called, not turning her eyes from the surface of the pond. “A terrible accident.”

  “One of the hotel managers has died,” Klaus said.

  “Which one?” asked a voice from a high window. “Frank or Ernest?”

  “Dewey,” Sunny said.

  “There’s no Dewey,” said another voice. “That’s a legendary figure.”

  “He’s not a legendary figure!” Violet said indignantly. “He’s a sub—”

  Klaus put his hand on his sister’s, and the eldest Baudelaire stopped talking. “Dewey’s catalog is a secret,” he whispered. “We can’t have it announced in The Daily Punctilio.”

  “But truth,” Sunny murmured.

  “Klaus is right,” Violet said. “Dewey asked us to keep his secret, and we can’t fail him.” She looked sadly out at the pond, and wiped the tears from her eyes. “It’s the least we can do,” she said.

  “I didn’t realize this was a sad occasion,” said another hotel guest. “We should observe everything carefully, and intrude only if absolutely necessary.”

  “I disagree!” said someone in a raspy shout. “We should intrude right now, and observe only if absolutely necessary!”

  “We should call the authorities!” said someone else.

  “We should call the manager!”

  “We should call the concierge!”

  “We should call my mother!”

  “We should look for clues!”

  “We should look for weapons!”

  “We should look for my mother!”

  “We should look for suspicious people!”

  “Suspicious people?” repeated another voice. “But this is supposed to be a nice hotel!”

  “Nice hotels are crawling with suspicious people,” someone else remarked. “I saw a washerwoman who was wearing a suspicious wig!”

  “I saw a concierge carrying a suspicious item!”

  “I saw a taxi carrying a suspicious passenger!”

  “I saw a cook preparing suspicious food!”

  “I saw an attendant holding a suspicious spatula!”

  “I saw a man with a suspicious cloud of smoke!”

  “I saw a baby with a suspicious lock!”

  “I saw a manager wearing a suspicious uniform!”

  “I saw a woman wearing suspicious lettuce!”

  “I saw my mother!”

  “I can’t see anything!” someone yelled. “It’s as dark as a crow flying through a pitch black night!”

  “I see something right now!” cried a voice. “There are three suspicious people standing at the edge of the pond!”

  “They’re the people who were talking to the reporter!” cried somebody else. “They’re refusing to show their faces!”

  “They must be murderers!” cried yet another person. “Nobody else would act as suspiciously as that!”

  “We’d better hurry downstairs,” said one more guest, “before they escape!”

  “Wow!” squealed another voice. “Wait until the readers of The Daily Punctilio read the headline: ‘VICIOUS MURDER AT HOTEL DENOUEMENT!’ That’s much more exciting than an accident!”

  “Mob psychology,” Sunny said, remembering a term Klaus had taught her shortly before she took her first steps.

  “Sunny’s right,” said Klaus, wiping his eyes. “This crowd is getting angrier and angrier. In a moment, they’ll all believe we’re murderers.”

  “Maybe we are,” Violet said quietly.

  “Poppycock!” Sunny said firmly, which meant something like, “Nonsense.” “Accident!”

  “It was an accident,” Klaus said, “but it was our fault.”

  “Partially,” Sunny said.

  “It’s not for us to decide,” Violet said. “We should go inside and talk to Justice Strauss and the others. They’ll know what to do.”

  “Maybe,” Klaus said. “Or maybe we should run.”

  “Run?” Sunny asked.

  “We can’t run,” Violet said. “If we run, everyone will think we’re murderers.”

  “Maybe we are,” Klaus pointed out. “All the noble people in that lobby have failed us. We can’t be sure they’ll help us now.”

  Violet heaved a great sigh, her breath still shaky from her tears. “Where would we go?” she whispered.

  “Anywhere,” Klaus said simply. “We could go somewhere where no one has ever heard of Count Olaf, or V.F.D. There must be other noble people in the world, and we could find them.”

  “There are other noble people,” Violet said. “They’re on their way here. Dewey told us to wait until tomorrow. I think we should stay.”

  “Tomorrow might be too late,” Klaus said. “I think we should run.”

  “Torn,” Sunny said, which meant something along the lines of, “I see the advantages and disadvantages of both plans of action,” but before her siblings could answer, the children felt a shadow over them, and looked up to see a tall, skinny figure standing over them. In the darkness the children could not see any of his features, only the glowing tip of a skinny cigarette in his mouth.

  “Do you three need a taxi?” he asked, and gestured to the automobile that had brought Justice Strauss and Jerome Squalor to the entrance of the hotel.

  The siblings looked at one another, and then squinted up at the man. The children thought perhaps his voice was familiar, but it might just have been his unfathomable tone, which they’d heard so many times since their arrival at the hotel that it made everything seem familiar and mysterious at the same time.

  “We’re not sure,” Violet said, after a moment.

  “You’re not sure?” the man asked. “Whenever you see someone in a taxi, they are probably being driven to do some errand. Surely there must be something you need to do, or somewhere you need to go. A great American novelist wrote that people travel faster now, but she wasn’t sure if they do better things. Maybe you would do better things if you traveled at this very moment.”

  “We haven’t any money,” Klaus said.

  “You needn’t worry about money,” the man said, “not if you’re who I think you are.” He leaned in toward the Baudelaires. “Are you?” he asked. “Are you who I think you are?”

  The children looked at each other again. They had no way of knowing, of course, if this man was a volunteer or an enemy, a noble man or a treacherous person. In general, of course, a stranger who tries to get you into an automobile is anything but noble, and in general a person who quotes great American novelists is anything but treacherous, and in general a man who says you needn’t worry about money, or a man who smokes cigarettes, is somewhere in between. But the Baudelaire orphans were not standing in general. They were standing outside the Hotel Denouement, at the edge of a pond where a great secret was hidden, while a crowd of guests grew more and more suspicious about the terrible thing that had just occurred. The children thought of Dewey, and remembered the terrible, terrible sight of him sinking into the pond, and they realized they had no way of knowing if they themselves were good or evil, let alone the mysterious man towering over them.

  “We don’t know,” Sunny said finally.

  “Baudelai
res!” came a sharp voice at the top of the stairs, followed by a fit of coughing, and the siblings turned to see Mr. Poe, who was staring at the children and covering his mouth with a white handkerchief. “What has happened?” he asked. “Where is that man you shot with the harpoon?”

  The Baudelaires were too weary and unhappy to argue with Mr. Poe’s description of what happened. “He’s dead,” Violet said, and found that tears were in her eyes once more.

  Mr. Poe coughed once more in astonishment, and then stepped down the stairs and stood in front of the children whose welfare had been his responsibility. “Dead!” he said. “How did that happen?”

  “It’s difficult to say,” Klaus said.

  “Difficult to say?” Mr. Poe frowned. “But I saw you, Baudelaires. You were holding the weapon. Surely you can tell me what happened.”

  “Henribergson,” Sunny said, which meant “It’s more complicated than that,” but Mr. Poe only shook his head as if he’d heard enough.

  “You’d better come inside,” he said, with a weary sigh. “I must say I’m very disappointed in you children. When I was in charge of your affairs, no matter how many homes I found for you, terrible things occurred. Then, when you decided to handle your own affairs, The Daily Punctilio brought more and more news of your treachery with each passing day. And now that I’ve found you again, I see that once more an unfortunate event has occurred, and another guardian is dead. You should be ashamed of yourselves.”

  The Baudelaires did not answer. Dewey Denouement, of course, had not been their official guardian at the Hotel Denouement, but he had looked after them, even when they did not know it, and he had done his best to protect them from the villainous people lurking around their home. Even though he wasn’t a proper guardian, he was a good guardian, and the children were ashamed of themselves for their participation in his unfortunate death. In silence, they waited while Mr. Poe had another fit of coughing, and then the banker put his hands on the Baudelaires’ shoulders, pushing them toward the entrance to the hotel. “There are people who say that criminal behavior is the destiny of children from a broken home,” he said. “Perhaps such people are right.”