Lemony Snicket - The Grim Grotto

"What next?" she murmured.

"Shh," Klaus said, putting another dish towel on top of her. "Don't worry, Sunny. We'll figure out what to do next."

The Baudelaires tiptoed out of the kitchen, carrying the tin of wasabi. "Do you think she'll be all right?" Violet asked.

"I'm sure she will," Klaus said. "After a nap she'll be as good as new. But we should eat some of that wasabi ourselves. When we opened the diving helmet, we were exposed to the Medusoid Mycelium , and we'll need all of our strength to get away from Olaf."

Violet nodded, and put a spoonful of wasabi into her mouth, shuddering violently as the condiment hit her tongue. "There's one last spoonful," Violet said, handing the tin to her brother. "We'd better make sure that diving helmet stays closed until we get our hands on some horseradish and destroy that fungus for good."

Klaus nodded in agreement, closed his eyes, and ate the last of the Japanese condiment. "If we ever invent that food code we talked about with Fiona," he said, "the word 'wasabi' should mean 'powerful.' No wonder this cured our sister."

"But now that we've cured her," Violet said, remembering Sunny's question as she fell asleep, "what next?"

"Olaf is next," Klaus said firmly. "He said he has everything he needs to defeat V.F.D. forever – except the sugar bowl."

"You're right," Violet said. "We have to turn the tables on him, and find it before he does."

"But we don't know where it is," Klaus said. "Someone must have taken it from the Gorgonian Grotto."

"I wonder –" Violet said, but she never said what she wondered, because a strange noise interrupted her. The noise was a sort of whir, followed by a sort of beep, followed by all sorts of noises, and they seemed to be coming from deep within the machinery of the Queequeg . Finally, a green light lit up on a panel in the wall, and a flat, white object began to slither out of a tiny slit in the panel.

"It's paper," Klaus said.

"It's more than paper," Violet said, and walked over to the panel. The sheet of paper curled into her hand as it emerged from the slit, as if the machine were impatient for the eldest Baudelaire to read it. "This is the telegram device. We must be receiving –"

"A Volunteer Factual Dispatch," Klaus finished. Violet nodded, and scanned the paper quickly. Sure enough, the words "Volunteer Factual Dispatch " were printed on the top, and as more and more of the paper appeared, the eldest Baudelaire saw that it was addressed "To the Queequeg ," with the date printed below, as well as the name of the person who was sending the telegram, miles and miles away on dry land. It was a name Violet almost dared not say out loud, even though she had felt as if she had been whispering it to herself for days, ever since the icy waters of the Stricken Stream had carried away a young man who meant very much to her.

"It's from Quigley Quagmire," she said quietly.

Klaus's eyes widened in astonishment. "What does he say?" he asked.

Violet smiled as the telegram finished printing, her finger touching the Q in her friend's name. It was almost as if knowing that Quigley was alive was enough of a message.

" 'It is my understanding that you have three additional volunteers on board STOP,' " she read, remembering that "STOP" indicates the end of a sentence in a telegram. " 'We are in desperate need of their services for a most urgent matter STOP. Please deliver them Tuesday to the location indicated in the rhymes below STOP.' "

She scanned the paper and frowned thoughtfully. "Then there are two poems," she said. "One by Lewis Carroll and the other by T. S. Eliot."

Klaus took his commonplace book out of his pocket, and flipped pages until he found what he was looking for. "Verse Fluctuation Declaration," he said. "That's the code we learned in the grotto. Quigley must have changed sonic of the words in the poems, so no one else would know where we're supposed to meet him. Let's see if we can recognize the changes."

Violet nodded, and read the first poem out loud:

" 'O Oysters, come and walk with us!' The Walrus did beseech. 'A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk, Along the movie theater.'

"That last part sounds wrong," Violet said.

"There were no movie theaters when Lewis Carroll was alive," Klaus said. "But what are the real words to the poem?"

"I don't know," Violet said. "I've always found Lewis Carroll too whimsical for my taste."

"I like him," Klaus said, "but I haven't memorized his poems. Read the other one. Maybe that will help."

Violet nodded, and read aloud:

"At the pink hour when the eyes and back Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits Like a pony throbbing party."

The voice of the eldest Baudelaire trailed off, and she looked at her brother in confusion. "That's all," she said. "The poem stops there."

Klaus frowned. "There's nothing else in the telegram?"

"Only a few letters at the very bottom," she said. " 'CC: J.S.' What does that mean?"

" 'CC' means that Quigley sent a copy of this message to someone else," Klaus said, "and 'J.S.' are the initials of the person."

"Those mysterious initials again," Violet said. "It can't be Jacques Snicket, because he's dead. But who else could it be?"

"We can't worry about that now," Klaus said. "We have to figure out what words have been substituted in these poems."

"How can we do that?" Violet asked.

"I don't know," Klaus said. "Why would Quigley think we would have memorized these poems?"

"He wouldn't think that," Violet said. "He knows us. But the telegram was addressed to the Queequeg . He knew that someone on board could decode the poetry."

"But who?" Klaus asked. "Not Fiona – she's a mycologist. An optimist like Phil isn't likely to be familiar with T. S. Eliot. And it's hard to imagine Captain Widdershins having a serious interest in poetry."

"Not anymore," Violet said thoughtfully. "But Fiona's brother said he and the captain used to study poetry together."

"That's true," Klaus said. "He said they used to read to one another in the Main Hall." He walked over to the sideboard and opened the cabinet, peering at the books Fiona kept inside. "But there's no poetry here – just Fiona's mycological library."

"Captain Widdershins wouldn't keep poetry books out front like that," Violet said. "He would have kept them secret."

"Just like he kept the secret of what happened to Fiona's brother," Klaus said.

"He thought there were secrets too terrible for young people to know," Violet said, "but now we need to know them."

Klaus was silent for a moment, and then turned to his sister. "There's something I never told you," he said. "Remember when our parents were so angry over the spoiled atlas?"

"We talked about that in the grotto," Violet said. "The rain spoiled it when we left the library window open."

"I don't think that's the only reason they were mad," Klaus said. "I took that atlas down from the top shelf – one I could only reach by putting the stepladder on top of the chair. They didn't think I could reach that shelf."

"Why would that make them angry?" Violet asked.

Klaus looked down. "That's where they kept books they didn't want us to find," he said. "I was interested in the atlas, but when I removed it from the shelf there was a whole row of other books."

"What kind of books?" Violet asked.

"I didn't get a good look at them," Klaus said. "There were a few books about war, and I think a few romances. I was too interested in the atlas to investigate any further, but I remember thinking it was strange that our parents had hidden those books. That's why they were so angry, I think – when they saw the atlas on the window seat, they knew I'd discovered their secret."

"Did you ever look at them again?" Violet said.