Lemony Snicket - The Penultimate Peril

"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 Esme 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.

"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," said 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!"