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"The Squalors must have some rope somewhere in their penthouse," Klaus said. "Let's split up and find some. We'll meet back here in fifteen minutes."
Violet and Sunny agreed, and the Baudelaires stepped carefully away from the elevator shaft and tiptoed back into the Squalor penthouse. They felt like burglars as they split up and began searching the apartment, although there have been only five burglars in the history of robbery who have specialized in rope. All five of these burglars were caught and sent to prison, which is why scarcely any people lock up their rope for safekeeping, but to their frustration, the Baudelaires learned that their guardians didn't lock up their ropes at all, for the simple reason that they didn't have any.
"I couldn't find any ropes at all," Violet admitted, as she rejoined her siblings. "But I did find these extension cords, which might work."
"I took these curtain pulls down from some of the windows," Klaus said. "They're a little bit like ropes, so I thought they might be useful."
"Armani," Sunny offered, holding up an armful of Jerome's neckties.
"Well, we have some ersatz ropes," Violet said, "for our climb down the ersatz elevator. Let's tie them all together with the Devil's Tongue."
"The Devil's Tongue?" Klaus asked.
"It's a knot," Violet explained. "It was invented by female Finnish pirates in the fifteenth century. I used it to make my grappling hook, when Olaf had Sunny trapped in that cage, dangling from his tower room, and it'll work here as well. We need to make as long a rope as possible--for all we know, the passageway goes all the way to the bottom floor of the building."
"It looks like it goes all the way to the center of the earth," Klaus said. "We've spent so much of our time trying to escape from Count Olaf. I can't believe that now we're trying to find him."
"Me neither," Violet agreed. "If it weren't for the Quagmires, I wouldn't go down there at all."
"Bangemp," Sunny reminded her siblings. She meant something along the lines of "If it weren't for the Quagmires, we would have been in his clutches a long time ago," and the two older Baudelaires nodded in agreement. Violet showed her siblings how to make the Devil's Tongue, and the three children hurriedly tied the extension cords to the curtain pulls, and the curtain pulls to the neckties, and the last necktie to the sturdiest thing they could find, which was the doorknob of the Squalor penthouse. Violet checked her siblings' handiwork and finally gave the whole rope a satisfied tug.
"I think this should hold us," she said. "I only hope it's long enough."
"Why don't we drop the rope down the shaft," Klaus said, "and listen to see if it hits the bottom? Then we'll know for sure."
"Good idea," Violet replied, and walked to the edge of the passageway. She threw down the edge of the furthermost extension cord, and the children watched as it disappeared into the blackness, dragging the rest of the Baudelaires' line with it. The coils of cord and pull and necktie unwound quickly, like a long snake waking up and slithering down into the shaft. It slithered and slithered and slithered, and the children leaned forward as far as they dared and listened as hard as they could. Finally, they heard a faint, faint clink!, as if the extension cord had hit a piece of metal, and the three orphans looked at one another. The thought of climbing down all that distance in the dark, on an ersatz rope they had fashioned themselves, made them want to turn around and run all the way back to their beds and pull the blankets over their heads. The siblings stood together at the edge of this dark and terrible place and wondered if they really dared to begin the climb.
The Baudelaire rope had made it to the bottom. But would the Baudelaire children?
"Are you ready?" Klaus asked finally.
"No," Sunny answered.
"Me neither," Violet said, "but if we wait until we're ready we'll be waiting for the rest of our lives. Let's go."
Violet tugged one last time on the rope, and carefully, carefully lowered herself down the passageway. Klaus and Sunny watched her disappear into the darkness as if some huge, hungry creature had eaten her up. "Come on," they heard her whisper, from the blackness. "It's O.K."
Klaus blew on his hands, and Sunny blew on hers, and the two younger Baudelaires followed their sister into the utter darkness of the elevator shaft, only to discover that Violet had not told the truth. It was not O.K. It was not half O.K. It was not even one twenty-seventh O.K. The climb down the shadowy passageway felt like falling into a deep hole at the bottom of a deep pit on the bottom floor of a dungeon that was deep underground, and it was the least O.K. situation the Baudelaires had ever encountered. Their hands gripping the line was the only thing they saw, because even as their eyes adjusted to the darkness, they were afraid to look anywhere else, particularly down. The distant clink! at the bottom of the line was the only sound they heard, because the Baudelaires were too scared to speak. And the only thing they felt was sheer terror, as deep and as dark as the passageway itself, a terror so profound that I have slept with four night-lights ever since I visited 667 Dark Avenue and saw this deep pit that the Baudelaires climbed down. But I also saw, during my visit, what the Baudelaire orphans saw when they reached the bottom after climbing for more than three terrifying hours. By then, their eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and they could see what the bottom of their line was hitting, when it was making that faint clinking sound. The edge of the farthest extension cord was bumping up against a piece of metal, all right--a metal lock. The lock was secured around a metal door, and the metal door was attached to a series of metal bars that made up a rusty metal cage. By the time my research led me to this passageway, the cage was empty, and had been empty for a very long time. But it was not empty when the Baudelaires reached it. As they arrived at the bottom of this deep and terrifying place, the Baudelaire orphans looked into the cage and saw the huddled and trembling figures of Duncan and Isadora Quagmire.
CHAPTER
Eight
I'm dreaming," Duncan Quagmire said. His voice was a hoarse whisper of utter shock. "I must be dreaming."
"But how can you be dreaming," Isadora asked him, "if I'm having the same dream?"
"I once read about a journalist," Duncan whispered, "who was reporting on a war and was imprisoned by the enemy for three years. Each morning, she looked out her cell window and thought she saw her grandparents coming to rescue her. But they weren't really there. It was a hallucination."
"I remember reading about a poet," Isadora said, "who would see six lovely maidens in his kitchen on Tuesday nights, but his kitchen was really empty. It was a phantasm."
"No," Violet said, and reached her hand between the bars of the cage. The Quagmire triplets shrank back into the cage's far corner, as if Violet were a poisonous spider instead of a long-lost friend. "It's not a hallucination. It's me, Violet Baudelaire."
"And it's really Klaus," Klaus said. "I'm not a phantasm."
"Sunny!" Sunny said.
The Baudelaire orphans blinked in the darkness, straining their eyes to see as much as possible. Now that they were no longer dangling from the end of a rope, they were able to get a good look at their gloomy surroundings. Their long climb ended in a tiny, filthy room with nothing in it but the rusty cage that the extension cord had clinked against, but the Baudelaires saw that the passageway continued with a long hallway, just as shadowy as the elevator shaft, that twisted and turned away into the dark. The children also got a good look at the Quagmires, and that view was no less gloomy. They were dressed in tattered rags, and their faces were so smeared with dirt that the Baudelaires might not have recognized them, if the two triplets had not been holding the notebooks they took with them wherever they went. But it was not just the dirt on their faces, or the clothes on their bodies, that made the Quagmires look so different. It was the look in their eyes. The Quagmire triplets looked exhausted, and they looked hungry, and they looked very, very frightened. But most of all, Isadora and Duncan looked haunted. The word "haunted," I'm sure you know, usually applies to a house, graveyard, or supermarket that has gho
sts living in it, but the word can also be used to describe people who have seen and heard such horrible things that they feel as if ghosts are living inside them, haunting their brains and hearts with misery and despair. The Quagmires looked this way, and it broke the Baudelaire hearts to see their friends look so desperately sad.
"Is it really you?" Duncan said, squinting at the Baudelaires from the far end of the cage. "Can it really, really be you?"
"Oh, yes," Violet said, and found that her eyes were filling with tears.
"It's really the Baudelaires," Isadora said, stretching her hand out to meet Violet's. "We're not dreaming, Duncan. They're really here."
Klaus and Sunny reached into the cage as well, and Duncan left his corner to reach the Baudelaires as best he could from behind bars. The five children embraced as much as they could, half laughing and half crying because they were all together once more.
"How in the world did you know where we are?" Isadora said. "We don't even know where we are."
"You're in a secret passageway inside 667 Dark Avenue," Klaus said, "but we didn't know you'd be here. We were just trying to find out what Gunther--that's what Olaf is calling himself now--was up to, and our search led us all the way down here."
"I know what he's calling himself," Duncan said, "and I know what he's up to." He shuddered, and opened his notebook, which the Baudelaires remembered was dark green but looked black in the gloom. "Every second we spend with him, all he does is brag about his horrible plans, and when he's not looking, I write down everything he tells us so I don't forget it. Even though I'm a kidnap victim, I'm still a journalist."
"And I'm still a poet," Isadora said, and opened her notebook, which the Baudelaires remembered was black, but now looked even blacker. "Listen to this:
"On Auction Day, when the sun goes down, Gunther will sneak us out of town. "
