The next day, Lemony went to Madame Olivia "Lulu" diLustro in her crystal-ball tent.
"Olivia, I need your help," he said.
"But of course, my Lemony," said Olivia. "After all, I am a Volunteer Fortune-telling Detective. Helping people is what I live for, please."
"I need to send several messages, but I don't want the police to intercept them. And the fewer people in the V.F.D. who know, the better," said Lemony.
"Very well, my Lemony."
"First, I must get a message to Duchess R, saying 'I have located her. Please send her an invitation to your masked ball care of Caligari Carnival.'"
Olivia pouted. "Her? So you have a girlfriend, my Lemony?"
"The love of my life," Lemony replied.
Olivia sighed. "Why are all the good ones taken? Oh, well. Let me be checking my reference library, please."
She looked through a set of newspaper clippings and notes she kept under the main table.
"I see that the Duchess is knowing the language of crickets. It happens that I am keeping the Mamba du Mal here for Montgomery Montgomery while he builds his new Reptile Room. That snake can communicate with crickets."
The communication process took several days, passing from cricket to cricket until it reached the Duchess. After the invitation was delivered to Madame diLustro, she delivered it by hand, in disguise, to Beatrice at the address on Brat Boulevard. Olivia brought the reply back to Lemony.
"My Dear Duchess," the reply read, "Your masked ball sounds like a fantastic evening, and I look forward to being there. I will come as a dragonfly. -- B."
Lemony smiled with delight, and thought, "A fantastic evening! She looks forward to being there! Oh, so do I."
"Now, we must be sending this reply back to the Duchess, please. There is no time to be using the crickets again. Do you have anyone else you can trust, please?"
"My cousin Isabella, the wife of Ferdinand Baudelaire. She knows the Duchess and she could visit her without suspicion," said Lemony.
"You be leaving it to me, please" said Olivia. Lemony walked out in a cloud of happiness; he didn't notice that Olivia had tucked the reply note into her library for future reference.
After Mrs. Baudelaire delivered the message, the Duchess sent off one more to the Carnival. In Sebald code, it warned: "Be careful, the palace guards are watching my house."
By carrier crow, Lemony sent back one final note, also in Sebald code, "Attending your masked ball is dangerous, but I'll be there." The plain text of the note was written to give the police the impression he was not coming, in case they intercepted it.
On the night of the ball, Lemony set out in a rented canoe across the lake formed by the dam which was above the Duchess's seaside home. Using Olivia's maps, he had planned this approach to get safely past the guards.
When Lemony got to the shore, he sawed holes in the rented canoe and sunk it so that it would not be found. Next, he put on his camouflage suit. It was actually a very large glove made of green and leafy fabric, from Madame Lulu's equipment. As a "nature-spirit hand from the beyond" it had never worked very well for her, anyway. It was large enough that he could stand in the middle finger, where he had cut two eye-holes. He cautiously moved from bush to tree in the shrubbery-covered landscape.
The camouflage worked very well until he had to cross the flagstone court to get into a side door of the house. Suddenly, an alert palace guard spotted him!
"Halt! Who goes there? If that's Lemony Snicket, you're under arrest for trespassing in restricted zone of the Palace with intent to commit arson, and for impersonating a French admiral!" cried the guard.
Lemony ducked into the door of the house and immediately ditched the glove in the hallway. Underneath he was wearing a bullfighter costume with a scarlet cape made of silk and a vest embroidered with gold thread and a skinny black mask. On his feet were his favorite shoes, a bright red pair with strange buckles which he had obtained with great difficulty from a sinister shoe emporium. He stepped into the main ballroom and blended in with the other guests.
Four palace guards entered on his trail, all dressed in scorpion costumes to keep from alarming the guests. They knew Lemony was here somewhere, but they didn't know which guest he was. There must have been a over hundred guests that night, in all manner of fantastic costumes -- lions, reptiles, oak trees, Littlest Elves, and more. All were milling around conversing and drinking cocktails as the live orchestra played polkas in the background.
As Lemony walked around trying to avoid the guards and to spot the dragonfly costume of Beatrice, he came across Mr. and Mrs. Baudelaire, both dressed as angels and not wearing masks.
"Isabella," whispered Lemony to Mrs. Baudelaire.
"Is that you, L?" she whispered back. "The person you're looking for is out on the veranda."
"Thank you, Isabella," said Lemony. "By the way, congratulations on the birth of your new daughter Violet."
"Thank you," said Isabella. "We plan to have two more, since the V.F.D. likes to recruit sets of three siblings. Those lucky Quagmires already have triplets."
"If we have a boy and a girl next, we plan to name them Klaus and Sunny," said Ferdinand Baudelaire.
Lemony was a little shocked, "You mean like Klaus von Bulow, who was put on trial for poisoning his wife Sunny?"
Isabella gave a tittering laugh, "Yes. A little in-joke. They may have to learn to be killers when they grow up. These are harsh times."
Lemony felt again how very much everyone had changed in his absence. He nodded a goodbye to the Baudelaires and headed to the veranda.
There she was, on the polished gray marble veranda, costumed as a dragonfly, with a glittering green mask and enormous silvery wings. She looked a little heavier than he had expected, but that didn't matter to Lemony.
Once, when he was first accused of arson, she had written and forbidden him to see her for the rest of his life, but he was hopeful things were different now. He could give her the message he had been longing to give her for fifteen long and lonely years.
Just then, a bell rang, calling the guests to dinner. The guests began moving into lines for the buffet tables on the sides of the room. That gave the guards a clear view out onto the veranda -- and they spotted Lemony.
"Beatrice," Lemony cried. "Count Olaf is the one who set those fires, not me. I'm innocent, and I love you. Now that you're free of your old life, come away with me!"
"No," said Beatrice.
"No?" said Lemony.
"I love someone else now," said Beatrice. "I've finally found the man I'm going to spend the rest of my life with. I'm carrying his child."
"Then why did you agree to meet me here tonight?" asked Lemony in despair.
"So that you would know I was happy, and move on," Beatrice replied.
"Don't move, Snicket!" came a sudden loud voice. "You're under arrest!"
Lemony was so shocked by what Beatrice said that he hadn't noticed the four guards moving up. They were between him and the ballroom.
He was caught. He didn't care. What did it matter, if Beatrice didn't love him?