Chapter 3

Kit looked up at them. "I know," she said silently. "I read it in the newspaper."

"The Daily Punctilio?" Violet said incredulously, a word which here means "not believing that someone so intelligent could read the most misinformed newspaper that ever existed." "How can you read that?"

"I take it with a grain of salt," Kit replied. When someone says that they take something with a grain of salt, it does not refer to any form of sodium. It is saying that they read or listen to something knowing full well that what is being said is probably false, and possibly ridiculous. If you were to take it with a grain of salt when your mother told you to clean your room, you would know that she wants your room clean but not do it, because you would think she was not serious about it, and you would probably end up grounded. If you were to take the laws with a grain of salt, you might end up in jail. Recently I took a warning from a comrade of mine with a grain of salt, and I ended up in an underwater trench, surrounded by eels, piranhas, and female ninjas. As you can see, taking most things with a grain of salt can be dangerous, but in this case it was necessary for Kit to take the Daily Punctilio with a grain of salt for the simple fact that all of the newspaper's reports were mostly fictitious, a word which here means "made up off the top of the reporters' heads."

"Why?" Sunny asked.

"Count Olaf has at least one associate working in the Daily Punctilio office, and I find it necessary to keep up with what this one reporter says."

"Who is she?" Violet asked.

"I can't tell you her name," Kit answered. "I believe she is growing more and more dangerous as we speak. But the one thing I did find out from that newspaper was that Jacques was murdered, and you three were framed for it."

"Dedukshun?" Sunny asked, and Violet quickly told Kit what her sister meant.

"Sunny wants to know how you figured that out," she said, "because in the article it said that Count Omar was murdered and Veronica, Klyde, and Susie Baudelaire were responsible."

"I saw the pictures," Kit informed them, "and I knew that Jacques wasn't Count Olaf any more than Klaus is. And I saw you three, and I knew that it wasn't Veronica, Klyde, and Susie. It was Violet, Klaus, and Sunny, and the town of V.F.D. was in an uproar over it."

Violet nodded. All three of them went silent, remembering the horrible events in V.F.D. At last, Kit spoke up again. "Who wants to hear about my plan?"

"Yeah!" Sunny exclaimed.

"We'll need a chef for this plan to work," Kit told them.

"Me!" Sunny volunteered.

"Thank you, Sunny, for volunteering. But we also need a kitchen and some ingredients. Somewhere in the kitchen of the Hotel Denouement is a recipe for Veronal Fulminating Desserts."

"Veronal? Fulminating?" Violet said, confused. "If Klaus were here he'd be able to tell us what those words mean."

"Veronal means hypnotic, and fulminating means exploding," Kit explained. "The desserts are made with Various Febrifugal Drugs. Febrifugal means medicinal, so we know that they are safe and won't cause lasting harm if we use them in the correct way. If we made Veronal Fulminating Desserts and serve them to the luncheon, disguised as waiters, then we can give all the people inside Virtuous Flax Disease."

"What is that?" Violet asked.

"Virtuous Flax Disease is a tool only used by our side of the schism. It will make the villains woozy and confused, and possibly even giggly, so all we have to do is come up with an outlandish reason why we would need Klaus. Then they'll just hand him to us straight away."

"But why would we need Klaus?" Violet asked.

The three of them pondered this, and they pondered it, and pondered and pondered and pondered until their heads felt like they were going to explode if they pondered any longer. As I'm sure you know, if you ponder something for an extended, a word which here means "long," period of time, you might get a headache, or your eyes might cross. Kit began to get a headache, and Violet's eyes began to cross, and Sunny got a headache while her eyes crossed. At last they figured something out, which was that they had no clue how to convince Olaf and company that they needed Klaus.

"I don't have the faintest idea," Kit said in mild amazement.

"Me neither," Violet admitted.

"Either!" Sunny cried.

"I expect that if we get some help, we'll have more ideas," Kit sighed. "After all, two heads are better than one, and six heads are better than three."

Kit was right about many things. She was right that Klaus shouldn't have gone near the Vicinity for Dining, and neither should Violet, and that they had to go through the roof to get to the Hotel, and that things were not always what they seemed, but in some cases she was wrong about two heads being better than one. If an elephant had two heads, it would be too heavy, and it would topple over and caused an earthquake. Uncle Monty, whom the Baudelaires had lived with for a short period of time, had had a snake with two heads, and this hadn't prevented it from being sold at the Herpetological Society. But in this case, Kit was right. Since the two Baudelaire girls and the one Snicket girl couldn't come up with any ideas as to how to convince a giggly Olaf that they needed Klaus, it would be best to have a few more heads to think up ideas. But since they didn't have more heads, they had no ideas.

"I believe my brother will be showing up soon," Kit said faintly.

Violet looked down at Sunny, and then back at Kit. "But Kit, your brother is—"

"Not Jacques. My other brother. He received a Verse Fluctuation Declaration by carrier pigeon, and he heard that an old friend of his was stopping by for the gathering, so he might swing by to check up on us."

"What is his name?" Violet asked.

Kit opened her mouth to answer, but at that moment, there was a large commotion just outside their door. All three stared at the door, as if just with their mind power, they could make it open on its own. But since their mind power could not even come up with an idea as to why they needed Klaus besides the fact that he was their brother, it could not open a door. Kit slowly walked over to the door and opened it with one of her gloved hands.

"Hello?" she called carefully. "Hello? Is anyone—"

She had taken maybe two steps forward, and suddenly, with a loud clanging noise, the floor opened up underneath her and she disappeared with a scream. Quickly, the floor closed up again.

Violet and Sunny were stunned, a word which here means "completely unsure what to do, because without Kit they had no clue how to find their way around Hotel Denouement." "Kit?" Violet finally called, leaping up from the bed. "Kit? Where did you go?"

"Kit?" Sunny cried, taking a few tottery running steps out the door.

"Kit?" Violet said softly, reaching the place where the woman had fallen through the floor. She fell to her knees and began to feel out the carpet, seeing if there was a door she could open and go through. But there was no such door. I had looked for the door before Violet had ever reached that spot, though I would have no chance to do it again. Slowly, very slowly, Violet crept back into the room, her eyes wide with fear. Sunny followed.

"Wadoo?" Sunny asked, which meant something along the lines of, "What do we do now?"

"I'm not sure, Sunny," Violet said, and I wish I could have been there to tell her that eventually they would find out what happened to Kit and that they would see Klaus again, but I wasn't, so I have to weep silently with Violet in frustration about all the horrible unsafe things that happened at the last safe place. Finally, Violet got to her feet, a phrase which here means "stood up and had a goal." "We need to find Quigley."

"Quig?" Sunny asked.

"Yes. Kit said he was somewhere in the hotel. We have to find him. He's been here longer than we have. He'll know what to do next."

So the two sisters traveled back to the elevator, wary of disappearing floors and trapdoors, and traveled all the way back up to floor one, where they headed for the concierge desk.

As anyone who has visited a hotel knows, especially if the hotel was in France, the concierge desk is for people who wish to know things about the hotel. They help with luggage and all sorts of hotel-related things, but as Violet and Sunny knew, they usually had a list of all the occupants of the hotel, and which rooms they were staying in. Violet wanted to see if Quigley was on the list. If he was, they were one step closer to finding Klaus.

Fortunately for them, the concierge desk was vacant, a word which here means "no one was in it." They crept behind the desk and checked around for lists of any sort. Sunny saw a list of people with laundry duties. Violet saw a list of all the things V.F.D. stood for, and that list seemed to be interminable, a word which here means "all the things that V.F.D. stood for never ended, and people were coming up with new ones all the time." But finally, they both spotted a list of Various Floor Denizens, with rooms numbered from one to eight hundred and thirty-six.

But even with eight hundred and thirty-six occupied rooms, Violet could tell almost at a glance that Quigley was not on the list. As she scanned all eight hundred and thirty-six slots, she realized that not one name started with a Q. Sunny patted her on the back gingerly, a word which here means "so as to not disturb her sister when she was so obviously upset."

"No," said Violet. "Kit said he was here. She said he sent him! He has to be here."

"Maybe gram?" Sunny suggested.

"An anagram?" Violet asked. "What is that?"

Sunny opened her mouth to explain, but then she sighed. She just didn't have the vocabulary to explain that an anagram was a bunch of letters that formed a word or a phrase and then rearranged to find another word or a phrase. She also didn't have the vocabulary to tell Violet that she and Klaus had rearranged an entire list of names trying to save Violet from unnecessary cranioectomy at Heimlich Hospital. So she tried to think of a way to make her older sister understand.

"Pen," she said finally.

"You need a pen? Um…here." Violet grabbed a pen off the concierge desk.

Sunny took it and began to scribble. To a normal human being, it seemed like she was forming chicken scratch, a phrase which here means "something that looks like a chicken has stomped its little chickeny feet in it and messed it all up." But Violet Baudelaire was no normal human being. She, along with her brother and sister, was an extraordinary human being. So as Sunny scribbled away, Violet began to tie her hair back, a sign that she was thinking very hard about what Sunny was trying to say.

When Sunny was done, Violet scrutinized her handiwork, a phrase which here means "looked very hard at her chicken scratch, trying to figure out what Sunny meant." "Does that line say Violet Baudelaire?" she asked finally.

"Yup," Sunny said proudly.

"And that line…" Violet squinted at it, feeling like Klaus without his glasses. "It says Lauro…no, Laura….V….Bleeding?"

"No," Sunny answered impatiently.

"Bleed…Bleedy…Bleediotie?"

"Yeah!" Sunny cried excitedly.

"Laura V. Bleediotie? I don't understand," said Violet.

"Scramble," Sunny told her.

Violet scrutinized it further and realized what her sister was saying. "Oh! You're saying that if I rearranged the letters in Violet Baudelaire I'd get Laura V. Bleediotie?"

"Yeah!" Sunny cried.

"So an anagram is like a word or phrase with the letters rearranged to make another word or phrase, and you think Quigley's name might be on here as an anagram?"

"Yeah!"

Violet looked proudly at her little sister. "You really are something, Sunny. Come on, let's get to work."

When you say that someone is something, there is a cornucopia, a word which here means "a lot," of possible meanings. For instance, if you told your math teacher that she was something, you might be saying she was something nice, or something pretty, or something horribly, horribly mean. If you told your airplane captain that he was something, you might be saying he was something good, something skilled, or something that was sending you crashing down from 20,000 feet up in the air. I recently told a female ninja that she was something and she took it the wrong way, a phrase which here means "I ended up in a headlock underwater." But when Violet told Sunny she was something, she meant that Sunny was something that could help them find Quigley and solve the mysteries and eventually led them to Klaus and Kit.

"There's just one problem, Sunny," Violet said suddenly, after they had skimmed the list again. "We don't have time to go through eight hundred and thirty-six names to see if they say Quigley Quagmire!"

"Cue!" Sunny told her.

"That's right, we can cross out all the names that don't have two Q's in them. Good thinking, Sunny." And Violet hurriedly crossed off all the names on the long list that didn't contain two Q's. When she was done, she ended up with a list that looked something like this:

Equestrina L. Equim – Room 235

Paulo Q. Quiestran – Room 811

Wanqui von Helquist – Room 534

Guiermy Q. Quelgia – Room 555

Sugar B. QuelBom – Room 142

Aipomer Q. Blanquest – Room 35

"How can we make this go faster?" Violet asked.

"Tea," said Sunny.

"You're right, Quigley's name doesn't have a T in it, so we can cross off all the ones that do."

They went down the list. Equestrina L. Equim had a T. She was crossed off. Paulo Q. Quiestran had a T. He was crossed off. Wanqui von Helquist and Aipomer Q. Blanquest both had T's. They were both crossed off.

"All that's left is Guiermy Q. Quelgia and Sugar B. Quelbom," said Violet. "Any other suggestions?"

"Eye!"

"That's right, Quigley's name has an I! Sugar B. Quelbom doesn't have an I, so it must be Guiermy Q. Quelgia!"

"No! Eye!"

Violet looked around. Striding out of the Vicinity For Dining was none other than Esmé Squalor, who had a hat like an enormous eye. Violet and Sunny crouched low and small in the corner of the concierge desk. The eye seemed to be staring down at the two Baudelaire girls as they tried to be inconspicuous, a word which here means "unseen by Esmé's giant eye hat."

Esmé stopped by the long desk to speak to the man that had previously checked the Baudelaires and Kit Snicket in. "Hello," she said impatiently. "Has anyone by the name of Geraldine Julienne stopped and checked in?"

"No, I'm sorry, ma'am, they haven't," the man said, sounding blasé, a word which here means "like he wasn't really interested in what Esmé had to say."

"Let me know when she does, all right?" Esmé said roughly. "Page me when she arrives, and our luncheon gathering will be complete."

"What is your name?" the man asked.

At this Esmé seemed to inflate like a giant Esmé balloon. "You don't know who I am? I am Esmé Gigi Genevieve Squalor, the city's sixth most important financial advisor! Page me at once when Geraldine gets here!" And she turned on her heel and stalked off in a fury toward the Vicinity For Dining, opened the door, and slammed it shut behind her.

Violet let out her breath, which she hadn't even realized she'd been holding. "Good, she didn't spot us. Haven't we heard that name before? Geraldine Julienne?"

"Dunno," said Sunny, which meant something along the lines of "I haven't a clue."

Violet shrugged. "Oh, well. Come on, Sunny, we have to get to Room 555. In this case, he who hesitates is lost."

"Or she!" Sunny piped up, and together they made their way to the elevator and went down to floor forty-three.

"This way," Violet hissed when they climbed out, taking Sunny's hand and hurrying to the right. There were signs all over the walls, and Violet could hardly distinguish which signs said more acrostic poems like "Vehement Fuzz Dimples" and "Vein Festers Demandingly," and which signs told her to go right if she wanted rooms 492-579.

After two more right turns and a couple lefts, the two Baudelaires finally reached a stretch of hallway that ended in a glass window. "It's got to be down this hallway," Violet said, quite out of breath from all the running and the sign-looking. They ran further, counting the numbers. "549…551…553…this is it, Sunny! 555!"

Violet had been imagining this moment from the minute that Quigley had slipped from behind her on the toboggan floating down Stricken Stream. She had imagined that she would throw open the door and there Quigley would be, waiting for her arrival. So she was extremely disappointed when she found the door locked.

"Oh well," Sunny said, which meant something along the lines of "I guess they usually keep the doors locked in a hotel, right?" Violet knocked frantically.

"Quigley?" she called. "Quigley, are you in there? It's me, Violet! Open the door!"

An eye appeared in the door's peephole, a very familiar eye. Then came the sound of someone fumbling with the doorknob on the inside. And at last, after all the running and waiting and following, the door opened, and Violet rushed in to give the occupant a big bear hug, a phrase which here means "practically tackle him to the ground."

"It's good to see you, too, Violet," said Quigley Quagmire.