Chapter Four

Violet followed reluctantly behind Olaf. Where was he taking her? What was he going to do to her? Olaf stayed quiet the entire walk, and sure enough, Olaf led her to his putrid tower room.

When they got inside, Count Olaf pulled up a chair. "Take a seat." He said, smiling a suspicious smile.

Violet did as she was told, and watched as Olaf seated himself directly across from her. "Well," he said, still smiling, "I just got two interesting pieces of news today."

Violet got the idea that he wanted to hear her ask him what the news was, but when no response came, he continued.

"The first thing is that I have found the sugar bowl, and the news inside it shows that it would be unwise to kill you. You are too valuable." He said, leaning back in his chair.

"Why?" Asked Violet, she had finally given in and couldn't contain her curiosity.

"You are the code to the very last safe place, and I don't mean Hotel Denouement." He said. "I mean the safe place that has all the secret files of the VFD in it."

"And the other?" Asked Violet accusingly, not believing his story about her being a code, people couldn't possibly be codes.

"I have found your beloved little friends, shot them out of the sky, then locked them in a different dungeon." He replied, very pleased with himself.

"You mean they're alive?" Asked Violet incredulously, a word which here means unable to believe that her friends were alive after being shot out of the air.

"Of course." He said in a bored tone. "Now back to this code business, your parents used your prints to put in the code for the Valorous Farms D – I mean the last safe place's door, so only you can open it."

Violet was stunned. So she was the in the sugar bowl that had caused so much trouble in the VFD. Of course, Olaf could be lying. After all, he had lied before.