"Bath escape?" asked Sunny, meaning "What does avoiding being washed have to do with anything?"
"A bathyscaphe is a self-propelled vessel for underwater exploration," said Klaus, remembering this from a book on oceanography.
"That's right," said Dewey. "It's a bit like a submarine except you have to dump out lead pellets in order to ascend from a dive. I use it for repairs on the underwater catalog. Kit designed it for me."
"Can we get it out to sea without being spotted?" Klaus asked.
"Yes, there's a secret tunnel under the hotel from the pond to the sea," Dewey said.
Just then, another telegram came in. Dewey took it. "This one is a Verse Fluctuation Declaration," he said.
"My Last Albatross, by Q. Browning
...I gave orders;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will 't please you rise? We'll greet
The company below, then...
Though his fair daughter's person, as I avowed
In starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go
Together down, Sir! Notice Pluto, though,
Taming a race-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me."
"Do you know the original verse?" Klaus asked. "I can read the first two words because I read an example in a book recently. Duchess R."
"Very good," said Dewey. "It reads, 'Duchess R. commands: meet self at Neptune Sea'. This will work out well; it's on our way. Besides, she's highly skilled at diving and seafaring missions."
Dewey led the way from the telegraph room to the "top" room of the hotel. "The Kit is docked in what would be the swimming pool of the sunbathing salon," he said. "There's an airlock that will let us into it."
On the way they picked up some provisions: bread, swiss cheese, and bottled water. "Sunny, would you make sandwiches for us? I know you've had nothing to eat since that brunch yesterday."
"Monte Cristo," said Sunny, which meant "I'd like to make you fancy battered sandwiches, but I realize you might not have all the ingredients and equipment."
"The submarine doesn't have much in the way of cooking facilities, though there is a small hot-plate," said Dewey.
"Toastedcheese," suggested Sunny. She started making toasted cheese sandwiches as soon as they boarded.
As they set out to sea, Klaus asked, "There's something Count Olaf said to us last night, Dewey, that I meant to ask you about, but the terrible thing that happened after that drove it from my mind."
Sunny nodded. "Mama and Papa. Poison darts."
Dewey blushed, as he had when Olaf had mentioned the subject.
"It really doesn't matter, now that Olaf is dead, does it?" Dewey asked. "We should let sleeping dogs lie."
"Let sleeping dogs lie" is a phrase which here means, "Don't stir up trouble by inquiring into a matter that is best forgotten," but in my experience it depends on what the dogs are lying in front of whether one must disturb them or not. I once had to disturb a dog that was lying on a trapdoor to an important dungeon. In this case, the "dogs" were lying in the way to Klaus' and Sunny's peace of mind.
"Please, we have to know about our parents," said Klaus.
"The fact is, your parents murdered Olaf's parents and stole their fortune from him," said Dewey. "It was in a good cause of course, and they've used the money it to support V.F.D. research as well as supporting you children. But I've always felt a bit embarrassed by it."
Klaus and Sunny turned white.
"A bit embarrassed?" Klaus gasped. "That's all you feel about our parents being murderers?"
"Kit helped?" Sunny asked, thinking of how Kit had told them of bringing them poison darts at the theater.
"She did, but that was for my sake," said Dewey. "She was quite young at the time and already a good friend of mine. She was helping me to revenge the death of my parents on Olaf."
The two Baudelaires fell silent. All their assumptions about the nobility of their parents and the nobility of the V.F.D. were shaken. They wished they had let sleeping dogs lie, but they wished more than anything that Violet were with them to help them face these new "dogs," the worries that hounded them.