CHAPTER
Thirteen
"These are doilies'" Violet cried. "This box is full of doilies!" And it was true. Scattered around the stage, spilling out of the remains of the cardboard box, were hundreds and hundreds of small, round napkins with a strip of lace around them--the sort of napkins that you might use to decorate a plate of cookies at a fancy tea party.
"Of course," the man in sunglasses said. He approached the stage and removed his sunglasses, and the Baudelaires could see that he wasn't one of Gunther's associates after all. He was just a bidder, in a pinstripe suit. "I was going to give them to my brother for a birthday present. They're Very Fancy Doilies. What else could V.F.D. stand for?"
"Yes," Gunther said, smiling at the children. "What else could it stand for, please?"
"I don't know," Violet said, "but the Quagmires didn't find out a secret about fancy napkins. Where have you put them, Olaf?"
"What is Olaf, please?" Gunther asked.
"Now, Violet," Jerome said. "We agreed that we wouldn't argue about Gunther anymore. Please excuse these children, Gunther. I think they must be ill."
"We're not ill!" Klaus cried. "We've been tricked! This box of doilies was a red herring!"
"But the red herring was Lot #48," someone in the crowd said.
"Children, I'm very disturbed by your behavior," Mr. Poe said. "You look like you haven't washed in a week. You're spending your money on ridiculous items. You run around accusing everybody of being Count Olaf in disguise. And now you've made a big mess of doilies on the floor. Someone is likely to trip and fall on all these slippery napkins. I would have thought that the Squalors would be raising you better than this."
"Well, we're not going to raise them anymore," Esmé said. "Not after they've made such a spectacle of themselves. Mr. Poe, I want these terrible children placed out of my care. It's not worth it to have orphans, even if they're in."
"Esmé!" Jerome cried. "They lost their parents! Where else can they go?"
"Don't argue with me," Esmé snapped, "and I'll tell you where they can go. They can--"
"With me, please," Gunther said, and placed one of his scraggly hands on Violet's shoulder. Violet remembered when this treacherous villain had plotted to marry her, and shuddered underneath his greedy fingers. "I am loving of the children. I would be happy, please, to raise three children of my own." He put his other scraggly hand on Klaus's shoulder, and then stepped forward as if he was going to put one of his boots on Sunny's shoulder so all three Baudelaires would be locked in a sinister embrace. But Gunther's foot did not land on Sunny's shoulder. It landed on a doily, and in a second Mr. Poe's prediction that someone would trip and fall came true. With a papery thump! Gunther was suddenly on the ground, his arms flailing wildly in the doilies and his legs flailing madly on the floor of the stage. "Please!" he shouted as he hit the ground, but his wiggling limbs only made him slip more, and the doilies began to spread out across the stage and fall to the floor of Veblen Hall. The Baudelaires watched the fancy napkins flutter around them, making flimsy, whispering sounds as they fell, but then they heard two weighty sounds, one after the other, as if Gunther's fall had made something heavier fall to the floor, and when they turned their heads to follow the sound, they saw Gunther's boots lying on the floor, one at Jerome's feet and one at Mr. Poe's.
"Please!" Gunther shouted again, as he struggled to stand up, but when he finally got to his feet, everyone else in the room was looking at them.
"Look!" the man who had been wearing sunglasses said. "The auctioneer wasn't wearing any socks! That's not very polite!"
"And look!" someone else said. "He has a doily stuck between two of his toes! That's not very comfortable!"
"And look!" Jerome said. "He has a tattoo of an eye on his ankle! He's not Gunther!"
"He's not an auctioneer!" Mr. Poe cried. "He's not even a foreigner! He's Count Olaf!"
"He's more than Count Olaf," Esmé said, walking slowly toward the terrible villain. "He's a genius! He's a wonderful acting teacher! And he's the handsomest, innest man in town!"
"Don't be absurd!" Jerome said. "Ruthless kidnapping villains aren't in!"
"You're right," said Count Olaf, and what a relief it is to call him by his proper name. Olaf tossed away his monocle and put his arm around Esmé. "We're not in. We're out--out of the city! Come on, Esmé!"
With a shriek of laughter, Olaf took Esmé's hand and leaped from the stage, elbowing aside the in crowd as he began running toward the exit.
"They're escaping!" Violet cried, and jumped off the stage to chase after them. Klaus and Sunny followed her as fast as their legs could carry them, but Olaf and Esmé had longer legs, which in this case was just as unfair an advantage as the element of surprise. By the time the Baudelaires had run to the banner with Gunther's face on it, Olaf and Esmé had reached the banner with "Auction" printed on it, and by the time the children reached that banner, the two villains had run past the "In" banner and through the award-winning door of Veblen Hall.
"Egad!" Mr. Poe cried. "We can't let that dreadful man escape for the sixth time! After him, everyone! That man is wanted for a wide variety of violent and financial crimes!"
The in crowd sprang into action, and began chasing after Olaf and Esmé, and you may choose to believe, as this story nears its conclusion, that with so many people chasing after this wretched villain, it would be impossible for him to escape. You may wish to close this book without finishing it, and imagine that Olaf and Esmé were captured, and that the Quagmire triplets were rescued, and that the true meaning of V.F.D. was discovered and that the mystery of the secret hallway to the ruined Baudelaire mansion was solved and that everyone held a delightful picnic to celebrate all this good fortune and that there were enough ice cream sandwiches to go around. I certainly wouldn't blame you for imagining these things, because I imagine them all the time. Late at night, when not even the map of the city can comfort me, I close my eyes and imagine all those happy comforting things surrounding the Baudelaire children, instead of all those doilies that surrounded them and brought yet another scoop of misfortune into their lives. Because when Count Olaf and Esmé Squalor flung open the door of Veblen Hall, they let in an afternoon breeze that made all the very fancy doilies flutter over the Baudelaires' heads and then settle back down on the floor behind them, and in one slippery moment the entire in crowd was falling all over one another in a papery, pinstripe blur. Mr. Poe fell on Jerome. Jerome fell on the man who had been wearing sunglasses, and his sunglasses fell on the woman who had bid highest on Lot #47. That woman dropped her chocolate ballet slippers, and those slippers fell on Count Olaf's boots, and those boots fell on three more doilies that made four more people slip and fall on one another and soon the entire crowd was in a hopeless tangle. But the Baudelaires did not even glance back to see the latest grief that the doilies had caused. They kept their eyes on the pair of loathsome people who were running down the steps of Veblen Hall toward a big black pickup truck. Behind the wheel of the pickup truck was the doorman, who had finally done the sensible thing and rolled up his oversized sleeves, but that must have been a difficult task, for as the children gazed into the truck they caught a glimpse of two hooks where the doorman's hands should have been.
"The hook-handed man!" Klaus cried. "He was right under our noses the entire time!"
Count Olaf turned to sneer at the children just as he reached the pickup truck. "He might have been right under your noses," he snarled, "but soon he will be at your throats. I'll be back, Baudelaires! Soon the Quagmire sapphires will be mine, but I haven't forgotten about your fortune!"
"Gonope?" Sunny shrieked, and Violet was quick to translate.
"Where are Duncan and Isadora?" she said. "Where have you taken them?"
Olaf and Esmé looked at one another, and burst into laughter as they slipped into the black truck. Esmé jerked a long-nailed thumb toward the flatbed, which is the word for the back part of a pickup where things are stored. "We used two red he
rrings to fool you," she said, as the truck's engine roared into life. The children could see, in the back of the truck, the big red herring that had been Lot #48 in the In Auction.
"The Quagmires!" Klaus cried. "Olaf has them trapped inside that statue!" The orphans raced down the steps of the hall, and once again, you may find it more pleasant to put down this book, and close your eyes, and imagine a better ending to this tale than the one that I must write. You may imagine, for instance, that as the Baudelaires reached the truck, they heard the sound of the engine stalling, instead of the tooting of the horn as the hook-handed man drove his bosses away. You may imagine that the children heard the sounds of the Quagmires escaping from the statue of the herring, instead of the word "Toodle-oo!" coming from Esmé's villainous mouth. And you may imagine the sound of police sirens as Count Olaf was caught at last, instead of the weeping of the Baudelaire orphans as the black truck rounded the corner and disappeared from view.
But your imaginings would be ersatz, as all imaginings are. They are as untrue as the ersatz auctioneer who found the Baudelaires at the Squalors' penthouse, and the ersatz elevator outside their front door and the ersatz guardian who pushed them down the deep pit of the elevator shaft. Esmé hid her evil plan behind her reputation as the city's sixth most important financial advisor, and Count Olaf hid his identity behind a monocle and some black boots, and the dark passageway hid its secrets behind a pair of sliding elevator doors, but as much as it pains me to tell you that the Baudelaire orphans stood on the steps of Veblen Hall, weeping with anguish and frustration as Count Olaf rode away with the Quagmire triplets, I cannot hide the unfortunate truths of the Baudelaires' lives behind an ersatz happy ending.
The Baudelaire orphans stood on the steps of Veblen Hall, weeping with anguish and frustration as Count Olaf rode away with the Quagmire triplets, and the sight of Mr. Poe emerging from the award-winning door, with a doily in his hair and a look of panic in his eye, only made them weep harder.