He smiled at me. “You can’t tell them everything,” he said. “They wouldn’t understand.”
“Who taught you that?”
“You did, Snicket. Remember? You said we could make our organization greater than ever, but only if we stopped listening to our instructors and found new ways to fix the world. It was quite a speech you gave. It almost got you thrown out for good.”
“Maybe they should have thrown me out. In Stain’d-by-the-Sea the world looks harder to fix.”
“Remember what our associate said,” my associate reminded me. “No reality has the power to dispel a dream.”
“Hangfire is dreaming up something awful,” I said, “and I don’t know how to stop him. I don’t even know where to begin.”
A bell rang then, the clanging alarm from the tower. I pictured the Wade Academy, abandoned on Offshore Island, where Cleo Knight’s secret ingredient could be found.
“I heard about this,” Widdershins said. “Do we have to put masks on?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It might be a superstition.”
“How can you be certain?”
I sighed. “I’m scarcely certain of anything, Widdershins.”
Widdershins gave me one last nod. “That sounds like apprenticeship to me,” he said. “None of us are certain of anything.” He waved and began to walk away. He couldn’t stay. I watched him go, and then I climbed up to the top of the ruined sculpture. The shape of the lump of metal made it a difficult climb, but at the top there was enough room to lie down and look at the sky. The metal was cold beneath me, but it was better than the bed in the Far East Suite, with the ruins of a wrong celebration. I don’t know what I thought of, lying there. I thought of the silver mask, and the face of the Bombinating Beast. I thought of the bandages covering Hangfire’s face and the ones around Moxie’s wound. I thought about the smell of laudanum, and the mud on my shoe. I thought about the hatch at the clinic and the hatch at the museum and the initials etched into the metal on both of them. I thought about Ellington Feint and her smile, the smile that could have meant anything. I looked at the sky. “No reality has the power to dispel a dream” means that no matter what happens in the world, you can keep thinking about something, particularly if it’s something you like.
I lay on the statue and thought, and the world went on without me. Moxie Mallahan was tucked into her bed, and Cleo Knight let herself into Handkerchief Heights, where her scientific equipment waited for her. Jake Hix started cooking up breakfast at Hungry’s, and the Bellerophon brothers put an old-fashioned record player and a huge stack of papers in the attic of Black Cat Coffee. S. Theodora Markson slept, and the Officers Mitchum bickered. Ignatius and Doretta Knight received news that their daughter was safe, and Zada and Zora celebrated with something delicious, and Polly Partial discovered that two honeydew melons had been returned to her establishment, while Dr. Flammarion and Nurse Dander sat handcuffed and waiting for a train that would rattle across bridges that were no longer over water, to the city where I no longer worked. And of course Hangfire lurked wherever he was lurking, and Ellington Feint hid wherever she was hiding, and the Bombinating Beast stared out at the world with its empty and evil eyes. All this happened without me, while I watched the night until I’d had enough, and I slid off the statue and got to my feet. I headed toward the Lost Arms and our next case. The bell rang again, signaling the all-clear. I didn’t know where I fit in, but I had an occupation. I wasn’t certain of anything, but I had a job to do.
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ALL THE WRONG QUESTIONS
“Who Could That Be at This Hour?”
“When Did You See Her Last?”
Contents
COVER
TITLE PAGE
WELCOME
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
FILE UNDER: SUSPICIOUS INCIDENTS
ALL THE WRONG QUESTIONS
COPYRIGHT
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Text copyright © 2013 by Lemony Snicket
Art copyright © 2013 by Seth
Cover design by Gail Doobinin
Cover art © 2013 Seth
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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First ebook edition: October 2013
ISBN 978-0-316-22503-8