The Slippery Slope

have been. The device looked a bit like a spider, with curly wires spreading out in all directions, but where the head of the spider might have been as the keyboard of a typewriter. Even in her excitement to see the headquarters, Violet's inventing mind was interested in such a device, and she leaned closer to see what it was.

'Wait,' the sweatered scout said, reaching his arm out to stop her. 'This is a coded lock. If we don't operate it properly, we won't be able to get into the headquarters.'

'How does it work?' Violet said, shivering slightly in the cold.

'I'm not sure,' the scout admitted, and took out his commonplace book again. 'It's called the Vernacularly Fastened Door, so — '

'So it operates on language,' Klaus finished. 'Vernacular is a word for 'a local language or dialect.''

'Of course,' Violet said. 'See how the wires are curled around the hinges of the door? They're locked in place, unless you type in the right sequence of letters on that keyboard. There are more letters than numbers, so it would be more difficult for someone to guess the combination of the lock.'

'That's what I read,' the scout confirmed looking at a page in his notebook. 'You're supposed to type in three specific phrases in a row. The phrases change every season, so volunteers need to have a lot of information at their fingertips to use this door. The first is the name of the scientist most widely credited with the discovery of gravity.'

'That's easy,' Violet said, and typed in S-I-R-I-S-A-A-C-N-E-W-T-O-N, the name of a physicist she had always admired. When she was finished, there was a muted clicking sound from the typewriter keyboard, as if the device was warming up.

'The second is the Latin name for the Volunteer Feline Detectives,' the scout said. 'I found the answer in Remarkable Phenomena of the Mortmain Mountains. It's Panthera leo.' He leaned forward and typed in P-A-N-T-H-E-R-A-L-E-O. There was a very quiet buzzing and and the children saw that the wires near the hinges were shaking very slightly.

'It's beginning to unlock,' Violet said. 'I hope I get a chance to study this invention.'

'Let's get to the headquarters first,' Klaus said. 'What's the third phrase?'

The scout sighed, and turned a page in the commonplace book. 'I'm not sure,' he admitted. 'Another volunteer told me that it's the central theme of Leo Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina, but I haven't had a chance to read it yet.'

Violet knew that her brother was smiling, even though she could not see his face through the mask. She was remembering one summer, very long ago, when Klaus was very young and Sunny was not even conceived. Every summer, the Baudelaires' mother would read a very long book, joking that lifting a large novel was the only exercise she liked to get during the hot months. During the time Violet was thinking of, Mrs. Baudelaire chose Anna Karenina for her summer reading, and Klaus would sit on his mother's lap for hours at a time while she read The middle Baudelaire had not been reading very long, but their mother helped him with the big words and would occasionally stop reading to explain what had happened in the story, and in this way Klaus and his mother read the story of Ms. Karenina, whose boyfriend treats her so poorly that she throws herself under a train. Violet had spent most of that summer studying the laws of thermodynamics and building a miniature helicopter out of an eggbeater and some old copper wiring, but she knew that Klaus must remember the central theme of the book he read on his mother's lap.

'The central theme of Anna Karenina' he said, 'is that a rural life of moral simplicity, despite its monotony, is the preferable personal narrative to a daring life of impulsive passion, which only leads to tragedy.'

'That's a very long theme,' the scout said.

'It's a very long book,' Klaus replied. 'But I can work quickly. My sisters and I once tapped out a long telegram in no time at all.'

'Too bad that telegram never arrived,' the scout said quietly, but the middle Baudelaire was already pressing the keys on the Vernacularly Fastened Door. As Klaus typed the words 'a rural life,' a phrase which here means 'living in the country,' the wires began to curl and uncurl very quickly, like worms on a sidewalk after it has rained, and by the time Klaus was typing 'the preferable personal narrative,' a phrase which here means 'the way to live your life,' the entire door was quivering as if it were as nervous as the Baudelaires. Finally, Klaus typed 'T-R-A- GE-D-Y,' and the three children stepped back, but instead of opening, the door stopped shaking and the wires stopped moving, and the passageway was dead quiet.

'It's not opening,' Violet said. 'Maybe that isn't the central theme of Leo Tolstoy's

Anna Karenina'

'It seemed like it was working until the last word,' the scout said.

'Maybe the mechanism is a little stuck ' Violet said.

'Or maybe a daring life of impulsive passion only leads to something else,' the scout said, and in some cases this mysterious person was right. A daring life of impulsive passion is an expression which refers to people who follow what is in their hearts, and like people who prefer to follow their head, or follow the advice of other people, or follow a mysterious man in a dark blue raincoat, people who lead a daring life of impulsive passion end up doing all sorts of things. For instance, if you ever find yourself reading a book entitled The Bible, you would find the story of Adam and Eve, whose daring life of impulsive passion led to them putting on clothing for the first time in their lives, in order to leave the snake-infested garden where they had been living. Bonnie and Clyde, another famous couple who lived a daring life of impulsive passion, found that it led them to a successful if short career in bank robbery. And in my own case, in the few moments where I have led a daring life of impulsive passion, it has led to all sorts of trouble, from false accusations of arson to a broken cufflink I can never have repaired. But in this case, as the Baudelaires stood at the Vernacularly Fastened Door, hoping to reach the V.F.D. headquarters, rescue their sister, and see if one of their parents was indeed alive, it was not the sweatered scout but the two Baudelaires who were right, because in Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, a daring life of impulsive passion leads only to tragedy, as Klaus said, and as Violet said, the mechanism was a little stuck, and after a few seconds, the door swung open with a slow and eerie creak. The children stepped through the door, blinking in the sudden light, and stood frozen in their steps. If you have read this far in the Baudelaires' woeful story, then you will not be surprised to learn that the V.F.D. headquarters in the Valley of Four Drafts in the Mortmain Mountains was no more, but Violet and Klaus, of course, were not reading their own story. They were in their own story, and this was the part of their story where they were sick with shock at what they saw.

The Vernacularly Fastened Door did not open onto a kitchen, not anymore. When the Baudelaires followed the mysterious scout through the doorway, they found themselves standing in what at first seemed to be a large field, growing a black and ruined harvest in a valley as cold and drafty as its name. But slowly, they saw the charred remains of the grand and impressive building that had stood where the three children were standing. Nearby was a handful of silverware that had survived the blaze, scattered in front of the remnants of a stove, and a refrigerator stood to one side, as if it were guarding the ashen remains of the rest of the kitchen. To one side was a pile of burnt wood that had probably once been a large dining table, with a half-melted candelabra sticking out of the top like a baby tree. Farther away, they could see the mysterious shapes of other objects that had survived the fire — a trombone, the pendulum of a grandfather clock, what looked like a periscope, or perhaps a spyglass, an ice cream scoop, lying forlornly in a pile of ashes encrusted with burnt sugar, and an iron archway emblazoned with the words 'V.F.D. Library,' but there was nothing beyond the archway but piles and piles of blackened remains. It was a devastating sight, and it made Violet and Klaus feel as if they were all alone in a world that had been completely ruined. The only thing they could see that seemed untouched by the fire was a sheer, white wall, beyond the refrigerator, that rose up as far as two siblings could see. It took the Baudelaires a few moments to realize that it was a frozen waterfall, rising up in a slippery slope toward the source of the Stricken Stream on Mount Fraught, so shiny and white that it made the ruined headquarters look even darker.

'It must have been beautiful,' the sweatered scout said, in a quivering voice. He walked toward the waterfall, his feet churning up black dust with every step. 'I read that there was a large window,' he said, moving his gloved hand in the air as if it were still there. 'When it was your turn to cook, you could look out at the waterfall while you were chopping vegetables or simmering a sauce. It was supposed to be very peaceful. And there was a mechanism just outside the window that turned some of the water from the pool into steam. The steam rose up and covered the headquarters, so it couldn't be seen through the blanket of mist.'

The Baudelaires walked to where the scout was standing, and looked into the frozen pool at the bottom of the waterfall. The pool branched off into two tributaries, a word which here means 'divisions of a river or stream,