The Slippery Slope

sense,' he said. 'I was hoping to find the answers here, but now I don't know if I'll ever find them.' He took out his purple notebook and opened it to the first page.

'All I can tell you is what I have here in this commonplace book.'

Klaus gave Quigley a small smile, and reached into his pockets to retrieve all of the papers he had stored there. 'You tell us what you know,' he said, 'and we'll tell you what we know. Perhaps together we can answer our own questions.'

Quigley nodded in agreement, and the three children sat in a circle on what was once the kitchen floor. Quigley opened his backpack and took out a bag of salted almonds, which he passed around. 'You must be hungry from the climb up the Vertical Flame Diversion,' he said. 'I know I am. Let's see, where was I?'

'In the Reptile Room,' Violet said, 'at the end of the passageway.'

'Well, nothing happened for a while,' Quigley said. 'On the doorstep of the house was a copy of The Daily Punctilio, which had an article about the fire. That's how I learned that my parents were dead. I spent days and days there, all by myself. I was so sad, and so scared, and I didn't know what else to do. I suppose I was waiting for the herpetologist to show up for work, and see if he was a friend of my parents and might be of some assistance. The kitchen was filled with food, so I had enough to eat, and every night I slept at the bottom of the stairs, so I could hear if anyone came in.'

The Baudelaires nodded sympathetically, and Violet put a comforting hand on Quigley's shoulder. 'We were the same way,' Violet said, 'right when we heard the news about our parents. I scarcely remember what we did and what we said.'

'But didn't anyone come looking for you?' Klaus asked.

''The Daily Punctilio said that I died in the fire, too,' Quigley said. 'The article said that my sister and brother were sent off to Prufrock Preparatory School, and that my parents' estate was under the care of the city's sixth most important financial advisor.'

'Esmй Squalor' Violet and Klaus said simultaneously, a word which here means 'in a disgusted voice, and at the exact same time.'

'Right,' Quigley said, 'but I wasn't interested in that part of the story. I was determined to go to the school and find my siblings again. I found an atlas in Dr. Montgomery's library, and studied it until I found Prufrock Preparatory School. It wasn't too far, so I started to gather whatever supplies I could find around his house.'

'Didn't you think of calling the authorities?' Klaus asked.

'I guess I wasn't thinking very clearly,' Quigley admitted. 'All I could think of was finding my siblings.'

'Of course,' Violet said. 'So what happened then?'

'I was interrupted,' Quigley said. 'Someone walked in just as I was putting the atlas in a totebag I found. It was Jacques Snicket, although I didn't know who he was, of course. But he knew who I was, and was overjoyed that I was alive after all.'

'How did you know you could trust him?' Klaus asked.

'Well, he knew about the secret passageway,' Quigley said. In fact, he knew quite a bit about my family, even though he hadn't seen my parents in years. And. .'

'And?' Violet said.

Quigley gave her a small smile. 'And he was very well-read,' he said. 'In fact, he was at Dr. Montgomery's house to do a bit more reading. He said there was an important file that was hidden someplace on the premises, and he had to stay for a few days to try and complete his investigation.'

'So he didn't take you to the school?' Violet asked.

'He said it wasn't safe for me to be seen,' Quigley said. 'He explained that he was part of a secret organization, and that my parents had been a part of it, too.'

'V.F.D.,' Klaus said, and Quigley nodded in agreement.

'Duncan and Isadora tried to tell us about V.F.D.,' Violet said, 'but they never got the chance. We don't even know what it stands for.'

'It seems to stand for many things,' Quigley said, flipping pages in his notebook. 'Nearly everything the organization uses, from the Volunteer Feline Detectives to the Vernacularly Fastened Door, has the same initials.'

'But what is the organization?' Violet asked. 'What is V.F.D.?'

'Jacques wouldn't tell me,' Quigley said, 'but I think the letters stand for Volunteer Fire Department.'

'Volunteer Fire Department,' Violet repeated, and looked at her brother. 'What does that mean?'

'In some communities,' Klaus said, 'there's no official fire department, and so they rely on volunteers to extinguish fires.'

'I know that,' Violet said, 'but what does that have to do with our parents, or Count Olaf, or anything that has happened to us? I always thought that knowing what the letters stood for would solve the mystery, but I'm as mystified as I ever was.'

'Do you think our parents were secretly fighting fires?' Klaus asked.

'But why would they keep it a secret?' Violet asked. 'And why would they have a secret passageway underneath the house?'

'Jacques said that the passageways were built by members of the organization,' Quigley said. 'In the case of an emergency, they could escape to a safe place.'

'But the tunnel we found connects our house to the home of Esmй Squalor,' Klaus said. 'That's not a safe place.'

'Something happened,' Quigley said. 'Something that changed everything.' He flipped through a few pages of his commonplace book until he found what he was looking for. 'Jacques Snicket called it a 'schism,'' he said, 'but I don't know what that word means.'

'A schism,' Klaus said, 'is a division of a previously united group of people into two or more oppositional parties. It's like a big argument, with everybody choosing sides.'

'That makes sense,' Quigley said. 'The way Jacques talked, it sounded like the entire organization was in chaos. Volunteers who were once working together are now enemies. Places that were once safe are now dangerous. Both sides are using the same codes, and the same disguises. Even the V.F.D. insignia used to represent the noble ideals everyone shared, but now it's all gone up in smoke.'

'But how did the schism start?' Violet asked. 'What was everyone fighting over?'

'I don't know,' Quigley said. 'Jacques didn't have much time to explain things to me.'

'What was he doing?' Klaus asked.

'He was looking for you,' Quigley replied. 'He showed me a picture of all three of you, waiting at the dock on some lake, and asked me if I'd seen you anywhere. He knew that you'd been placed in Count Olaf's care, and all the terrible things that had happened there. He knew that you had gone to live with Dr. Montgomery. He even knew about some of the inventions you made, Violet, and the research you did, Klaus, and some of Sunny's tooth-related exploits. He wanted to find you before it was too late.'

'Too late for what?' Violet said.

'I don't know,' Quigley said with a sigh. 'Jacques spent a long time at Dr. Montgomery's house, but he was too busy conducting his investigation to explain everything to me. He would stay up all night reading and copying information into his notebook, and then sleep all day, or disappear for hours at a time. And then one day, he said he had to go interview someone in the town of Paltryville, but he never came back. I waited weeks and weeks for him to return. I read books in Dr. Montgomery's library, and started a commonplace book of my own. At first it was difficult to find any information on V.F.D., but I took notes on anything I could find. I must have read hundreds of books, but Jacques never returned. Finally, one morning, two things happened that made me decide not to wait any longer. The first was an article in The Daily Punctilio saying that my siblings had been kidnapped from the school. I knew I had to do something. I couldn't wait for Jacques Snicket or for anyone else.'

The Baudelaires nodded in solemn agreement. 'What was the second thing?' Violet asked.

Quigley was silent for a moment, and he reached down to the ground and scooped up a handful of ashes, letting them fall from his gloved hands. 'I smelled smoke,' he said, 'and when I opened the door of the Reptile Room, I saw that someone had thrown a torch through the glass of the ceiling, starting a fire in the library. Within minutes, the entire house was in flames.'

'Oh,' Violet said quietly. 'Oh' is a word which usually means something along the lines of, 'I heard you, and