'We could take her prisoner,' Quigley said, and everyone was quiet. Taking someone prisoner, of course, is a villainous thing to do, and when you think of doing a villainous thing — even if you have a very good reason for thinking of doing it — it can make you feel like a villain, too. Lately, the Baudelaires had been doing things like wearing disguises and helping burn down a carnival, and were beginning to feel more and more like villains themselves. But Violet and Klaus had never done anything as villainous as taking somebody prisoner, and as they looked at Quigley they could tell that he felt just as uncomfortable, sitting in the dark and thinking up a villainous plan.
'How would we do it?' Klaus asked quietly.
'We could lure her to us,' Violet said, 'and trap her.'
Quigley wrote something down in his commonplace book. 'We could use the Verdant Flammable Devices,' he said. 'Esmй thinks they're cigarettes, and she thinks cigarettes are in. If we lit some of them, she might smell the smoke and come down here.'
'But then what?' Klaus asked.
Violet shivered in the cold, and reached into her pocket. Her fingers bumped up against the large bread knife, which she had almost forgotten was there, and then found what she was looking for. She took the ribbon out of her pocket and tied her hair up, to keep it out of her eyes. The eldest Baudelaire could scarcely believe she was using her inventing skills to think up a trap. 'The easiest trap to build,' she said, 'is a pit. We could dig a deep hole, and cover it up with some of this half-burned wood so Esmй couldn't see it. The wood has been weakened by the fire, so when she steps on it. .'
Violet did not finish her sentence, but by the glow of the flashlights, she could see that Klaus and Quigley were both nodding. 'Hunters have used traps like that for centuries,' Klaus said, 'to capture wild animals.'
'That doesn't make me feel any better,' Violet said.
'How could we dig such a pit?' Quigley said.
'Well,' Violet said, 'we don't really have any tools, so we probably have to use our hands. As the pit got deeper, we'd have to use something to carry the dirt away.'
'I still have that pitcher,' Klaus said.
'And we'd need a way to make sure that we wouldn't get trapped ourselves,' Violet said.
'I have a rope,' Quigley said, 'in my backpack. We could tie one end to the archway, and use it to climb out.'
Violet reached her hand down to the ground The dirt was very cold, but quite loose, and she saw that they could dig a pit without too much trouble. 'Is this the right thing to do?' Violet asked. 'Do you think this is what our parents would do?'
'Our parents aren't here,' Klaus said. 'They might have been here once, but they're not here now.'
The children were quiet again, and tried to think as best they could in the cold and the dark. Deciding on the right thing to do in a situation is a bit like deciding on the right thing to wear to a party. It is easy to decide on what is wrong to wear to a party, such as deep-sea diving equipment or a pair of large pillows, but deciding what is right is much trickier. It might seem right to wear a navy blue suit, for instance, but when you arrive there could be several other people wearing the same thing, and you could end up being handcuffed due to a case of mistaken identity. It might seem right to wear your favorite pair of shoes, but there could be a sudden flood at the party, and your shoes would be ruined. And it might seem right to wear a suit of armor to the party, but there could be several other people wearing the same thing, and you could end up being caught in a flood due to a case of mistaken identity, and find yourself drifting out to sea wishing that you were wearing deep-sea diving equipment after all. The truth is that you can never be sure if you have decided on the right thing until the party is over, and by then it is too late to go back and change your mind, which is why the world is filled with people doing terrible things and wearing ugly clothing, and so few volunteers who are able to stop them.
'I don't know if it's the right thing to do,' Violet said, 'but Count Olaf captured Sunny, and we might have to capture someone ourselves, in order to stop him.'
Klaus nodded solemnly. 'We'll fight fire ' he said, 'with fire.'
'Then we'd better get started,' Quigley said and stood up. 'When the sun rises, we can light the Verdant Flammable Devices with the mirror again, like we did when we were signaling Sunny.'
'If we want the pit to be ready by dawn,' Violet said, 'we'll have to dig all night.'
'Where shall we put the pit?' Klaus asked.
'In front of the entrance,' Violet decided. 'Then we can hide behind the arch when Esmй approaches.'
'How will we know when she's fallen in,' Quigley asked, 'if we can't see her?'
'We'll hear it,' Violet replied. 'We'll hear the breaking of the wood, and Esmй might scream.'
Klaus shuddered. 'That's not going to be a pleasant sound.'
'We're not in a pleasant situation,' Violet said, and the eldest Baudelaire was right. It was not pleasant to kneel down in front of the ruined library entrance, and dig through the ashes and dirt with their bare hands by the light of two flashlights, as all four drafts of the valley blew around them. It was not pleasant for Violet and her brother to carry the dirt away in the pitcher, while Quigley tied his rope to the iron archway, so they could climb in and out as the pit grew bigger and deeper, like an enormous dark mouth opening wider and wider to swallow them whole. It was not even pleasant to pause and eat a carrot to keep up their energy, or to gaze at the shiny white shape of the frozen waterfall as it glinted in the moonlight, imagining Esmй Squalor, lured by the smoke of the Verdant Flammable Devices, approaching the ruined headquarters to become their prisoner. But the least pleasant part of the situation wasn't the cold dirt, or the freezing winds, or even their own exhaustion as it grew later and later and the children dug deeper and deeper. The least pleasant part was the idea, shared by the two Baudelaires and their new friend, that they might be doing a villainous thing.
The siblings were not sure if digging a deep pit to trap someone, in order to trade prisoners with a villain, was something that their parents or any other volunteers would do, but with so many of the V.F.D. secrets lost in the ashes, it was impossible to know for sure, and this uncertainty haunted them with every pitcherful of dirt, and every climb up the rope, and every piece of weakened wood they laid on top of the pit to hide it from view.
As the first rays of the morning sun appeared on the misty horizon, the elder Baudelaires gazed up at the waterfall. At the summit of the Mortmain Mountains, they knew, was a group of villains, from whom Sunny was hopefully learning the location of the last safe place. But as Violet and Klaus lowered their gaze to their own handiwork, and looked at the dark, deep pit Quigley had helped them dig, they could not help wondering if there were also a group of villains at the bottom of the slippery slope. As they looked at the villainous thing they had made, the three volunteers could not help wondering if they were villains, too, and this was the least pleasant feeling in the world.
Chapter Twelve
Not too long ago, in the Swedish city of Stockholm, a group of bank robbers took a few prisoners during the course of their work. For several days, the bank robbers and the prisoners lived together in close proximity, a word which here means 'while the police gathered outside and eventually managed to arrest the robbers and take them to jail.' When the prisoners were finally freed, however, the authorities discovered that they had become friends with the bank robbers, and since that time the expression 'Stockholm Syndrome' has been used to describe a situation in which someone becomes friendly with the people who are holding them prisoner.
There is another expression, however, which describes a situation that is far more common, when a prisoner does not become friends with such people, but instead regards them as villains, and despises them more and more with each passing moment, waiting desperately for an opportunity to escape. The expression is 'Mount Fraught Syndrome,' and Sunny Baudelaire was experiencing it as she stood at the top of Mount Fraught, gazing down at the frozen waterfall and thinking about her circumstances.
The young girl had spent another sleepless night in the covered casserole dish, after washing the salmon out of it with a few handfuls of melted snow. It was chilly, of course, with the winds of the Mortmain Mountains blowing through the holes in the lid, and it was painful, because once again her teeth were chattering in the cold and giving her tiny cuts on her lips, but there was another reason Sunny did not sleep well, which is that she was frustrated. Despite her best spying attempts, the youngest Baudelaire had been unable to eavesdrop on the villains'
