The Slippery Slope

only need one of you to learn where the sugar bowl is,' he said, his eyes shining brightly, 'and to get my hands on the fortune. But which one should it be?'

'That's a difficult decision,' Esmй said. 'On one hand, it's been enjoyable having an infant servant. But it would be a lot of fun to smash Klaus's glasses and watch him bump into things.'

'But Violet has the longest hair,' Carmelita volunteered, as the Baudelaires backed toward the cracked waterfall with Quigley right behind them. 'You could yank on it all the time, and tie it to things when you were bored.'

'Those are both excellent ideas,' Count Olaf said. 'I'd forgotten what an adorable little girl you are. Why don't you join us?'

'Join you?' Carmelita asked.

'Look at my stylish dress,' Esmй said to Carmelita. 'If you joined us, I'd buy you all sorts of in outfits.'

Carmelita looked thoughtful, gazing first at the children, and then at the two villains standing next to her and smiling. The three Baudelaires shared a look of horrified disappointment with Quigley. The siblings remembered how monstrous Carmelita had been at school, but it had never occurred to them that she would be interested in joining up with even more monstrous people.

'Don't believe them, Carmelita,' Quigley said, and took his purple notebook out of his pocket. 'They'll burn your parents' house down. I have the evidence right here, in my commonplace book.'

'What are you going to believe, Carmelita?' Count Olaf asked. 'A silly book, or something an adult tells you?'

'Look at us, you adorable little girl,' Esmй said, her yellow, orange, and red dress crackling on the ground. 'Do we look like the sort of people who like to burn down houses?'

'Carmelita!' Violet cried. 'Don't listen to them!'

'Carmelita!' Klaus cried. 'Don't join them!'

'Carmelita!' Sunny cried, which meant something like, 'You're making a monstrous decision!'

'Carmelita,' Count Olaf said, in a sickeningly sweet voice. 'Why don't you choose one orphan to live, and push the others off the cliff, and then we'll all go to a nice hotel together.'

'You'll be like the daughter we never had,' Esmй said, stroking her tiara.

'Or something,' added Olaf, who looked like he would prefer having another employee rather than a daughter.

Carmelita glanced once more at the Baudelaires, and then smiled up at the two villains. 'Do you really think I'm adorable?' she asked.

'I think you're adorable, beautiful, cute, dainty, eye-pleasing, flawless, gorgeous, harmonious, impeccable, jaw-droppingly adorable, keen, luscious, magnificent, nifty, obviously adorable, photogenic, quite adorable, ravishing, splendid, thin, undeformed, very adorable, well-proportioned, xylophone, yummy, and zestfully adorable,' Esmй pledged, 'every morning, every afternoon, every night, and all day long!'

'Don't listen to her!' Quigley pleaded. 'A person can't be 'xylophone'!'

'I don't care!' Carmelita said. 'I'm going to push these cakesniffers off the mountain, and start an exciting and fashionable new life!'

The Baudelaires took another step back, and Quigley followed, giving the children a panicked look. Above them they could hear the squawking of the eagles as they took the villains' new recruits farther and farther away. Behind them they could feel the four drafts of the valley below, where the headquarters had been destroyed by people the children's parents had devoted their lives to stopping. Violet reached in her pocket for her ribbon, trying to imagine what she could invent that could get them away from such villainous people, and journeying toward their fellow volunteers at the last safe place. Her fingers brushed against the bread knife, and she wondered if she should remove the weapon from her pocket and use it to threaten the villains with violence, or whether this, too, would make her as villainous as the man who was staring at her now.

'Poor Baudelaires,' Count Olaf said mockingly. 'You might as well give up. You're hopelessly outnumbered.'

'We're not outnumbered at all,' Klaus said. 'There are four of us, and only three of you.'

'I count triple because I'm the False Spring Queen,' Carmelita said, 'so you are outnumbered, cakesniffers.'

This, of course, was more utter nonsense from the mouth of this cruel girl, but even if it weren't nonsense, it does not always matter if one is outnumbered or not. When Violet and Klaus were hiking toward the Valley of Four Drafts, for instance, they were outnumbered by the swarm of snow gnats, but they managed to find Quigley Quagmire, climb up the Vertical Flame Diversion to the headquarters, and find the message hidden in the refrigerator. Sunny had been outnumbered by all of the villains on top of Mount Fraught, and had still managed to survive the experience, discover the location of the last safe place, and concoct a few recipes that were as easy as they were delicious. And the members of V.F.D. have always been outnumbered, because the number of greedy and wicked people always seems to be increasing, while more and more libraries go up in smoke, but the volunteers have managed to endure, a word which here means 'meet in secret, communicate in code, and gather crucial evidence to foil the schemes of their enemies.' It does not always matter whether there are more people on your side of the schism than there are on the opposite side, and as the Baudelaires stood with Quigley and took one more step back, they knew what was more important.

'Rosebud!'' Sunny cried, which meant 'In some situations, the location of a certain object can be much more important than being outnumbered,' and it was true. As the villains gasped in astonishment, Violet sat down in the toboggan, grabbing the leather straps. Quigley sat down behind her and put his arms around her waist, and Klaus sat down next, and put his arms around Quigley's, and there was just enough room in back for a young girl, so Sunny sat behind her brother and hung on tight as Violet pushed off from the peak of Mount Fraught and sent the four children hurtling down the slope. It did not matter that they were outnumbered. It only mattered that they could escape from a monstrous end by racing down the last of the slippery slope, just as it only matters for you to escape from a monstrous end by putting down the last of The Slippery Slope, and reading a book in which villains do not roar at children who are trying to escape.

'We'll be right behind you, Baudelaires!' Count Olaf roared, as the toboggan raced toward the Valley of Four Drafts, bumping and splashing against the cracked and melting ice.

'He won't be right behind us,' Violet said. 'My shoes punctured his tire, remember?'

Quigley nodded. 'And he'll have to take that path,' he said. 'A car can't go down a waterfall.'

'We'll have a head start,' Violet said. 'Maybe we can reach the last safe place before he does.'

'Overhear!' Sunny cried. 'Hotel Denouement!'

'Good work, Sunny!' Violet said proudly, pulling on the leather straps to steer the toboggan away from the large crack. 'I knew you'd be a good spy.'

'Hotel Denouement,' Quigley said. 'I think I have that in one of my maps. I'll check my commonplace book when we get to the bottom.'

'Bruce!' Sunny cried.

'That's another thing to write down in our commonplace books,' Klaus agreed. 'That man Bruce was at Dr. Montgomery's house at the end of our stay. He said he was packing up Monty's reptile collection for the herpetological society.'

'Do you think he's really a member of V.F.D.?' Violet asked.

'We can't be sure,' Quigley said. 'We've managed to investigate so many mysteries, and yet there's still so much we don't know.' He sighed thoughtfully, and gazed down at the ruins of headquarters rushing toward them. 'My siblings — '

But the Baudelaires never got to hear any more about Quigley's siblings, because at that moment the toboggan, despite Violet's efforts with the leather straps, slipped against a melted section of the waterfall, and the large sled began to spin. The children screamed, and Violet grabbed the straps as hard as she could, only to have them break in her hands. 'The steering mechanism is broken!' she yelled. 'Dragging Esmй Squalor up the slope must have weakened the straps!'

'Uh-oh!' Sunny cried, which meant something along the lines of, 'That doesn't sound like good news.'

'At this velocity,' Violet said, using a scientific word for speed, 'the toboggan won't stop when we reach the frozen pool. If we don't slow down, we'll fall right into the pit we dug.'

Klaus was getting dizzy from all the spinning, and closed his eyes behind his glasses. 'What can we do?' he