The Grim Grotto

'I've read that,' Fiona said, twirling a few noodles around a swizzle stick to get them into her mouth. 'It's a very creepy story about a man who murders his wife.'

'Right,' Klaus said. 'But if a volunteer used the name of the poem in a coded communication, the title might be 'My Last Wife' instead of 'My Last Duchess,' by the poet 'Obert Browning' instead of Robert Browning.'

'What purpose would that serve?' Violet said. 'The volunteer reading it would notice the mistake,' Klaus said. 'The changing of certain words or letters is a kind of fluctuation. If you fixed the fluctuations in the poem, you'd receive the message.'

'Duchess R?' Fiona asked. 'What kind of message is that?'

'I'm not sure,' Klaus admitted. 'The next page in the book is missing.'

'Do you think the missing page is a code, too?' Violet asked.

Klaus shrugged. 'I don't know,' he said. 'Codes are nothing more than a way of talking so that some people understand and other people don't. Remember when we talked to Quigley in the cave, with all the other Snow Scouts listening?'

'Yes,' Violet said. 'We used words that began with V, F, and D, so that we knew we were all on the same side.' 'Maybe we should have a code ourselves,' Fiona said, 'so that we can communicate if we run into trouble.'

'That's a good idea,' Klaus said. 'What should we use as code words?'

'Food,' Sunny suggested.

'Perfect,' Violet said. 'We'll draw up a list of foods and what they mean in our code. We'll bring them up in conversation, and our enemies will never suspect that we're actually communicating.'

'And our enemies could be around any corner,' Fiona said, handing the fishbowl of lo mein to Violet and picking up the envelope she had found. 'Inside this envelope was a letter. Normally I don't like to read other people's mail, but it seems unlikely that this letter will ever reach Gregor Anwhistle.'

'Gregor Anwhistle?' Violet asked. 'He's the man who founded the research center. Who was writing to him?'

'A woman named Kit,' Fiona said. 'I think it's Kit Snicker – Jacques's sister.'

'Of course,' Klaus said. 'Your stepfather said she was a noble woman who helped build the Queequeg.'

'According to her letter,' Fiona said, 'Gregor Anwhistle was involved in something called a 'schism.' What's that?'

'It was a big conflict within V.F.D.,' Klaus said. 'Quigley told us a little bit about it.'

'Everybody chose sides,' Violet recalled, 'and now the organization is in chaos. Which side was Gregor on?'

'I don't know,' Fiona said, frowning. 'Some of this letter is in code, and some of it was in water. I can't understand all of it, but it sounds like Gregor was involved with something called Volatile Fungus Deportation.'

' 'Volatile' means 'unstable,' or 'likely to cause trouble,' ' Klaus said. ' 'Fungus,' of course, means 'mushrooms,' and 'deportation' means 'moving something from one place to another.' Who was moving unstable mushrooms?'

'V.F.D.,' Fiona replied. 'During the schism, Gregor thought the Medusoid Mycelium might be useful.'

'The Medusoid Mycelium?' Violet said, looking nervously at the silent, gray mushrooms that still lined the entrance to the small, tiled room, their black splotches looking particularly eerie in the dim light. 'I can't imagine thinking that such deadly things could be useful.'

'Listen to what Kit wrote about it,' Fiona said. ' 'The poisonous fungus you insist on cultivating in the grotto will bring grim consequences for all of us. Our factory at Lousy Lane can provide some dilution of the mycelium's destructive respiratory capabilities, and you assure me that the mycelium grows best in small, enclosed spaces, but this is of little comfort. One mistake, Gregor, and your entire facility would have to be abandoned. Please, do not become the thing you dread most by adopting the destructive tactic of our most villainous enemies: playing with fire.'

Klaus was busily copying Kit Snicket's letter into his commonplace book. 'Gregor was growing those mushrooms,' he said, 'to use on enemies of V.F.D.'

'He was going to poison people?' Violet asked.

'Villainous people,' Fiona replied, 'but Kit Snicket thought that using poisonous mushrooms was equally villainous. They were working on a way to weaken the poison, in a factory on Lousy Lane. But the writer of this letter still thought that Volatile Fungus Deportation was too dangerous, and she warned Gregor that if he wasn't careful, the mycelium would poison the entire research center.'

'And now the center is gone,' Violet said, 'and the mycelium remains. Something went very wrong, right here where we're sitting.'

'I still don't understand it,' Klaus said. 'Was Gregor a villain?'

'I think he was volatile,' Fiona said, 'like the Medusoid Mycelium. And the writer of this letter says that if you cultivate something volatile, then you're playing with fire.'

Violet shuddered, stopped eating her pesto lo mein, and put down the fishbowl.

'Playing with fire,' of course, is an expression that refers to any dangerous or risky activity, such as writing a letter to a volatile person, or journeying through a dark cave filled with a poisonous fungus in order to search for an object that was taken away quite some time before, and the Baudelaires did not like to think about the fire they were playing with, or the fires that had already been played with in this damp and mysterious room. For a moment, nobody spoke, and the Baudelaires gazed at the stalks and caps of the deadly mushrooms, wondering what had gone wrong with Anwhistle Aquatics. They wondered how the schism began. And they wondered about all of the mysterious and villainous things that seemed to surround the three orphans, drawing closer and closer as their woeful lives went on and on, and if such mysteries would ever be solved and if such villains ever defeated.

'Wane,' Sunny said suddenly, and the children saw it was true.

The crowd of mushrooms seemed to be just a bit smaller, and here and there they saw a stalk and cap disappear back into the sand, as if the poisonous fungus had decided to implement an alternate strategy, a phrase which here means 'would terrorize the Baudelaires in another way.'

'Sunny's right,' Klaus said with relief. 'The Medusoid Mycelium is waning. Soon it'll be safe enough to return to the Queequeg.'

'It must be a fairly short cycle,' Fiona said, making a note in her commonplace book. 'How long do you think we've been here?'

'All night, at least,' Violet said, unfolding the sheet of newspaper Sunny had found. 'It's lucky we found all these materials, otherwise we would have been quite bored.'

'My brother always had a deck of cards with him,' Fiona remembered, 'in case he was stuck in a boring situation. He invented this card game called Fernald's Folly, and we used to play it together whenever we had a long wait.'

'Fernald?' Violet asked. 'Was that your brother's name?'

'Yes,' Fiona said. 'Why do you ask?'

'I was just curious,' she said, hurriedly tucking the newspaper into the pocket of her uniform. There was just enough room to slip it next to the tin of wasabi.

'Aren't you going to tell us what was in the newspaper?' Klaus asked. 'I saw the headline said V.F.D.'

'I didn't learn anything,' Violet said. 'The article was too blurred to read.'

'Hmmm,' Sunny said, and gave her sister a sly look. The youngest Baudelaire had known Violet since she was born, of course, and found it quite easy to tell when she was lying.

Violet looked back at Sunny, and then at Klaus, and shook her head, very, very slightly. 'Why don't we get ready to go?' the eldest Baudelaire suggested. 'By the time we pack up these documents and put on our diving helmets, the fungus will have waned completely.'

'You're right,' Fiona said. 'Here, Sunny, I'll help you get into your helmet. It's the least I can do after you cooked such a delicious meal.'

'Shivalrush,' Sunny said, which meant ''That's very kind of you,' and although Fiona had not known Sunny very long, she understood what the youngest Baudelaire had said, more or less, and smiled at all three of the Baudelaire siblings.