'There they are!' a voice cried, and in an instant the children realized they had neglected to look in back of them, as well as in front of them and around each corner. About two blocks behind them was Mr. Lesko, leading a small group of torch-carrying citizens straight up the street. The day was getting later, and the torches left long, skinny shadows on the sidewalk as if the mob were being led by slithering black serpents, instead of a man in plaid pants. 'There are the orphans!' Mr. Lesko cried triumphantly. 'After them, citizens!'
'Who are those other two?' asked an Elder in the crowd.
'Who cares?' said Mrs. Morrow, and waved her torch. 'They're probably more accomplices! Let's burn them at the stake, too!'
'Why not?' said another Elder. 'We already have torches and kindling, and I don't have anything else to do right now.'
Mr. Lesko stopped at a corner and called down a street the children couldn't see. 'Hey, everyone!' he shouted. 'They're over here!'
The five children had been staring at the group of citizens, too terrified to get moving again. Sunny was the first to recover. 'Lililk!' she shouted, and began crawling down the street as fast as she could. She meant something like 'Let's go! Don't look behind you! Let's just try to get to Hector and his self-sustaining hot air mobile home before the mob catches up with us and burns us at the stake!' but her companions didn't need any encouragement. Down the street they raced, paying no attention to the footsteps and shouts behind them, which seemed to be growing in number as more and more people heard the news that V.F.D.'s prisoners were escaping. The children ran down narrow alleys and wide main streets, across parks and bridges that were all covered in black feathers. Occasionally they had to retrace their steps, a phrase which here means 'turn around and run the other way when they saw townspeople approaching,' and often they had to duck into doorways or hide behind shrubbery while angry citizens ran by, as if the children were playing a game of hide-and-go-seek instead of running for their lives. The afternoon wore on, and the shadows on V.F.D.'s streets grew longer and longer, and still the sidewalks echoed with the sounds of the mob's cries and the windows of the buildings reflected the flames from the torches the townspeople were carrying. Finally, the five children reached the outskirts of town, and stared at the flat, bare landscape. The Baudelaires searched desperately for a sign of the handyman and his invention, but only the shapes of Hector's house, the barn, and Nevermore Tree were visible on the horizon.
'Where's Hector?' Isadora asked frantically.
'I don't know,' Violet said. 'He said he'd be at the barn, but I don't see him.'
'Where can we go?' Duncan cried. 'We can't hide anywhere around here. The citizens will spot us in a second.'
'We're trapped,' Klaus said, his voice hoarse with panic.
'Vireo!' Sunny cried, which meant 'Let's run — or, in my case, crawl — as fast as we can!'
'We'll never run fast enough,' Violet said, pointing behind them. 'Look.'
The youngsters turned around, and saw the entire Village of Fowl Devotees, marching together in a huge group. They had rounded the last corner and were now heading straight toward the five children, their footsteps as loud as a roll of thunder. But the youngsters did not feel as if it was thunder that was rolling toward them. As hundreds of fierce and angry citizens approached, it felt more like the rolling of an enormous root vegetable. It felt like a root vegetable that could crush all of the reptiles in Uncle Monty's collection in five seconds flat, or one that could soak up every drop of water of Lake Lachrymose in an instant. The approaching crowd felt like a root vegetable that made every tree in the Finite Forest look like a tiny twig, made the huge lasagna served at the Prufrock Preparatory School cafeteria look like a light snack, and made the skyscraper at 667 Dark Avenue look like a dollhouse made for midget children to play with, a root vegetable so tremendous in size that it would win every first-place ribbon in every starchy farm crop competition in every state and county fair in the entire world from now until the end of time. The march of the torch-wielding mob, eager to capture Violet and Klaus and Sunny and Duncan and Isadora and burn each one of them at the stake, felt like the largest potato the Baudelaire orphans and the Quagmire triplets had ever encountered.
Chapter Thirteen
The Baudelaires looked at the Quagmires, and the Quagmires looked at the Baudelaires, and then all five children looked at the mob. All the members of the Council of Elders were walking together, their crow-shaped hats bobbing in unison. Mrs. Morrow was leading a chant of 'Burn the orphans! Burn the orphans!' which the Verhoogen family was taking up with spirit, and Mr. Lesko's eyes were shining as brightly as his torch. The only person missing from the mob was Detective Dupin, who the children would have expected to be leading the crowd. Instead, Officer Luciana walked in front, A scowling below the visor of her helmet as she led the way in her shiny black boots. In one white-gloved hand she was clutching something covered in a blanket, and with the other hand she was pointing at the terrified children.
'There they are!' Officer Luciana cried, pointing her white-gloved finger at the five terrified children. 'They have nowhere else to go!'
'She's right!' Klaus cried. 'There's no way to escape!'
'Machina!' Sunny shrieked.
'There's no sign of deus ex machina, Sunny,' Violet said, her eyes filling with tears. 'I don't think anything helpful will arrive unexpectedly.'
'Machina!' Sunny insisted, and pointed at the sky. The children took their eyes off the approaching mob and looked up, and there was the greatest example of deus ex machina they had ever seen. Floating just over the children's heads was the superlative sight of the self- sustaining hot air mobile home. Although the invention had been quite marvelous to look at in Hector's studio, it was truly wondrous now that it was actually being put to use, and even the angry citizens of V.F.D. stopped chasing the children for a moment, just so they could stare at this amazing sight. The self-sustaining hot air mobile home was enormous, as if an entire cottage had somehow detached itself from its neighborhood and was wandering around the sky. The twelve baskets were all connected and floating together like a group of rafts, with all of the tubes, pipes, and wires twisted around them like a huge piece of knitting. Above the baskets were dozens of balloons in varying shades of green. Fully inflated, they looked like a floating crop of crisp, ripe apples glistening in the last light of the afternoon. The mechanical devices were working at full force, with flashing lights, spinning gears, ringing bells, dripping faucets, whirring pulleys, and a hundred other gadgets all going at once, but miraculously, the entire self-sustaining hot air mobile home was as silent as a cloud. As the invention sailed toward the ground, the only sound that could be heard was Hector's triumphant shout.
'Here I am!' the handyman called from the control basket. 'And here it is, like a bolt from the blue! Violet, your improvements are working perfectly. Climb aboard, and we'll escape from this wretched place.' He flicked a bright yellow switch, and a long ladder made of rope began to unfurl down to where the children were standing. 'Because my invention is self-sustaining,' he explained, 'it isn't designed to come back down to the ground, so you'll have to climb up this ladder.'
Duncan caught the end of the ladder and held it for Isadora to climb up. 'I'm Duncan Quagmire,' he said quickly, 'and this is my sister, Isadora.'
'Yes, the Baudelaires have told me all about you,' Hector said. 'I'm glad you're coming along. Like all mechanical devices, the self-sustaining hot air mobile home actually needs several people to keep it running.'
'Aha!' cried Mr. Lesko, as Isadora hurriedly climbed the ladder with Duncan right behind her. The mob had stopped staring at the deus ex machina and was now marching once again toward the children. 'I
'Why, Hector!' an Elder said. 'Rule #67 clearly states that no citizen is allowed to build or use any mechanical devices.'
'Burn him at the stake, too!' cried Mrs. Morrow. 'Somebody get extra kindling!'
Hector took a deep breath, and then called down to the mob without a trace of skittishness in his voice. 'Nobody's going to be burned at the stake,' he said firmly, as Isadora reached the top of the ladder and joined Hector in the control basket. 'Burning people at the stake is a repulsive thing to do!'
'What's repulsive is your behavior,' an Elder replied. 'The children have murdered Count Olaf, and you have
