built a mechanical device. You have both broken very important rules!'

'I don't want to live in a place with so many rules,' Hector replied in a quiet voice, 'or a place with so many crows. I'm floating away from here, and I'm taking these five children with me. The Baudelaires and the Quagmires have had a horrible time since their parents died. The Village of Fowl Devotees ought to be taking care of them, instead of accusing them of things and chasing them through the streets.'

'But who's going to do our chores?' an Elder asked. 'The Snack Hut is still full of dirty dishes from our hot fudge sundaes.'

'You should do your own chores,' the handyman said, as he leaned over to lift Duncan aboard his invention, 'or take turns doing them according to a fair schedule. The aphorism is 'It takes a village to raise a child,' not 'Three children should clean up after a village.' Baudelaires, climb aboard. Let's leave these terrible people behind us.'

The Baudelaires smiled at one another, and began climbing up the rope ladder. Violet went first, her hands clutching the scratchy rope as tightly as she could, and Klaus and Sunny followed closely behind. Hector turned a knob, and the mobile home rose up higher just as the crowd reached the end of the ladder. 'They're getting away!' another Elder called, her crow-shaped hat bobbing with frustration. She jumped up to try to grab the edge of the ladder, but Hector had maneuvered his invention too high for her to reach. 'The rulebreakers are getting away! Officer Luciana, do something!'

'I'll do something, all right,' Officer Luciana said with a snarl, and tossed away the blanket she had been holding. From halfway down the ladder, the three climbing Baudelaires looked down and saw a large, wicked- looking object in Luciana's hands, with a bright red trigger and four long, sharp hooks. 'You're not the only one with a mechanical device!' she called up to Hector. 'This is a harpoon gun that my boyfriend bought for me. It fires four hooked harpoons, which are long spears perfect for popping balloons.'

'Oh no!' Hector said, looking down at the climbing children.

'Raise the self-sustaining hot air mobile home, Hector!' Violet called. 'We'll keep climbing!'

'Our Chief of Police is using a mechanical device?' Mrs. Morrow asked in astonishment. 'That means she's breaking Rule #67, too.'

'Officers of the law are allowed to break rules,' Luciana said, aiming the harpoon gun in Hector's direction. 'Besides, this is an emergency. We need to get those murderers down from there.' Members of the mob looked at one another in confusion, but Luciana merely gave them a lipsticked smile, and pressed the harpoon gun's trigger with a sharp click! followed by a swoosh! as one of the hooked harpoons flew out of the gun straight toward Hector's invention. The handyman managed to manuever the self- sustaining hot air mobile home so the harpoon did not hit a balloon, but it struck a metal tank on the side of one of the baskets, making a large hole.

'Drat!' Hector said, as a purplish liquid began to pour out of the hole. 'That's my supply of cranberry juice! Baudelaires, hurry up! If she causes any serious damage, we're all doomed!'

'We're coming as fast as we can!' Klaus cried, but as Hector moved his invention even higher in the air, the rope ladder was shaking so much that the Baudelaires could not move very fast at all.

Click! Swoosh! Another harpoon flew through the air and landed in the sixth basket, sending a cloud of brown dust fluttering to the ground, followed by some thin metal tubes. 'She hit our supply of whole wheat flour,' Hector cried, 'and our box of extra batteries!'

'I'll hit a balloon with this one!' Officer Luciana called. 'Then you'll fall to the ground, where we can burn you at the stake!'

'Officer Luciana,' said one of the Council of Elders in the crowd, 'I don't think you should break the rules in order to capture people who have broken the rules. It doesn't make sense.'

'Hear, hear!' called out a townsperson from the opposite side of the crowd. 'Why don't you put down the harpoon gun, and we'll walk over to Town Hall and have a council meeting.'

'It's not cool,' called out a voice, 'to have meetings!' There was a rumble, as if another large potato had arrived, and the crowd parted to reveal Detective Dupin, riding through the mob on a motorcycle painted turquoise to match his blazer. Below his sunglasses was a grin of triumph, and his bare chest swelled with pride.

'Detective Dupin is using a mechanical device too?' an Elder asked. 'We can't burn everyone at the stake!'

'Dupin isn't a citizen,' another member of the Council pointed out, 'so he's not breaking Rule #67.'

'But he's riding through a crowd of people,' Mr. Lesko said, 'and he's not wearing a helmet. He's not showing good judgment, that's for sure.'

Detective Dupin ignored Mr. Lesko's lecture about motorcycle safety and pulled to a stop beside Officer Luciana. 'It's cool to be late,' he said, and snapped his fingers. 'I was buying today's edition of The Daily Punctilio.'

'You shouldn't be buying newspapers,' said an Elder, shaking his crow hat in disapproval. 'You should be catching criminals.'

'Hear, hear!' said several voices in agreement, but the crowd was beginning to look uncertain. It is hard work to be fierce all afternoon, and as the situation grew more complicated, the citizens of V.F.D. seemed a bit less bloodthirsty. A few townspeople even lowered their torches, which had been heavy to hold up all this time.

But Detective Dupin ignored this change in V.F.D.'s mob psychology. 'Leave me alone, you crow-hatted fool,' he said to the Elder, and snapped his fingers. 'It's cool to fire away, Officer Luciana.'

'It certainly is,' Luciana said, and looked up into the sky to aim the harpoon gun again. But the self- sustaining hot air mobile home was no longer alone in the sky. In all the commotion, no one had noticed that the afternoon was over, and the V.F.D. crows had left their downtown roost to fly in circles before migrating to Nevermore Tree to spend the night as usual. Now the crows were arriving, thousands and thousands of them, and in seconds the evening sky was covered in black, muttering birds. Officer Luciana could not see Hector and his invention. Hector could not see the Baudelaires. And the Baudelaires could not see anything. The rope ladder was right in the path of the migrating crows, and the three children were absolutely surrounded by the birds of V.F.D. The wings of the crows rustled against the children, and their feathers became tangled in the ladder, and all the three siblings could do was hang on for dear life.

'Baudelaires!' Hector called down. 'Hang on for dear life! I'm going to fly even higher, over the crows!'

'No!' Sunny cried, which meant something like, 'I'm not sure that's the wisest plan — we won't survive a fall from such a height!' but Hector couldn't hear her over another click! and swoosh! from Luciana's harpoon gun. The Baudelaires felt the rope ladder jerk sharply in their hands, and then twist dizzily in the crow-filled air. From up in the control basket, the Quagmire triplets looked down and caught a glimpse, through the migrating crows, of some very bad news.

'The harpoon hit the ladder!' Isadora called down to her friends in despair. 'The rope is coming unraveled!'

It was true. As the crows began to settle in at Nevermore Tree, the Baudelaires could see more clearly, and they stared up at the ladder in horror. The harpoon was sticking out of one of the ladder's thick ropes, which was slowly uncurling around the hook. It reminded Violet of a time when she was much younger, and had begged her mother to braid her hair so she could look like a famous inventor she had seen in a magazine. Despite her mother's best efforts, the braids had not held their shape, and had come unraveled almost as soon as she had tied their ends with ribbons. Violet's hair had slowly spun out of the braid, just as the strands of rope were spinning out of the ladder now.

'Climb faster!' Duncan screamed down. 'Climb faster!'

'No,' Violet said quietly, and then said it again so her siblings could hear. More and more crows were taking their places in the tree, and Klaus and Sunny could see Violet's grim face as she looked down at them in despair. 'No.' The eldest Baudelaire took another look at the unraveling rope and saw that they couldn't possibly climb up to the basket of Hector's self-sustaining hot air mobile home. It was just as impossible as her mother ever braiding her hair again. 'We can't do it,' she said. 'If we keep trying to climb up, we'll fall to our deaths. We have to climb down.'

'But — ' Klaus said.

'No,' Violet said, and one tear rolled down her cheek. 'We won't make it, Klaus.'

'Yoil!' Sunny said.

'No,' Violet said again, and looked her siblings in the eye. The three Baudelaires shared a moment of

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