and faint voice were a calming piece of music. But the Baudelaires did not feel better because of the way Babs's voice sounded. The announcement soothed the children's savage breasts because of what it said.
'I need three members of the Volunteers Fighting Disease who are willing to be given a new assignment,' said the voice. 'Those three volunteers should report immediately to my office, which is the seventeenth door on the left as you enter the finished half of the building. Instead of walking around the hallways of the hospital singing to people, these three volunteers will be working in the Library of Records here at Heimlich Hospital.'
Chapter Four
Whether you have been sent to see the principal of your school for throwing wet paper towels at the ceiling to see if they stick, or taken to the dentist to plead with him to hollow out one of your teeth so you can smuggle a single page of your latest book past the guards at the airport, it is never a pleasant feeling to stand outside the door of an office, and as the Baudelaire orphans stood at the door reading 'Office of the Head of Human Resources' they were reminded of all the unpleasant offices they had recently visited On their very first day at Prufrock Preparatory School, before they had even met Isadora and Duncan Quagmire, the Baudelaires had visited the office of Vice Principal Nero and learned about all of the academy's strict and unfair rules. When they worked at Lucky Smells Lumbermill, the siblings had been summoned to the office of the owner, who made clear just how dreadful their situation really was. And, of course, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny had been many, many times to Mr. Poe's office at the bank, where he coughed and talked on the phone and made decisions about the Baudelaires' future that had not proved to be good ones. But even if the children had not had all these unfortunate experiences in offices, it was perfectly understandable that the Baudelaire children had to stand for a few moments in front of the seventeenth door on the left, and gather their courage to knock.
'I'm not sure we should take this risk,' Violet said. 'If Babs has read this morning's edition of
'But the Library of Records might be our only hope,' Klaus said. 'We need to find out who Jacques Snicket really was--where he worked, and how he knew us. If we get some evidence, we can convince people that Count Olaf is still alive and that we're not murderers.'
'Curoy,' Sunny added, which meant 'Besides, the Quagmire triplets are far, far away, and we have only a few pages of their notebooks. We need to find the real meaning of V.F.D.'
'Sunny's right,' Klaus said. 'In the Library of Records, we might even solve the mystery of that underground passageway that led from Jerome and Esmé Squalor's apartment to the ashy remains of the Baudelaire mansion.'
'Afficu,' Sunny said. She meant something like 'And the only way we'll get into the Library of Records is if we talk to Babs, so it's a risk we have to take.'
'All right,' Violet said, looking down at her sister and smiling. 'You've convinced me. But if Babs begins looking at us suspiciously, we'll leave, agreed?'
'Agreed,' Klaus said.
'Yep,' Sunny said, and knocked on the door.
'Who is it?' Babs's voice called out.
'It's three members of Volunteers Fighting Disease,' Violet replied. 'We're here to volunteer at the Library of Records.'
'Come in,' Babs commanded, and the children opened the door and walked into the office. 'I was wondering when someone would show up,' the Head of Human Resources continued. 'I was just finishing up reading this morning's paper. These three terrible children are running around killing people.'
The Baudelaires looked at one another and were about to run back out the door when they saw something in the office that changed their minds. The office of the Head of Human Resources at Heimlich Hospital was a small one, with a small desk, two small chairs, and a small window decorated with two small curtains. On the windowsill was a small vase of yellow flowers and on the wall was a small tasteful portrait of a man leading a horse to a small pond of fresh water. But it was not the furnishings, the flower arrangement, or the tasteful artwork that made the three orphans stop.
Babs's voice had come from the direction of the desk, which the Baudelaires had expected, but what they hadn't expected was that Babs was not sitting behind the desk, or on the desk or even beneath it. Instead, a small square intercom speaker--just like the ones on the outside of the hospital--had been placed in the middle of the desk, and it was from this speaker that the speaking had been spoken. It was strange to hear speaking from a speaker instead of from the person who was speaking, but the children realized they could not be recognized if Babs could not see them, so they did not run out of the room.
'We're three children, too,' Violet said to the speaker, trying to be as honest as she could 'but we'd much rather volunteer in the hospital than embark on a life of crime.'
'If you're children, then be silent!' Babs's voice said rudely. 'In my opinion, children should be seen and not heard. I'm an adult, so it follows that I should be heard and not seen. That's why I work exclusively over the intercom. You will be working exclusively with the most important thing we do in this hospital. Can you guess what it is?'
'Healing sick people?' Klaus guessed.
'Be silent!' the speaker commanded. 'Children should be seen and not heard, remember? Just because I can't see you doesn't mean you should start babbling about sick people. You're wrong, anyway. The most important thing we do at the hospital is paperwork, and you will be working at the Library of Records, filing paperwork. I'm sure this will be difficult for you, because children never have any administrative experience.'
'Hend,' said Sunny in disagreement. Violet was about to explain that her sister meant something along the lines of 'Actually, I worked as an administrative assistant at Prufrock Preparatory School,' but the intercom speaker was too busy reproving the Baudelaires, a phrase which here means 'shouting 'Be silent!'' at every opportunity.
'Be silent!' the speaker shouted. 'Instead of chattering away, report to the Library of Records at once. The Library of Records is located in the basement, at the very bottom of the staircase next to this office. You'll go straight there every morning when the van arrives at Heimlich Hospital, and you'll return straight to the van at the end of each day. The van will take you back home. Are there any questions?'
The Baudelaires had plenty of questions, of course, but they did not ask them. They knew that if they said even one word, the intercom speaker would command them to be silent, and besides, they were eager to get to the Library of Records, where they hoped to answer the most important questions of their lives.
'Excellent!' the speaker said. 'You're learning to be seen instead of heard. Now, get out of this office.'
The children got out of that office and quickly found the staircase the speaker had mentioned. The Baudelaires were glad that the route to the Library of Records was so easy to remember, because Heimlich Hospital seemed like a place where it would be very easy to get lost. The staircase curved this way and that, leading to many doors and corridors, and every ten feet or so, nailed to the wall just below an intercom speaker there was a complicated map of the hospital, filled with arrows, stars, and other symbols the Baudelaires did not recognize. Every so often, the children would see someone from the hospital walking toward them. Although neither the Volunteers Fighting Disease nor the Head of Human Resources had recognized the three children, it was certain that someone in the hospital must have read
'That was close,' Violet sighed in relief, when a group of chatting doctors had gone by without even glancing at the youngsters.
'It was close,' Klaus agreed, 'and we don't want it to get any closer. I don't think we should get back on the van at the end of the day--or any other day. Sooner or later we're bound to be recognized.'
'You're right,' Violet said. 'We'd have to walk back through the hospital every day, just to get to the van. But where will we go at night? People will think it is odd if three children are sleeping in the Library of Records.'
'Half,' Sunny suggested.
