The Hostile Hospital

files.'

'Seerg,' Sunny said, which meant 'And I was afraid to ask him any more about it.'

'Me, too,' Violet said. 'We simply can't call attention to ourselves. Any minute now, Hal could learn that we're wanted for murder, and we'd be dragged off to jail before we learned anything more.'

'We've already escaped from one jail cell,' Klaus said. 'I don't know if we could do it again.'

'I thought that if we had a chance to look over these pages from Duncan's and Isadora's notebooks,' Violet said, 'we would find the answers to our questions, but the Quagmires' notes are very difficult to read.'

Klaus frowned, and moved a few fragments of the Quagmire pages around as if they were pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. 'The harpoon gun tore these pages to shreds,' he said. 'Look what Duncan has written here: 'Jacques Snicket worked for V.F.D., which stands for Volunteer--' and then it's ripped, right in the middle of the sentence.'

'And on this page,' Violet said, picking up a page I cannot bear to think about, 'it reads, 'In photographs, and in each public place, Snicket rarely shows his face.

'Isadora must have written that one--it's a rhyming couplet.'

'This scrap says 'apartment,'' Klaus said, 'and has what looks like half of a map. That might have to do with the apartment where we lived with Jerome and Esmé Squalor.'

'Don't remind me,' Violet said, shuddering at the thought of all the misfortune the children had encountered at 667 Dark Avenue.

'Rabave,' Sunny said, pointing to one of the pieces of paper.

'This page has two names on it,' Violet said. 'One name is Al Funcoot.'

'That's the man who wrote that horrible play Olaf forced us to perform,' Klaus said.

'I know,' Violet said, 'but the other name I don't recognize: 'Ana Gram.''

'Well, the Quagmires were researching Count Olaf and his sinister plot,' Klaus said. 'Maybe Ana Gram is one of Olaf's associates.'

'It's probably not the hook-handed man,' Violet said, 'or the bald man with the long nose. Ana is not usually a man's name.'

'It could be the name of one of the white-faced women,' Klaus said.

'Orlando!' Sunny said, which meant 'Or the one who looks like neither a man nor a woman.'

'Or someone we haven't even met yet,' Violet said with a sigh, and turned her attention to another piece of paper. 'This page isn't ripped at all, but all it has on it is a long list of dates. It looks like something was going on every twelve weeks or so.'

Klaus picked up the smallest piece and held it up for his sisters to see. Behind his glasses his eyes looked very sad. 'This piece just says 'fire,'' he said quietly, and the three Baudelaires looked down sadly at the dusty floor. With any word, there are subconscious associations, which simply means that certain words make you think of certain things, even if you don't want to. The word 'cake,' for example, might remind you of your birthday, and the words 'prison warden' might remind you of someone you haven't seen in a very long time. The word 'Beatrice' reminds me of a volunteer organization that was swarming with corruption, and the word 'midnight' reminds me that I must keep writing this chapter very quickly, or else I will probably drown. But the Baudelaires had all sorts of subconscious associations with the word 'fire,' and none of them were pleasant to think about. The word made the children think of Hal, who had mentioned something about the Snicket fires that afternoon in the Library of Records. 'Fire' made the youngsters think of Duncan and Isadora Quagmire, who had lost their parents and their brother, Quigley, in a fire. And, of course, the word 'fire' made the Baudelaires think of the fire that had destroyed their home and had begun the unfortunate journey that had led them to the half-finished wing of Heimlich Hospital. The three children huddled quietly together under their dropcloths, getting colder and colder as they thought about all the fires and subconscious associations that were in the Baudelaire lives.

'That file must contain the answers to all these mysteries,' Violet said finally. 'We need to find out who Jacques Snicket was, and why he had the same tattoo as Count Olaf.'

'And we need to know why he was murdered,' Klaus added, 'and we need to learn the secret of V.F.D.'

'Us,' Sunny said, which meant 'And we need to know why there's a picture of us in the file.'

'We have to get our hands on that file,' Violet said.

'That's easier said than done,' Klaus pointed out. 'Hal told us specifically not to touch any of the files we weren't working with, and he'll be right there with us in the Library of Records.'

'We'll just have to find a way,' Violet replied. 'Now, let's try and get a good night's sleep, so we can stay alert tomorrow, and get ahold of the file on the Snicket fires.'

Klaus and Sunny nodded in agreement, and arranged the dropcloths into a sort of bed, while Violet turned off the flashlights one by one. The three Baudelaires huddled together for the rest of the night, getting what sleep they could on a filthy floor with a cold wind blowing through their inappropriate home, and in the morning, after a breakfast of leftover fruit salad, they walked to the completed half of Heimlich Hospital and carefully walked down all those stairs, past the intercom speakers and the confusing maps. Hal was already in the Library of Records when they arrived, unlocking the file cabinets with his long loop of keys, and immediately Violet and Klaus got to work filing the information that had come through the chute during the night, while Sunny turned her tooths' attention to the file cabinets that needed to be opened. But the Baudelaires' minds were not on filing, or on file cabinets. Their minds were on the file.

Just about everything in this world is easier said than done, with the exception of 'systematically assisting Sisyphus's stealthy, cyst-susceptible sister,' which is easier done than said. But it is frustrating to be reminded of this fact. As Violet filed a piece of paper containing information on cuttlefish under M, for mollusks, she said to herself, 'I'll just walk down the S aisle and look under Snicket,' but Hal was already in the S aisle, filing away paintings of sewing machines, and she could not do what she said. As Klaus filed a survey of thimbles under P, for protection of the thumb, he said to himself, 'I'll just walk down the F aisle and look under F, for 'fires,'' but by that time Hal had moved to the F aisle, and was opening a file cabinet to rearrange biographies of famous Finnish fishermen. And Sunny twisted her teeth this way and that, trying to open one of the locked file cabinets in the B aisle, thinking that perhaps the file was inside, filed under Baudelaires, but when the lock finally broke just after lunch, the youngest sibling opened the cabinet and saw that it was absolutely empty.

'Nil,' Sunny said, as the three children took a short fruit break in the antechamber.

'Me neither,' Klaus said. 'But how can we get ahold of the file, when Hal is always around?'

'Maybe we can just ask him to find it for us,' Violet said. 'If this were a regular library, we would ask the librarian for help. In a Library of Records, maybe we should ask Hal.'

'You can ask me anything you want,' Hal said, walking into the antechamber 'but first I have to ask you something.' He walked over to the children and pointed at one of the fruits. 'Is that a plum or a persimmon?' he asked. 'My eyesight isn't what it used to be, I'm afraid.'

'It's a plum,' Violet said, handing it to him.

'Oh good,' Hal replied, looking it over for bruises. 'I was not in the mood for a persimmon. Now, what is your question?'

'We had a question about a certain file,' Klaus began carefully, not wanting Hal to become suspicious. 'I know it's not customary for us to read the files, but if we were very curious, would it be O.K. to make an exception?'

Hal bit into the plum and frowned. 'Why would you want to read one of the files?' he asked. 'Children should read happy books with bright pictures, not official information from the Library of Records.'

'But we're interested in official information,' Violet said, 'and we're so busy filing things away that we don't get a chance to read anything in the files. That's why we were hoping to take one home with us and read it.'

Hal shook his head. 'Paperwork is the most important thing we do in this hospital,' he said sternly. 'That's why the files are only allowed out of the room if there's a very important reason. For example--'

But the Baudelaires did not get to hear an example, because Hal was interrupted by a voice coming over the intercom. 'Attention!' the voice said, and the children turned to face a small square speaker. 'Attention! Attention!'

The three siblings looked at one another in shock and horror, and then at the wall where the speaker was hanging. The voice coming over the intercom was not Babs's. It was a faint voice, and it was a scratchy voice, but it was not the voice of the Head of Human Resources at Heimlich Hospital. It was a voice that the Baudelaires heard