The Hostile Hospital Read online

  "Is it absolutely necessary to do this?" Violet murmured to Klaus, as the three children followed Hal out of the library into the anteroom. She took her hair ribbon out of her pocket and smoothed it out, making sure it didn't have any tangles. "It's not a nice thing to do."

  "I know," Klaus answered, holding his hand out so Sunny could hand back the paper clips. "I have a quiver in my stomach just thinking about it. But it's the only way we can get our hands on that file."

  "Olaf," Sunny said grimly. She meant "Before Mattathias gets his hands on us," and as soon as she was finished with her sentence, Mattathias's scratchy voice came over the intercom.

  "Attention! Attention!" the voice said, as Hal and the Baudelaires looked up at the square speaker. "This is Mattathias, the new Head of Human Resources. Inspections are over for the day but will continue tomorrow."

  "What nonsense," Hal muttered, putting the loop of keys down on the table. The Baudelaires looked at one another, and then at the keys, as Mattathias continued his announcement.

  "Also," the speaker said, "if anyone in the hospital has any valuables of any kind, please bring them to the Human Resources office for safekeeping. Thank you."

  "My eyeglasses are somewhat valuable," Hal said, taking them off, "but I'm not going to bring them to the Human Resources office. I might not ever see them again."

  "That's probably true," Violet said, shaking her head at Mattathias's audacity, a word which here means "attempt to steal valuables from hospital employees, in addition to snatching the Baudelaire fortune."

  "Besides," Hal said, smiling at the children and reaching for his coat, "nobody's going to steal anything from me. You three are the only people I see at the hospital, and I trust you absolutely. Now, where did I put my keys?"

  "Here they are," Violet said, and the quiver in her stomach got worse. She held up her hair ribbon, which had been tied into a circle to look like a loop of string. Hanging from the ribbon was a long row of paper clips, which Sunny had fashioned into different shapes with her teeth when Hal wasn't looking. The result looked something like Hal's loop of keys, the way a horse looks something like a cow, or a woman in a green dress looks something like a pine tree, but there was no way anyone would look at Violet's hair ribbon full of chewed-up paper clips and think it was a ring of keys--unless, of course, their eyesight was not what it used to be. The three children waited as Hal squinted at what Violet was holding.

  "Those are my keys?" Hal said doubtfully. "I thought I put them down on the table."

  "Oh, no," Klaus said quickly, standing in front of the table so Hal wouldn't catch a glimpse of his real keys. "Violet has them."

  "Here," Violet said, moving them back and forth so they would be even harder to squint at, "why don't I put them in your coat pocket for you?"

  "Thank you," Hal said, as Violet dropped them into his overcoat pocket. He looked at the Baudelaires, his tiny eyes shining with gratitude. "That's another way you three have helped me. My eyesight's not what it used to be, you know, so I'm glad I can rely on such good volunteers. Well, good night, children. I'll see you tomorrow."

  "Good night, Hal," Klaus replied. "We're just going to have one last piece of fruit here in the anteroom."

  "Don't spoil your dinner," Hal said. "It's supposed to be a very cold evening, so I bet your parents have cooked up a nice hot meal." Hal smiled and shut the door behind him, leaving the children alone with the real keys to the Library of Records and the quivery feeling still in their stomachs.

  "Someday," Violet said quietly, "we'll apologize to Hal for playing a trick on him, and explain why we had to break the rules. This wasn't a nice thing to do, even though it was necessary."

  "And we'll return to the Last Chance General Store," Klaus said, "and explain to the shopkeeper why we had to run away."

  "Twisp," Sunny said firmly, which meant "But not until we get ahold of the file, solve all these mysteries, and prove our innocence."

  "You're right, Sunny," Violet said, with a sigh. "Let's get started. Klaus, see if you can find the right key for the Library door."

  Klaus nodded, and carried Hal's keys over to the door. Not too long ago, when the Baudelaires had been staying with Aunt Josephine by the shores of Lake Lachrymose, Klaus had been in a situation in which he had to match up a key to a locked door very, very quickly, and since then he had been quite good at it. He looked at the lock of the door, which had a very short and narrow keyhole, and then looked at the loop of string, which had one very short and narrow key, and in no time at all the children were re-entering the Library of Records and looking down the dim aisles of file cabinets.

  "I'm going to lock the door behind us," Klaus said, "so that nobody will get suspicious if they happen to walk into the anteroom."

  "Like Mattathias," said Violet with a shudder. "On the intercom he said that they were stopping the inspections for the day, but I bet he's really still looking."

  "Vapey," Sunny said, which meant "Then let's hurry."

  "Let's start with the S aisle," Violet said. "For Snicket."

  "Right," Klaus said, locking the door with a rattle. The three children found the S aisle and began walking past the file cabinets, reading the labels on them to figure out which one to open.

  "Sauce to Saxifrage," Klaus read out loud. "That means that anything that falls alphabetically between the word 'sauce' and the word 'saxifrage' will be in this cabinet. That would be fine if we wanted the Sawmill file."

  "Or the Sauna file," Violet said. "Let's move on."

  The children moved on, their footsteps echoing off the low ceilings of the room. "Scarab to Scavenger," Klaus said, reading one farther down the aisle. Sunny and Violet shook their heads, and the Baudelaires kept moving.

  "Secretary to Sediment," Violet read. "We're still not there."

  "Kalm," Sunny said, which meant "I can't read very well, but I think this one says 'Sequel to Serenity.'"

  "You're right, Sunny," Klaus said, smiling at his sister. "It's the wrong one."

  "Shed to Sheepshank," Violet read.

  "Shellac to Sherbet," Klaus read, walking farther down the aisle.

  "Shipwreck to Shrimp."

  "Sicily to Sideways."

  "Skylight to Slob."

  "Sludge to Smoke."

  "Snack to Snifter."

  "Snowball to Sober."

  "Sonnet to Spackle."

  "Wait!" Klaus cried. "Back up! Snicket is between Snack and Snifter."

  "You're right," Violet said, stepping back to find the right cabinet. "I was so distracted by all the strange file names that I forgot what we were looking for. Here it is, Snack to Snifter. Let's hope the file we're looking for is here."

  Klaus looked at the lock on the file cabinet, and found the right key on Hal's loop on only the third try. "It should be in the bottom drawer," Klaus said, "close to Snifter. Let's look."

  The Baudelaires looked. A snifter is a type of glass, usually meant for holding brandy, although it is also the term for a strong wind. Plenty of words are close to "snifter" in the alphabet, and the children found many of them. There was a file on sniffing, which seemed to have many photographs of noses. There was a file on Snell's Law, which states that a ray of light passing from one uniform medium to another produces an identical ratio between the sine of the angle of incidence and the sine of the angle of refraction, which Klaus already knew. There was a file on the inventor of the sneaker, whom Violet admired very much, and one on snicking, which is something Sunny had done many times with her teeth. But there was not a single scrap of paper marked Snicket. The children sighed in disappointment, and shut the drawer of the file cabinet so Klaus could lock it again.

  "Let's try the J aisle, for Jacques," Violet suggested.

  "Shh," Sunny said.

  "No, Sunny," Klaus said gently. "I don't think the H aisle is a good bet. Why would Hal have filed it under H?"

  "Shh," Sunny insisted, pointing at the door, and her siblings knew instantly that they had misunderstood her.
Usually when Sunny said "Shh," she meant something along the lines of "I think the H aisle might be a good place to look for the file," but this time she meant something more along the lines of "Be quiet! I think I hear someone walking into the anteroom of the Library of Records." Sure enough, when the Baudelaires listened closely, they could hear the clomping of some odd, teetering footsteps, as if someone were walking on very thin stilts. The footsteps grew closer and closer, and then stopped, and as the three children held their breath, the door to the Library rattled as someone tried to open the door.

  "Maybe it's Hal," Violet whispered, "trying to unlock the door with a paper clip."

  "Maybe it's Mattathias," Klaus whispered, "looking for us."

  "Janitor," Sunny whispered.

  "Well, whoever it is," Violet said, "we'd better hurry to the J aisle."

  The Baudelaires tiptoed across the low-ceilinged room to the J aisle, and walked down it quickly, reading the labels of the file cabinets.

  "Jabberwocky to Jackal."

  "Jacket to Jack-o'-Lanterns."

  "Nersai."

  "That's it!" Klaus whispered. "Jacques will be in Jackline to Jacutinga."

  "We hope," Violet said, as the door rattled again. Klaus hurried to find the right key, and the children opened the top drawer to look for Jacques. As Violet knew, jackline is a kind of rope used in sailing, and as Klaus knew, jacutinga is a sort of gold-bearing iron ore found in Brazil, and once again there were plenty of files between these two, but although the children found information on jack-o'-lanterns, Jack Russell terriers, and Jacobean drama, there was no file marked "Jacques."

  "Fire!" Klaus whispered, shutting and locking the file cabinet. "Let's head to the F aisle."

  "And hurry," Violet said. "It sounds like the person in the anteroom is picking the lock."

  It was true. The Baudelaires paused for a moment and heard a muffled scratching from behind the door, as if something long and thin were being stuck in the keyhole to try to unlock the lock. Violet knew, from when she and her siblings lived with Uncle Monty, that a lockpick can often take a long time to work properly, even if it has been made by one of the world's greatest inventors, but the children nonetheless moved to the F aisle as fast as their tiptoes could carry them.

  "Fabian to Fact."

  "Fainting to Fangs."

  "Fatalism to Faulkner."

  "Fear to Fermat."

  "Ficus to Filth."

  "Fin de Siécle to Fissle--here it is!"

  Once more, the Baudelaires hurried to find the proper key, and then the proper drawer and then the proper file. "Fin de siéecle" is a term for a time in history when a century is drawing to a close, and "fissle" is a fancy word for a rustling noise, like the one that continued to come from behind the locked door as the children looked frantically for Fire. But the papers went right from Finland to Firmament, without a single word on Fire in between.

  "What will we do?" Violet asked, as the door began to rattle again. "Where else could the file be?"

  "Let's try to think," Klaus said. "What did Hal say about the file? We know it has to do with Jacques Snicket, and with fire."

  "Prem!" Sunny said, which meant "But we looked under Snicket, Jacques, and Fire already."

  "There must be something else," Violet said. "We have to find this file. It has crucial information about Jacques Snicket and V.F.D."

  "And about us," Klaus said. "Don't forget that."

  The three children looked at one another.

  "Baudelaire!" Sunny whispered.

  Without another word, the orphans ran to the B aisle, and hurried past Babbitt to Babylon, Bacteria to Ballet, and Bamboo to Baskerville, stopping at Bat Mitzvah to Bavarian Cream. As the door continued to fissle behind them, Klaus tried nine keys in a row before finally opening the cabinet, and there, between the Jewish coming-of-age ceremony for young women, and the delicious filling of certain doughnuts, the children found a folder marked "Baudelaire."

  "It's here," Klaus said, taking it out of the drawer with trembling hands.

  "What does it say? What does it say?" Violet asked in excitement.

  "Look," Klaus said. "There's a note on the front."

  "Read it!" Sunny said in a frantic whisper, as the door began to shake violently on its hinges. Whoever was on the other side of the door was obviously getting frustrated with trying to pick the lock.

  Klaus held up the file so he could see what the note said in the dim light of the room. "'All thirteen pages of the Snicket file,'" he read, '"have been removed from the Library of Records for the official investigation.'" He looked up at his sisters, and they could see that, behind his glasses, his eyes were filling with tears. "That must be when Hal saw our picture," he said. "When he removed the file and gave it to the official investigators." He dropped the file on the floor and then sat down beside it in despair. "There's nothing here."

  "Yes there is!" Violet said. "Look!"

  The Baudelaires looked at the file where Klaus had dropped it on the ground. There, behind the note, was a single sheet of paper. "It's page thirteen," Violet said, looking at a number typed in a corner of the paper. "The investigators must have left it behind by mistake."

  "That's why you should keep paper clips on papers that belong together," Klaus said, "even when you file them. But what does the page say?"

  With a long crackle! and a loud bang, the door to the Library of Records was knocked off its hinges, and fell to the floor of the enormous room as if it had fainted. But the children paid no attention. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny all sat and looked at page thirteen of the file, too amazed to even listen to the odd, teetering footsteps as the intruder entered the room and began to walk along the aisles of file cabinets.

  Page thirteen of the Baudelaire file was not a crowded sheet of paper--there was just one photograph stapled into place, below one sentence of type. But sometimes it takes only a photograph and a sentence to make an author cry himself to sleep even years after the photograph was taken, or to make three siblings sit and stare at a page for a long time, as if an entire book were printed on one sheet of paper.

  There were four people in the photograph, standing together outside a building the Baudelaires recognized immediately. It was 667 Dark Avenue, where the orphans had lived with Jerome and Esmé Squalor for a brief time, until it became another place too treacherous for the children to stay. The first person in the photograph was Jacques Snicket, who was looking at the photographer and smiling. Standing next to Jacques was a man who was turned away from the camera, so the children could not see his face, only one of his hands, which was clutching a notebook and pen, as if the obscured man were a writer of some sort. The children had not seen Jacques Snicket since he was murdered, of course, and the writer appeared to be someone they had never seen at all. But standing next to these two people were another two people the Baudelaire children thought they would never see again. Bundled up in long coats, looking cold but happy, were the Baudelaire parents.

  "Because of the evidence discussed on page nine," read the sentence above the photograph, "experts now suspect that there may in fact be one survivor of the fire, but the survivor's whereabouts are unknown."

  Chapter Seven

  "I never thought I'd live to see the day," Violet said, and took another look at page thirteen of the file. The Baudelaire parents looked back at her, and for a moment it seemed to Violet her father would step out of the photograph and say, "There you are, Ed. Where have you been?" Ed was short for Thomas Alva Edison, one of the greatest inventors of all time, and it was a special nickname only used by her father, but the man in the photograph did not move, of course, but only stood smiling in front of 667 Dark Avenue.

  "Me neither," Klaus said. "I never thought we'd see our parents again." The middle Baudelaire looked at his mother's coat, which had a secret pocket on the inside. In the secret pocket, she often kept a small pocket dictionary, which she would take out whenever she encountered a word she did not know. Because Klaus was so inter
ested in reading, she had promised that someday she would give the pocket dictionary to him, and now it seemed to Klaus that his mother was about to reach into her coat and put the small, leatherbound book in his hand.

  "Neither me," Sunny said. She looked at her parents' smiles, and suddenly remembered, for the first time since the fire, a song that her mother and father used to sing together, when it was time for Sunny to go to sleep. The song was called "The Butcher Boy," and the Baudelaire parents would take turns singing the verses, her mother singing in her breathy, high voice, and her father in his, which was as low and deep as a foghorn. "The Butcher Boy" was the perfect way for Sunny to end the day, safe and cozy in the Baudelaire crib.

  "This photograph must have been taken a long time ago," Violet said. "Look how much younger they look. They aren't even wearing their wedding rings."

  "'Because of the evidence discussed on page nine,'" Klaus said, reading the sentence typed above the photograph, "'experts now suspect that there may in fact be one survivor of the fire, but the survivor's whereabouts are unknown.'" He stopped, and looked at his sisters. "What does that mean?" he said, in a very faint voice. "Does that mean one of our parents is still alive?"

  "Well, well, well," said a familiar and sneering voice, and the children heard the odd, tottering footsteps walk straight toward them. "Look what we have here."