"O.K., Klaus," Violet said to her brother, when the three children had found a comfortable corner for their discussion. "I know you've been thinking very hard about something, because you've been doing that unique habit of yours where you don't pay a bit of attention to your surroundings."
"Unique habits like that are called idiosyncrasies," Klaus said.
"Stiblo!" Sunny cried, which meant "We can improve our vocabulary later--tell us what's on your mind!"
"Sorry, Sunny," Klaus said. "It's just that I think I've figured out where Gunther might be hiding, but I'm not positive. First, Violet, I need to ask you something. What do you know about elevators?"
"Elevators?" Violet said. "Quite a bit, actually. My friend Ben once gave me some elevator blueprints for my birthday, and I studied them very closely. They were destroyed in the fire, of course, but I remember that an elevator is essentially a platform, surrounded by an enclosure, that moves along the vertical axis via an endlessly looped belt and a series of ropes. It's controlled by a push-button console that regulates an electromagnetic braking system so the transport sequence can be halted at any access point the passenger desires. In other words, it's a box that moves up or down, depending on where you want to go. But so what?"
"Freijip?" Sunny asked, which, as you know, was her idiosyncratic way of saying "How can you think of elevators at a time like this?"
"Well, it was the doorman who got me thinking about elevators," Klaus said. "Remember when he said that sometimes the solution is right under your nose? Well, he was gluing that wooden starfish to the elevator doors right when he said that."
"I noticed that, too," Violet said. "It looked a little ugly."
"It did look ugly," Klaus agreed. "But that's not what I mean. I got to thinking about the elevator doors. Outside the door to this penthouse, there are two pairs of elevator doors. But on every other floor, there's only one pair."
"That's true," Violet said, "and that's odd, too, now that I think of it. That means one elevator can stop only on the top floor."
"Yelliverc!" Sunny said, which meant "That second elevator is almost completely useless!"
"I don't think it's useless," Klaus said, "because I don't think the elevator is really there."
"Not really there?" Violet asked. "But that would just leave an empty elevator shaft!"
"Middiow?" Sunny asked.
"An elevator shaft is the path an elevator uses to move up and down," Violet explained to her sister. "It's sort of like a hallway, except it goes up and down, instead of side to side."
"And a hallway," Klaus said, "could lead to a hiding place."
"Aha!" Sunny cried.
"Aha is right," Klaus agreed. "Just think, if he used an empty elevator shaft instead of the stairs, nobody would ever know where he was. I don't think the elevator has been shut down because it's out. I think it's where Gunther is hiding."
"But why is he hiding? What is he up to?" Violet asked.
"That's the part we still don't know," Klaus admitted, "but I bet you the answers can be found behind those sliding doors. Let's take a look at what's behind the second pair of elevator doors. If we see the ropes and things you were describing, then we know it's a real elevator. But if we don't--"
"Then we know we're on the right track,"
Violet finished for him. "Let's go right this minute."
"If we go right this minute," Klaus said, "we'll have do it very quietly. The Squalors are not going to let three children poke around an elevator shaft."
"It's worth the risk, if it helps us figure out Gunther's plan," Violet said. I'm sorry to say that it turned out not to be worth the risk at all, but of course the Baudelaires had no way of knowing that, so they merely nodded in agreement and tiptoed toward the penthouse's exit, peeking into each room before they went through to see if the Squalors were anywhere to be found. But Jerome and Esmé were apparently spending the evening in some room in another part of the apartment, because the Baudelaires didn't see hide or hair of them--the expression "hide or hair of them" here means "even a glimpse of the city's sixth most important financial advisor, or her husband"--on their way to the front door. They hoped the door would not squeak as they pushed it open, but apparently silent hinges were in, because the Baudelaires made no noise at all as they left the apartment and tiptoed over to the two pairs of sliding elevator doors.
"How do we know which elevator is which?" Violet whispered. "The pairs of doors look exactly alike."
"I hadn't thought of that," Klaus replied. "If one of them is really a secret passageway, there must be some way to tell."
Sunny tugged on the legs of her siblings' pants, which was a good way to get their attention without making any noise, and when Violet and Klaus looked down to see what their sister wanted, she answered them just as silently. Without speaking, she reached out one of her tiny fingers and pointed to the buttons that were next to each set of sliding doors. Next to one pair of doors, there was a single button, with an arrow printed on it pointing down. But next to the second pair of doors, there were two buttons: one with a Down arrow, and one with an Up arrow. The three children looked at the buttons and considered.
"Why would you need an Up button," Violet whispered, "if you were already on the top floor?" and without waiting for an answer to her question, she reached out and pressed it. With a quiet, slithery sound, the sliding doors opened, and the children leaned carefully into the doorway, and gasped at what they saw.
"Lakry," Sunny said, which meant something like "There are no ropes."
"Not only are there no ropes," Violet said. "There's no endlessly looped belt, push-button console, or electromagnetic braking system. I don't even see an enclosed platform."
"I knew it," Klaus said, in hushed excitement. "I knew the elevator was ersatz!"
"Ersatz"
is a word that describes a situation in which one thing is pretending to be another, the way the secret passageway the Baudelaires were looking at had been pretending to be an elevator, but the word might as well have meant "the most terrifying place the Baudelaires had ever seen." As the children stood in the doorway and peered into the elevator shaft, it was as if they were standing on the edge of an enormous cliff, looking down at the dizzying depths below them. But what made these depths terrifying, as well as dizzying, was that they were so very dark. The shaft was more like a pit than a passageway, leading straight down into a blackness the likes of which the youngsters had never seen. It was darker than any night had ever been, even on nights when there was no moon. It was darker than Dark Avenue had been on the day of their arrival. It was darker than a pitch-black panther, covered in tar, eating black licorice at the very bottom of the deepest part of the Black Sea. The Baudelaire orphans had never dreamed that anything could be this dark, even in their scariest nightmares, and as they stood at the edge of this pit of unimaginable blackness, they felt as if the elevator shaft would simply swallow them up and they would never see a speck of light again.
"We have to go down there," Violet said, scarcely believing the words she was saying.
"I'm not sure I have the courage to go down there," Klaus said. "Look how dark it is. It's terrifying."
"Prollit," Sunny said, which meant "But not as terrifying as what Gunther will do to us, if we don't find out his plan."
"Why don't we just go tell the Squalors about this?" Klaus asked. "Then they can go down the secret passageway."
"We don't have time to argue with the Squalors," Violet said. "Every minute we waste is a minute the Quagmires are spending in Gunther's clutches."
"But how are we going to go down?" Klaus asked. "I don't see a ladder, or a staircase. I don't see anything at all."
"We're going to have to climb down," Violet said, "on a rope. But where can we find rope at this time of night? Most hardware stores close at six."