"How will he do that?" Violet asked. "The police have been informed of your kidnapping, and are on the lookout."
"I know," Duncan said. "Gunther wants to smuggle us out of the city, and hide us away on some island where the police won't find us. He'll keep us on the island until we come of age and he can steal the Quagmire sapphires. Once he has our fortune, he says, he'll take us and--"
"Don't say it," Isadora cried, covering her ears. "He's told us so many horrible things. I can't stand to hear them again."
"Don't worry, Isadora," Klaus said. "We'll alert the authorities, and they'll arrest him before he can do anything."
"But it's almost too late," Duncan said. "The In Auction is tomorrow morning. He's going to hide us inside one of the items and have one of his associates place the highest bid."
"Which item?" Violet asked.
Duncan flipped the pages of his notebook, and his eyes widened as he reread some of the wretched things Gunther had said. "I don't know," he said. "He's told us so many haunting secrets, Violet. So many awful schemes--all the treachery he has done in the past, and all he's planning to do in the future. It's all here in this notebook--from V.F.D. all the way to this terrible auction plan."
"We'll have plenty of time to discuss everything," Klaus said, "but in the meantime, let's get you out of this cage before Gunther comes back. Violet, do you think you can pick this lock?"
Violet took the lock in her hands and squinted at it in the gloom. "It's pretty complicated," she said. "He must have bought himself some extra-difficult locks, after I broke into that suitcase of his when we were living with Uncle Monty. If I had some tools, maybe I could invent something, but there's absolutely nothing down here."
"Aguen?" Sunny asked, which meant something like "Could you saw through the bars of the cage?"
"Not saw," Violet said, so quietly that it was as if she was talking to herself. "I don't have the time to manufacture a saw. But maybe . . ." Her voice trailed off, but the other children could see, in the gloom, that she was tying her hair up in a ribbon, to keep it out of her eyes.
"Look, Duncan," Isadora said, "she's thinking up an invention! We'll be out of here in no time!"
"Every night since we've been kidnapped," Duncan said, "we've been dreaming of the day when we would see Violet Baudelaire inventing something that could rescue us."
"If we're going to rescue you in time," Violet said, thinking furiously, "then my siblings and I have to climb back up to the penthouse right away."
Isadora looked nervously around the tiny, dark room. "You're going to leave us alone?" she asked.
"If I'm going to invent something to get you out of that cage," Violet replied, "I need all the help I can get, so Klaus and Sunny have to come with me. Sunny, start climbing. Klaus and I will be right behind you."
"Onosew," Sunny said, which meant "Yes ma'am," and Klaus lifted her up to the end of the rope so she could begin the long, dark climb back up to the Squalors' apartment. Klaus began climbing right behind her, and Violet clasped hands with her friends.
"We'll be back as soon as we can," she promised. "Don't worry, Quagmires. You'll be out of danger before you know it."
"In case anything goes wrong," Duncan said, flipping to a page in his notebook, "like it did the last time, let me tell you--"
Violet placed her finger on Duncan's mouth. "Shush," she said. "Nothing will go wrong this time. I swear it."
"But if it does," Duncan said, "you should know about V.F.D. before the auction begins."
"Don't tell me about it now," Violet said. "We don't have time. You can tell us when we're all safe and sound." The eldest Baudelaire grabbed the end of the extension cord and started to follow her siblings. "I'll see you soon," she called down to the Quagmires, who were already fading into the darkness as she began her climb. "I'll see you soon," she said again, just as she lost all sight of them.
The climb back up the secret passageway was much more tiring but a lot less terrifying, simply because they knew what they would find at the other end of their ersatz rope. On the way down the elevator shaft, the Baudelaires had no idea what would be waiting for them at the bottom of such a dark and cavernous journey, but Violet, Klaus, and Sunny knew that all seventy-one bedrooms of the Squalor penthouse would be at the top. And it was these bedrooms--along with the living rooms, dining rooms, breakfast rooms, snack rooms, sitting rooms, standing rooms, ballrooms, bathrooms, kitchens, and the assortment of rooms that seemed to have no purpose at all--that would be helpful in rescuing the Quagmires.
"Listen to me," Violet said to her siblings, after they had been climbing for a few minutes. "When we get up to the top, I want the two of you to search the penthouse."
"What?" Klaus said, peering down at his sister. "We already searched it yesterday, remember?"
"I don't want you to search it for Gunther," Violet replied. "I want you to search it for long, slender objects made of iron."
"Agoula?" Sunny asked, which meant "What for?"
"I think the easiest way to get the Quagmires out of that cage will be by welding," Violet said. "Welding is when you use something very hot to melt metal. If we melt through a few of the bars of the cage, we can make a door and get Duncan and Isadora out of there."
"That's a good idea," Klaus agreed. "But I thought that welding required a lot of complicated equipment."
"Usually it does," Violet said. "In a normal welding situation, I'd use a welding torch, which is a device that makes a very small flame to melt the metal. But the Squalors won't have a welding torch--that's a tool, and tools are out. So I'm going to devise another method. When you two find the long, slender objects made of iron, meet me in the kitchen closest to the front door."
"Selrep," Sunny said, which meant something like "That's the one with the bright blue oven."
"Right," Violet said, "and I'm going to use that bright blue oven to heat those iron objects as hot as they can get. When they are burning, burning hot, we will take them back down to the cage and use their heat to melt the bars."
"Will they stay hot long enough to work, after such a long climb down?" Klaus asked.
&n
bsp; "They'd better," Violet replied grimly. "It's our only hope."
To hear the phrase "our only hope" always makes one anxious, because it means that if the only hope doesn't work, there is nothing left, and that is never pleasant to think about, however true it might be. The three Baudelaires felt anxious about the fact that Violet's invention was their only hope of rescuing the Quagmires, and they were quiet the rest of the way up the elevator shaft, not wanting to consider what would happen to Duncan and Isadora if this only hope didn't work. Finally, they began to see the dim light from the open sliding doors, and at last they were once again at the front door of the Squalors' apartment.
"Remember," Violet whispered, "long, slender objects made of iron. We can't use bronze or silver or even gold, because those metals will melt in the oven. I'll see you in the kitchen."
The younger Baudelaires nodded solemnly, and followed two different trails of bread crumbs in opposite directions, while Violet walked straight into the kitchen with the bright blue oven and looked around uncertainly. Cooking had never been her forte--a phrase which here means "something she couldn't do very well, except for making toast, and sometimes she couldn't even do that without burning it to a crisp"--and she was a bit nervous about using the oven without any adult supervision. But then she thought about all the things she had done recently without adult supervision--sprinkling crumbs on the floor, eating apple butter, climbing down an empty elevator shaft on a ersatz rope made of extension cords, curtain pulls, and neckties tied together with the Devil's Tongue--and stiffened her resolve. She turned the oven's bright blue temperature dial to the highest temperature--500 degrees Fahrenheit--and then, as the oven slowly heated up, began quietly opening and closing the kitchen drawers, looking for three sturdy oven mitts. Oven mitts, as you probably know, are kitchen accessories that serve as ersatz hands by enabling you to pick up objects that would burn your fingers if you touched them directly. The Baudelaires would have to use oven mitts, Violet realized, once the long, slender objects were hot enough to be used as welding torches. Just as her siblings entered the kitchen, Violet found three oven mitts emblazoned with the fancy, curly writing of the In Boutique stuffed into the bottom of the ninth drawer she had opened.