Chapter SIX
“That’s a very kind invitation, Snicket,” Moxie said to me, “but I’m not sure if it counts as a burglary if the item being stolen isn’t treasured by its owner.”
“What do you mean?” I asked her.
Moxie blinked at me under the brim of her hat. “You know what I mean, Snicket. You’re here to steal the Bombinating Beast, aren’t you?”
“How did you know?”
Moxie walked to her typewriter, which sat in its usual spot on the stairway, with a sheet of paper still rolled into it. She scanned the paper to reread what she had typed earlier. “A stranger knocked on my door,” she said, “with an older woman who briefly pretended to be his wife. The stranger asked to see a particular item and was clearly surprised that I showed it to him. And here you are, talking about burglary. So?”
“You’re a very good journalist,” I told her.
“Flattery bores me, Snicket. Are you here to steal the statue or not?”
“Yes,” I decided to say. “Do you mind terribly?”
Her smile got quite a bit bigger. “Not at all,” she said, and leaned against the open door of the lighthouse. She adjusted a knob on her typewriter and then looked me straight in the eye. She wasn’t taller than I was, but I still had to look up to meet her gaze, as I had been taught never to do. “Lemony Snicket, I think it’s time to tell me exactly what’s going on.”
“Are you really writing this up for the newspaper?” I asked. “I thought The Stain’d Lighthouse was out of business.”
“I’m staying in practice as a journalist,” she said. “Then when I leave this town, I’ll be ready to join a newspaper.”
“When your mother sends for you,” I said.
“Stop stalling, Snicket. What exactly is going on?”
“There’s someone who has taken an interest in the statue of the Bombinating Beast,” I said, protecting the name of my client, as I had been requested to do. “This person has said that the statue is theirs and is worth upward of a great deal of money. I don’t think that’s true. I think the statue has been in your family for a very long time, since the days of Lady Mallahan, and I think that if it were very valuable, it wouldn’t be covered in a sheet with a bunch of dusty, forgotten items. But it doesn’t matter what I think. So I’m going to stay here until midnight, when my associate will arrive, and we will take the Bombinating Beast and escape down the hill on the hawser, and then my assignment will be over.”
Moxie had been typing at a furious pace, but now she stopped and looked at me. “This person,” she said, “who is interested in the Bombinating Beast—do they live here in Stain’d-by-the-Sea?”
“Yes,” I said, incorrectly. “Why do you ask?”
Moxie walked across the room to a small desk and, with some difficulty, pulled open a drawer stuffed with papers. There is a drawer like this in every house in the world. She sifted through the papers with an expert eye and finally found what she was looking for. “Look at this thing,” she said.
This thing was a telegram, dated six months before my graduation. It was addressed to Moxie’s father, sent from a town I’d never heard of.In the old code of telegram writing, the end of each sentence was marked with STOP, which made the message even more confusing than it already was.
GREETINGS SIR STOP
I AM VERY INTERESTED IN A CERTAIN
STATUE I BELIEVE IS IN YOUR
HOME STOP I BELIEVE IT IS CALLED
THE BOMBINATING BEAST STOP
IF YOU ARE WILLING TO SELL IT TO
ME I BELIEVE YOU WILL BE PLEASED
WITH THE PRICE I AM WILLING TO
PAY STOP PLEASE REPLY AT YOUR
EARLIEST CONVENIENCE STOP END
MESSAGE
“‘I believe is in your home,’” I read out loud. “‘I believe it is called the Bombinating Beast. I believe you will be pleased.’ That’s a lot of belief. What did your father reply?”
“My father never saw this telegram,” Moxie said. “When it was sent, I’d already started handling all his correspondence.”
“Well, did you reply?”
“I couldn’t. Stain’d-by-the-Sea’s only telegram dispatch closed its doors due to ink shortages, the day after this telegram arrived.”
“So for all you know, this person has tried to send you many more telegrams.”
“For all I know, yes.”
“Did you investigate this at all?”
Moxie shook her head. “There wasn’t much to investigate,” she said. “The telegram is unsigned, and that town is quite a ways away. And, frankly, six months ago I had far more pressing matters than a statue nobody cares about.”
I didn’t press her about her pressing matters. “The writer of the telegram and the person who hired me might be the same person.”
“Whoever they are,” Moxie said, “they’re welcome to that old thing. Nobody has to go to the trouble of burglary.”
“Not according to my chaperone,” I said.
“Well, in that case, what are we going to do until midnight?”
At last it was a question I could answer. “I was hoping we could have dinner,” I said. “I’ve scarcely eaten today.”
“I’m afraid I don’t have much in the house,” Moxie said. “My father said he was going to go to the market today, but he never got out of his robe. I’m afraid all we have is a great deal of wilted basil.”
“Do you have a bulb of garlic, a lemon, a cup of walnuts, Parmesan cheese, pasta of some kind, and a fair amount of olive oil?”
“I think so,” Moxie said, “although I think the cheese might be Asiago.”
“Even better,” I said, and I followed her into the lighthouse’s small kitchen, which was piled with dirty dishes and stacks of typewritten pages. Moxie cleared away the mess, and I put the walnuts in the oven to toast along with some peeled garlic coated in olive oil. I put a pot of water on to boil while Moxie looked in the fridge for something to drink. I was hoping for root beer, but all she could find was some cranberry juice, which tasted all right, but just all right. Together we plucked the leaves of the basil from the stems, grated the cheese, and squeezed the juice from the lemon, pausing to pick out the seeds with the tines of a fork decorated with an image of the Bombinating Beast. Then I put the pasta into the boiling water and mixed the remaining ingredients together, and soon we were sitting at the small wooden table, which wobbled slightly from a chipped leg, eating big bowls of orecchiette al pesto. It was just what I needed. I finished, wiped my mouth, and leaned back in my chair, which was just as wobbly.
Moxie finished her cranberry juice. “So?”
“Do you know,” I asked her, “that orecchiette is Italian for ‘little ears’? I know it’s just the shape of the noodle, but some people don’t like the idea of eating a big bowl of—”
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it, Snicket. Why does someone want a statue everyone else has forgotten?”
“I wouldn’t know,” I said.
She reached over and opened up her typewriter to add a few sentences to her summary. “There’s something going on that we can’t see.”
“That’s usually the case,” I said. “The map is not the territory.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s an adult expression for the muddle we’re in.”
“Adults never tell children anything.”
“Children never tell adults anything either,” I said. “The children of this world and the adults of this world are in entirely separate boats and only drift near each other when we need a ride from someone or when someone needs us to wash our hands.”
Moxie smiled at this and began to type. I meant to stack the dirty plates in the sink, but I liked staying at the table and watching her at work. “Do you like that?” I asked her. “Typing up what happens in the world?”
“Yes, I do,” Moxie said. “Do you like what you do, Lemony Snicket?”
I stared out the kitchen’s lone window. The moon had risen like a wide eye. “I do what I do,” I said, “in order to do something else.”
I was certain she would ask more questions, but we were interrupted by the lonely and familiar clanging of the bell. Moxie frowned at a clock with a face like that of an angry sea horse. “There’s not usually an alarm at this hour,” she said.
“When does it usually ring?”
“It depends. For a while it seemed like it was ringing less and less frequently, but lately it’s started up again like gangbusters.”
“Who rings it, anyway?”
Moxie stood on her chair to reach a high shelf. “The bell tower is over on Offshore Island, where there used to be a fancy boarding school that everyone called ‘top drawer.’”
“I always thought that was a curious expression,” I said. “After all, the most interesting things are usually in the bottom drawer.”
Moxie smiled in agreement. “Back then the bell was rung by the student valedictorian, but Wade Academy closed some time ago. Now the bell is rung by someone from the Coast Guard, I think, or maybe it’s the Octopus Council.” She took two masks down from the shelf and handed one to me. “Don’t worry, Snicket. We have plenty of spares. You won’t get salt lung.”
“Salt lung?”
“That’s what the bell is for,” she explained. “When the wind rises, it carries salt deposits left behind on the floor of the sea, which can be dangerous to breathe. The masks filter the salt out of the air.”
“I heard the masks were for water pressure,” I said.
Moxie frowned into her mask. “Where did you hear that?”
“From S. Theodora Markson,” I said. “Where did you hear about salt lung?”
“Some society put out a pamphlet,” Moxie said, gesturing to the stuffed drawer. We put on our masks and faced each other. “I don’t much like talking with these on,” she said. “Shall we read until we hear the all-clear?”
I gave her a masked nod of agreement, and she led me into a small room where the walls were stuffed with bookshelves, and a large floor lamp stood in the middle. A big bulb cast a bright circle of light from under a shade decorated with a creature I was getting tired of looking at. There were two large chairs to sit in, one piled with more typewritten pages and the other surrounded by thick, sad-looking books on the decline of the newspaper industry and how to raise a daughter all by yourself. On the carpet I could see marks on the floor where a third chair had been dragged away. Moxie sat in her chair and put her typewritten notes in her lap and told me to help myself. I found a book that did nothing to relax my nerves. The story took place in some big woods where a little house was home to a medium-sized family who liked to make things. First they made maple syrup. Then they made butter. Then they made cheese, and I shut the book. It was more interesting to think about stealing a statue and making my way down a hill on a hawser high above the ground. “Interesting” is a word which here means that it made me nervous. I walked over to the window and tried to see how far it was from the lighthouse to the Sallis mansion, but the sun was long down, and outside was as black as the Bombinating Beast itself. It wasn’t much of a view, but I stared at it for quite some time. After a while the bell clanged the all-clear from the island tower, and I took off my mask and realized Moxie had fallen asleep behind hers. I slipped her mask off and found a blanket to put on her and went back to my staring. I thought maybe if I stared hard enough, I could see the lights of the city I had left so very far behind. This was nonsense, of course, but there’s nothing wrong with occasionally staring out the window and thinking nonsense, as long as the nonsense is yours.
Before long the clock was bombinating twelve times, but it was a quiet buzzing, so I heard Theodora’s roadster outside without a problem. Moxie didn’t stir, so I shook her shoulder slightly until her eyes flickered open.
“Is it time?” she said.
“It’s time,” I said, “but you would do me a great favor if you went to bed.”
“And miss all the fun?” she said. “Not on your life, Lemony Snicket.”
“You said yourself there’s something going on we can’t see,” I said. “It might be something dangerous.”
“In any case, it’s something interesting,” Moxie said, “and I’m going to find out all about it.”
“Moxie, we can’t burgle you if you’re standing around watching. At least hide yourself.”
She stood up. “Where?”
“You grew up in this lighthouse,” I said. “You know all the best hiding places.”
She nodded, packed up her typewriter, and walked out of the room. I put out the lights and then opened the front door. The roadster was parked in front of the lighthouse, but I couldn’t see Theodora. I walked a few steps out and called her name.
My chaperone emerged from the night, crouching along the ground as she made her way. She had changed her clothes and was wearing black pants and a black turtleneck sweater, with black slippers on her feet and a small black mask over her eyes. Her immense hair was tied up in a complication of black ribbons, and her face was dusted with something black to help her blend in. I once saw a cat run up a chimney and then immediately come back down covered in soot to ruin the living room furniture, and I noticed several striking similarities between this memory and the woman who was moving stealthily toward me.
“There are burglary clothes in your suitcase,” she hissed. “Why aren’t you wearing them? We don’t want to attract attention.”
“Perhaps you should have parked someplace else,” I said, pointing to the roadster.
“Keep your voice down,” she said. “We’ll wake people up.”
One way to keep one’s voice down is to stop talking altogether, which is also one way not to argue with somebody. I beckoned to Theodora, and we slipped into the house and made our way up the spiral staircase, Theodora pressing herself against the walls of the lighthouse and swiveling her head this way and that, and me walking like a normal person. I led her into the newsroom, removed the sheet, and pointed to the statue of the Bombinating Beast. She gestured to me that I should be the one to take it. I gestured back that she was the chaperone and the leader of this caper. She gestured to me that I shouldn’t argue with her. I gestured to her that I was the one who had gotten us into the house in the first place. She gestured to me that my predecessor knew that the apprentice should never argue with the chaperone or complain and that I might model my own behavior after his. I gestured to her asking what the S stood for in her name, and she replied with a very rude gesture, and I grabbed the statue and tucked it into my vest. It was lighter than I thought it would be, and I felt less like a burglar and more like someone who was simply carrying an object from one place to another.
I opened the window and reached a hand down into the darkness until I could feel the hawser rough and cold against my palm. This made me feel more like a burglar. I held it steady for Theodora to grab with both hands, and then I lowered myself after her. I couldn’t reach to shut the window, but I figured Moxie would do it once she came out of hiding. I wondered if she could see us now as we began to climb, hand over hand, along the hawser toward the Sallis mansion at the bottom of the hill. We must have been strange shadows against the round, white moon. The rustling of the Clusterous Forest grew softer as we got farther and farther away, and the still night air filled my throat. I was not as high up as I thought I would be, and the hawser stayed steady as we continued our descent. In the moonlight I could see the trees below us, the thin branches all folded together like laced-up shoes, and the leaves looking lonely and uncomfortable. I could see the small white cottage, with something glinting in one of its windows—some small object that was reflecting the light of the moon. What I did not see was a candle, as Theodora had told me there would be, to signal that all was clear.
“Snicket,” Theodora said, “this would be a good time to ask me a question.”
“Why?” I tried.
“Because I am somewhat afraid of heights,” she answered, “and answering an apprentice’s questions would be a good way to distract me.”
“OK,” I said, and thought for a moment. “Do you think this is the way the statue was stolen?”
“Absolutely,” Theodora said. “The Mallahans must have climbed down the hawser, grabbed the statue, and gone back out the way they came.”
“I thought you said they came in from the parlor,” I said, “by sawing a hole in the ceiling and letting gravity do the rest.”
“That was an early theory of mine, yes,” Theodora said, “but at least I was half-right: Gravity is involved. This would be a much harder climb if we were going up this hill instead of down.”
What Theodora said was true—it would have been much harder to move hand over hand up the cable—but she had also said the thieves had gone back out the way they had come. Arguing with my chaperone, however, probably would not have distracted her from her condition. There was a word for a fear of heights, I knew, but I couldn’t think of it. Something-phobia. “How do you think the thieves got into the Sallis mansion?” I asked.
“Through one of the windows of the library, of course,” Theodora said. “The hawser goes right there.”
“Mrs. Sallis said the windows are always latched,” I reminded her.
“Well, they’re not latched now,” Theodora said. “Look. The butler is giving us the signal that all is clear.”
Sure enough, I could see the faint shape of the open window, right where the hawser ended, and in the middle of that shape was a faint light. Hydrophobia? I thought. No, Snicket. That’s the fear of water. The light did not look like a candle, as it was not flickering, and it was bright red in color. A bright red light reminded me of something that I also could not quite remember. Agoraphobia, I thought. No, Snicket. That’s the fear of wide-open spaces.
“We’re almost there,” Theodora said. “In a minute the Bombinating Beast will be returned to its rightful owner, and this case will be closed.”
I did not answer, because it had come to me all at once, like a light turning on. It was the red flashlight the Officers Mitchum had on top of their car. And “acrophobia” is the word for a fear of heights. I let go of the hawser and fell straight down into the trees.