Finally, the light in the house turned the pale blue-gray of early dawn, and the Baudelaire children walked blearily down the stairs to breakfast, tired and achy from their sleepless night. They sat around the table where they had eaten cake on their first morning at the house, and picked listlessly at their food. For the first time since their arrival at Uncle Monty’s, they were not eager to enter the Reptile Room and begin the day’s work.

“I suppose we have to go in now,” Violet said finally, putting aside her scarcely nibbled toast. “I’m sure Uncle Monty has already started working, and is expecting us.”

“And I’m sure that Stephano is there, too,”

Klaus said, staring glumly into his cereal bowl. “We’ll never get a chance to tell Uncle Monty what we know about him.”

“Yinga,” Sunny said sadly, dropping her untouched raw carrot to the floor.

“If only Uncle Monty knew what we know,” Violet said, “and Stephano knew that he knew what we know. But Uncle Monty doesn’t know what we know, and Stephano knows that he doesn’t know what we know.”

“I know,” Klaus said.

“I know you know,” Violet said, “but what we don’t know is what Count Olaf—I mean Stephano—is really up to. He’s after our fortune, certainly, but how can he get it if we’re under Uncle Monty’s care?”

“Maybe he’s just going to wait until you’re of age, and then steal the fortune,” Klaus said.

“Four years is a long time to wait,” Violet said. The three orphans were quiet, as each remembered where they had been four years ago. Violet had been ten, and had worn her hair very short. She remembered that sometime around her tenth birthday she had invented a new kind of pencil sharpener. Klaus had been about eight, and he remembered how interested he had been in comets, reading all the astronomy books his parents had in their library. Sunny, of course, had not been born four years ago, and she sat and tried to remember what that was like. Very dark, she thought, with nothing to bite. For all three youngsters, four years did seem like a very long time.

“Come on, come on, you are moving very slowly this morning,” Uncle Monty said, bursting into the room. His face seemed even brighter than usual, and he was holding a small bunch of folded papers in one hand.