“Stephano has only worked here one day, and he’s already in the Reptile Room. In fact, he was up before I was—I ran into him on my way down the stairs. He’s an eager beaver. But you three—you’re moving like the Hungarian Sloth Snake, whose top speed is half an inch per hour! We have lots to do today, and I’d like to catch the six o’clock showing of Zombies in the Snow tonight, so let’s try to hurry, hurry, hurry.”

Violet looked at Uncle Monty, and realized that this might be their only opportunity to talk to him alone, without Stephano around, but he seemed so wound up they weren’t sure if he would listen to them. “Speaking of Stephano,” she said timidly, “we’d like to talk to you about him.”

Uncle Monty’s eyes widened, and he looked around him as if there were spies in the room before leaning in to whisper to the children.

“I’d like to talk to you, too,” he said. “I have my suspicions about Stephano, and I’d like to discuss them with you.”

The Baudelaire orphans looked at one another in relief. “You do?” Klaus said.

“Of course,” Uncle Monty said. “Last night I began to get very suspicious about this new assistant of mine. There’s something a little spooky about him, and I—” Uncle Monty looked around again, and began speaking even softer, so the children had to hold their breaths to hear him. “And I think we should discuss it outside. Shall we?”

The children nodded in agreement, and rose from the table. Leaving their dirty breakfast dishes behind, which is not a good thing to do in general but perfectly acceptable in the face of an emergency, they walked with Uncle Monty to the front entryway, past the painting of two snakes entwined together, out the front door, and onto the lawn, as if they wanted to talk to the snake-shaped hedges instead of to one another.

“I don’t mean to be vainglorious,” Uncle Monty began, using a word which here means “braggy,” “but I really am one of the most widely respected herpetologists in the world.”

Klaus blinked. It was an unexpected beginning for the conversation. “Of course you are,” he said, “but—”

“And because of this, I’m sad to say,” Uncle Monty continued, as if he had not heard, “many people are jealous of me.”

“I’m sure that’s true,” Violet said, puzzled.

“And when people are jealous,” Uncle Monty said, shaking his head, “they will do anything. They will do crazy things. When I was getting my herpetology degree, my roommate was so envious of a new toad I had discovered that he stole and ate my only specimen. I had to X-ray his stomach, and use the X-rays rather than the toad in my presentation. And something tells me we may have a similar situation here.”