“When the adults come to fetch us,” Violet said, ignoring Klaus’s question, “keep them in the Reptile Room until I get back.”

“But how will I do that?” Klaus asked.

“Create a distraction,” Violet answered impatiently, still looking out the window at the little pile of suitcases Dr. Lucafont was making.

“What distraction?” Klaus asked anxiously. “How?”

“For goodness’ sake, Klaus,” his older sister replied. “You have read hundreds of books. Surely you must have read something about creating a distraction.”

Klaus thought for a second. “In order to win the Trojan War,” he said, “the ancient Greeks hid soldiers inside an enormous wooden horse. That was sort of a distraction. But I don’t have time to build a wooden horse.”

“Then you’ll have to think of something else,” Violet said, and began to walk toward the door, still gazing out the window. Klaus and Sunny looked first at their sister, and then out the window of the Reptile Room in the direction she was looking. It is remarkable that different people will have different thoughts when they look at the same thing.

For when the two younger Baudelaires looked at the pile of suitcases, all they thought was that unless they did something quickly, they would end up alone in Uncle Monty’s jeep with Stephano. But from the way Violet was staring as she walked out of the Reptile Room, she was obviously thinking something else. Klaus and Sunny could not imagine what it was, but somehow their sister had reached a different conclusion as she looked at her own brown suitcase, or perhaps the beige one that held Klaus’s things, or the tiny gray one that was Sunny’s, or maybe the large black one, with the shiny silver padlock, that belonged to Stephano.

TEN

When you were very small, perhaps someone read to you the insipid story—the word “insipid” here means “not worth reading to someone”—of the Boy Who Cried Wolf. A very dull boy, you may remember, cried “Wolf!” when there was no wolf, and the gullible villagers ran to rescue him only to find the whole thing was a joke. Then he cried “Wolf!” when it wasn’t a joke, and the villagers didn’t come running, and the boy was eaten and the story, thank goodness, was over. The story’s moral, of course, ought to be “Never live somewhere where wolves are running around loose,” but whoever read you the story probably told you that the moral was not to lie. This is an absurd moral, for you and I both know that sometimes not only is it good to lie, it is necessary to lie. For example, it was perfectly appropriate, after Violet left the Reptile Room, for Sunny to crawl over to the cage that held the Incredibly Deadly Viper, unlatch the cage, and begin screaming as loudly as she could even though nothing was really wrong.