Violet had realized, when her brother had talked about Stephano ordering them to carry his suitcase into the house, that the evidence she had been looking for was undoubtedly in that very suitcase.

And now, while her siblings were distracting the adults in the Reptile Room, would be her only opportunity to open the suitcase and retrieve proof of Stephano’s evil plot. But her aching shoulder was a reminder that she couldn’t simply open the suitcase—it was locked, with a lock as shiny as Stephano’s scheming eyes. I confess that if I were in Violet’s place, with only a few minutes to open a locked suitcase, instead of on the deck of my friend Bela’s yacht, writing this down, I probably would have given up hope. I would have sunk to the floor of the bedroom and pounded my fists against the carpet wonder-ing why in the world life was so unfair and filled with inconveniences.

Luckily for the Baudelaires, however, Violet was made of sterner stuff, and she took a good look around her bedroom for anything that might help her. There wasn’t much in the way of inventing materials. Violet longed for a good room in which to invent things, filled with wires and gears and all of the necessary equipment to invent really top-notch devices.

Uncle Monty was in fact in possession of many of these supplies, but, to Violet’s frustration as she thought of this, they were loc-ated in the Reptile Room. She looked at the pieces of butcher paper tacked to the wall, where she had hoped to sketch out inventions as she lived in Uncle Monty’s house. The trouble had begun so quickly that Violet had only a few scribblings on one of the sheets, which she had written by the light of a floorlamp on her first night here. Violet’s eyes traveled to the floorlamp as she remembered that evening, and when she reached the electric socket she had an idea.