"Hmm!" Justice Strauss said.
Count Olaf glared at the children, and the children glared back, until at last the villain stepped aside and let the Baudelaires join him and his prisoner in the elevator. "Going down?" he asked, and the children blinked. They had been so intent on escaping the crowd and reaching the judge that they hadn't considered exactly where they might go afterward.
"We're going wherever you go," Klaus said.
"I have a few errands to run," Olaf said. "Ha! First I'm going down to the basement, to retrieve the sugar bowl. Ha! Then I'm going up to the roof, to retrieve the Medusoid Mycelium. Ha! Then I'm going down to the lobby, to expose the fungus to everyone in the lobby. Ha! And then, finally, I'm going up to the roof, to escape without being seen by the authorities."
"You'll fail," Sunny said, and Olaf glared down at the youngest Baudelaire.
"Your mother told me the same thing," he said. "Ha! But one day, when I was seven years old-"
The elevator's doors slid open as it arrived at the basement, and the villain interrupted himself and quickly dragged Justice Strauss out into the hallway. "Follow me!" he called back to the Baudelaires. The children, of course, did not want to follow this horrid man any more than they wanted to put cream cheese in their hair, but they looked at one another and could not think of what else they could do.
"You can't retrieve the sugar bowl," Violet said. "You'll never open the Vernacularly Fastened Door."
"Can't I?" Olaf asked, stopping at Room 025. The lock was still stretched securely across the door, as it had been when Sunny left it. "This hotel is like an enormous library," the villain said, "but you can find any item in a library if you have one thing."
"Catalog?" Sunny asked.
"No," Count Olaf replied, and pointed the harpoon gun at the judge. "A hostage." With that, he turned to Justice Strauss and ripped the tape off her mouth very slowly, so it would sting as much as possible. "You're going to help me open this lock," he informed her, with a wicked smile.
"I will do nothing of the sort!" Justice Strauss replied. "The Baudelaires will help me drag you back up to the lobby, where justice can be served!"
"Justice isn't being served in the lobby," Olaf growled, "or anywhere else in the world!"
"Don't be so sure of that!" Justice Strauss said, and reached behind her back. The Baudelaires looked hopefully at what she was holding, but their hopes fell when they saw what it was. "Odious Lusting After Finance," she read out loud, holding up Jerome Squalor's comprehensive history of injustice. "There's enough evidence in here to put you in jail for the rest of your life!"
"Justice Strauss," Violet said, "your fellow judges on the High Court are associates of Count Olaf. Those villains will never put Olaf in jail."
"It can't be!" Justice Strauss gasped. "I've known them for years! I've told them everything that was happening to you children, and they were always very interested!"
"Of course they were interested, you fool," Count Olaf said. "They passed along all that information to me, so I could catch up with the orphans! You've been helping me all along, without even knowing it! Ha!"
Justice Strauss leaned against an ornamental vase, and her eyes filled with tears. "I've failed you again, Baudelaires," she said. "No matter how I've tried to help you, I've only put you in more danger. I thought justice would be served if you told the High Court your story, but-"
"No one's interested in their story," Count Olaf said scornfully. "Even if you wrote down every last detail, no one would read such a dreadful thing. I've triumphed over the orphans and over any other person foolish or noble enough to stand in my way. It's the unraveling of my story, or, as the French say, the noblesse oblige."
"Denouement" Sunny corrected, but Olaf acted as though he had not heard, and turned his attention to the lock on the door.
"That idiot sub-sub said the first phrase is a description of a medical condition that all three Baudelaire children share," he muttered, and turned to Justice Strauss. "Tell me what it is, or prepare to eat harpoon."
"Never," Justice Strauss said. "I may have failed these children, but I won't fail V.F.D. You'll never get the sugar bowl, no matter what terrible threats you make."
"I'll tell you what the first phrase is," Klaus said calmly, and his siblings looked at him in astonishment. Justice Strauss looked at him in amazement. Even Count Olaf seemed a little puzzled.
"You will?" he asked.
"Certainly," Klaus said. "It's just like you said, Count Olaf. Every noble person has failed us. Why should we protect the sugar bowl?"
"Klaus!" Violet and Sunny cried, in simultaneous astonishment.
"No!" Justice Strauss cried, in solitary amazement.
Count Olaf looked a little puzzled again, but then shrugged his dusty shoulders. "O.K.," he said, "tell me what medical condition you and your orphan siblings share."
"We're allergic to peppermints," Klaus said, and quickly typed A-L-L-E-R-G-I-C-T-O-P-E-P-P-E-R-M-I-N-T-S into the lock. Immediately, there was a muted clicking sound from the typewriter keyboard.
"It's warming up," Count Olaf said, in a delighted wheeze. "Get out of the way, four-eyes! The second phrase is the weapon that left me an orphan, and I can type that one in myself. P-O-Y-Z-"
"Wait!" Klaus said, before Olaf could touch the keyboard. "That can't be right. Those letters don't spell anything."
"Spelling doesn't count," said the count.
"Yes, it does," Klaus said. "Tell me what the weapon is that left you an orphan, and I'll type it in for you."
Count Olaf gave Klaus a slow smile that made the Baudelaires shudder. "Certainly I'll tell you," he said. "It was poison darts."
Klaus looked at his sisters, and then in grim silence typed P-O-I-S-O-N-D-A-R-T-S into the lock, which began to buzz quietly. Count Olaf's eyes shone brightly as he stared at the wires of the lock, which began to shake as they stretched around the hinges of the laundry room door.
"It's working," he said, and ran his tongueover his filthy teeth. "The sugar bowl is so close I can taste it!"
Klaus took his commonplace book from his pocket, and read his notes intently for a moment. Then he turned to Justice Strauss. "Give me that book, please," he said, pointing to Jerome Squalor's book. "The third phrase is the famous unfathomable question in the best-known novel by Richard Wright. Richard Wright was an American novelist of the realist school whose writings illuminated the disparities in race relations. It is likely his work is quoted in a comprehensive history of injustice."
"You can't read that entire book!" Count Olaf said. "The crowd will find us before you finish the first chapter!"
"I'll look in the index," Klaus said, "just like I did at Aunt Josephine's, when we decoded her note and found her hiding place."
"I always wondered how you did that," Olaf said, sounding almost as if he admired the middle Baudelaire's research skills. Klaus paged to the back of the book, where the index can usually be found. An index, as I'm sure you know, is a list of everything a book contains, and where each item can be found.