"Kit said that all would not go well," Violet said. "She said our errands may be noble, but that we would not succeed."
"That's true," agreed Klaus. "She said all our hopes would go up in smoke, and maybe she was right. We each observed a different story, but none of the stories makes any sense."
"Elephant," Sunny said.
Violet and Klaus looked at their sister curiously.
"Poem," she said. "Father."
Violet and Klaus looked at one another in puzzlement.
"Elephant," Sunny insisted, but this was one of the rare occasions that Violet and Klaus did not understand what their sister was saying. The brow furrowed on Sunny's little forehead as she struggled to remember something that might help make herself clear to her siblings. Finally, she looked up at Violet and Klaus. "John Godfrey Saxe," she said, and all three Baudelaires smiled.
The name John Godfrey Saxe is not likely to mean anything to you, unless you are a fan of American humorist poets of the nineteenth century. There are not many such people in the world, but the Baudelaires' father was one of them, and had several poems committed to memory. From time to time he would get into a whimsical mood-the word "whimsical," as you probably know, means "odd and impulsive"-and would grab the nearest Baudelaire child, bounce him or her up and down on his lap, and recite a poem by John Godfrey Saxe about an elephant. In the poem, six blind men encountered an elephant for the first time and were unable to agree on what the animal was like. The first man felt the tall, smooth side of the elephant, and concluded that an elephant was like a wall. The second man felt the tusk of the elephant, and decided that an elephant resembled a spear. The third man felt the trunk of the elephant, and the fourth felt one of the elephant's legs, and so on and so on, with all of the blind men bickering over what an elephant is like. As with many children, Violet and Klaus had grown old enough to find their father's whimsical moods a little embarrassing, so Sunny had become the primary audience for Mr. Baudelaire's poetry recital, and remembered the poem best.
"That poem could have been written about us," Violet said. "We've each observed one tiny part of the puzzle, but none of us has seen the entire thing."
"Nobody could see the entire thing," Klaus said. "There's a mystery behind every door at the Hotel Denouement, and nobody can be everywhere at once, observing all the volunteers and all the villains."
"We've still got to try," Violet said. "Kit said that the sugar bowl was on its way to this hotel. We have to stop it from falling into the hands of the impostor."
"But the sugar bowl could be hidden anywhere," Klaus said, "and the impostor could be anyone. Everyone we observed was talking about J. S., but we still don't know who he or she is."
"'Each was partly in the right,'" Sunny recited, from the penultimate verse of the elephant poem.
Her siblings smiled, and chimed in to finish the line. "'And all were in the wrong,'" they said together, but the last word was drowned out by another sound, or perhaps it would be more proper to say that the last "wrong" was drowned out by another. Wrong! called the clock of the Hotel Denouement. Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!
"It's late," Klaus said, as the twelfth Wrong! faded. "I hadn't realized we'd been talking for so long." He and his sisters stood up and stretched, and saw that the lobby had grown empty and silent. The lid of the grand piano was closed. The cascading fountain had been turned off. Even the reception desk was empty, as if the Hotel Denouement was not expecting any more guests until the morning. The light from the frog-shaped lamp, and of course the Baudelaires themselves, were the only signs of life underneath the enormous domed ceiling.
"I guess the guests are asleep," Violet said, "or they're staying up all night reading, like Frank said."
"Or Ernest," Sunny reminded her.
"Maybe we should try to sleep as well," Klaus said. "We have one more day to solve these mysteries, and we should be well-rested when that day arrives."
"I suppose there won't be much to observe after dark," Violet said.
"Tired," Sunny yawned.
The siblings nodded, but all three orphans just stood there. It did not seem right to sleep when so many enemies were lurking around the hotel, hatching sinister plots. But such events go on every night, not just in the Hotel Denouement but all over the world, and even the noblest of volunteers needs to get a little shut-eye, a phrase which here means "lie down behind a large, wooden desk and hope that nobody rings for the concierge until morning." The children would have preferred more comfortable sleeping circumstances, of course, but it had been a very long time since such circumstances were available, and so without any further discussion they bid one another good night, and Klaus reached up and turned off the frog-shaped lamp. For a moment the three children lay there in the darkness, listening to the croaking coming from the pond outside.
"It's dark," Sunny said. The youngest Baudelaire was not particularly afraid of the dark, but just felt like mentioning it, in case her siblings were nervous.
"It is dark," Violet agreed, with a yawn. "With my sunglasses on, it's as dark as-what did Kit Snicket say?-as dark as a crow flying through a pitch black night."
"That's it," Klaus said suddenly. His sisters heard him stand up in the dark, and then he turned the frog lamp back on, making them both blink behind their sunglasses.
"What's it?" Violet said. "I thought we were going to sleep."
"How can we sleep," Klaus asked, "when the sugar bowl is being delivered to the hotel this very night?"
"What?" Sunny asked. "How?"
Klaus pulled his commonplace book out of his pocket and flipped to the notes he had taken on what the Baudelaires had observed. "By crow," he said.
"Crow?" Violet said.
"It wouldn't be the first time crows have carried something important," Klaus said, reminding his sisters of the crows in the Village of Fowl Devotees, who had brought the Baudelaires messages from the Quagmires. "That's what Esme Squalor has been watching for with her Vision Furthering Device."
"J. S. too," Sunny said, remembering what either Frank or Ernest had said about watching the skies.
"And that's why Carmelita Spats had me fetch a harpoon gun," Violet said thoughtfully. "To shoot down the crows, so V.F.D. can never get the sugar bowl."
"And that's why either Frank or Ernest had me hang birdpaper outside the window of the sauna," Klaus said. "If the crows are hit with the harpoon gun, they'll fall onto the birdpaper, and he'll know that the delivery had been unsuccessful."
"But was it Frank who had you lay out the birdpaper," Violet asked, "or Ernest? If it was Frank, then the birdpaper will serve as a signal to volunteers that they have been defeated. And if it was Ernest, then the birdpaper will serve as a signal to villains that they have triumphed."
"And what about the sugar bowl?" Klaus asked. "The crows will drop the sugar bowl if the harpoon hits them." He frowned at a page of his commonplace book. "If the crows drop a heavy object like that," he said, "it will fall straight down into the pond."
"Maybe no," Sunny said.
"Where else could it land?" Violet said.
"Spynsickle," Sunny said, which was her way of saying "laundry room."
"How would it get into the laundry room?" Klaus asked.
"The funnel," Sunny said. "Frank said. Or Ernest."