"And you can choose death by harpoon!" Count Olaf cried. "Six!"
"Please," Sunny said, joining her sisters. The villain did not move, but standing together, the three Baudelaires walked closer and closer to the harpoon gun, shielding Dewey all the while.
"Seven!"
"Please," the youngest Baudelaire said again. The Baudelaires walked slowly but steadily toward the harpoon gun, their echoing footsteps the only sound in the silent lobby except for Olaf's shrieking of higher and higher numbers.
"Eight!"
They walked closer.
"Nine/"
The children took one last step, and silently put their hands on the harpoon gun, which felt ice cold, even through their white gloves. They tried to pull the weapon out of Olaf's hands, but their first guardian did not let go, and for a long moment the youngsters and the adult were gathered around the terrible weapon in silence. Violet stared at the hooked tip of one harpoon that was pressed against her chest. Klaus stared straight ahead at the bright red trigger that could press at any moment, and Sunny stared into Olaf's shiny, shiny eyes for even the smallest sign of nobility.
"What else can I do?" the villain asked, so quietly the children could not be sure they had heard him correctly.
"Give us the gun," Violet said. "It's not your destiny to do this treacherous deed."
"Give us the gun," Klaus said. "It's not your destiny to be a wicked person."
" La Forza del Destino," Sunny said, and then nobody said anything more. It was so quiet in the lobby that the Baudelaires could hear Olaf draw breath as he got ready to shout the word "ten."
But then, in an instant, they heard another sound, specifically a very loud cough, and in an instant everything changed, which is the wicked way of the world. In an instant, you can light a match and start a fire that can destroy the lives of countless people. In an instant, you can remove a cake from the oven and provide dessert for countless others, assuming that the cake is very large, and the others are not very hungry. In an instant, you can change a few words in a poem by Robert Frost and communicate with your associates through a code known as Verse Fluctuation Declaration, and in an instant, you can realize where something is hidden and decide whether you are going to retrieve it or let it stay hidden, where it might never be found and eventually be forgotten by all but a few very well-read and very distraught figures, who are themselves forgotten by all but a few very well-read and very distraught figures, who in turn are forgotten, and so on, and so on, and so on, and a few more so ons besides. All this can happen in an instant, as if a single instant is an enormous container, capable of holding countless secrets safely, securely, and attractively, such as the countless secrets held in the Hotel Denouement, or in the hidden underwater catalog in its rippling reflection. But in this instant, in the hotel's enormous lobby, the Baudelaire orphans heard a cough, as loud as it was familiar, and in this instant Count Olaf turned to see who was walking into the lobby, and hurriedly pushed the harpoon gun into the Baudelaires' hands when he saw a figure wearing pajamas with drawings of money all over them and a bewildered expression on his face. In this instant, the three siblings grasped the weapon, feeling its heavy, dark weight in their hands, and in this instant the gun slipped from their hands and clattered to the green wooden floor, and in this instant they heard the red trigger click!, and in this instant the penultimate harpoon was fired with a swoosh! and sailed through the enormous, domed room and struck someone a fatal blow, a phrase which here means "killed one of the people in the room."
"What's going on?" Mr. Poe demanded, for it was not his destiny to be slain by a harpoon, at least not on this particular evening. "I could hear people arguing all the way from Room 174. What in the world-" and in that instant he stopped, and gazed in horror at the three siblings. "Baudelaires!" he gasped, but he was not the only person gasping. Violet gasped, and Klaus gasped, and Sunny gasped, and Justice Strauss and Jerome Squalor gasped, and Hugo, Colette, and Kevin-who were accustomed to violence from their days as carnival employees and as henchmen to a villain-gasped, and Carmelita Spats gasped, and Esme Squalor gasped, and even Count Olaf gasped, although it is unusual for a villain to gasp unless he is discovering a crucial secret, or suffering very great pain. But it was Dewey Denouement who gasped loudest of all, louder even than the Wrong!s that thundered through the hotel as the clock struck two. Wrong! Wrong! the clock thundered, but all the Baudelaires heard was Dewey's pained, choking gasp, as he stumbled backward through the lobby, one hand on his chest, and the other clutching the tail end of the harpoon, which stuck out from his body at an odd angle, like a drinking straw, or a reflection of one of Dewey's skinny arms.
"Dewey!" Violet cried.
"Dewey!" Klaus cried.
"Denouement!" Sunny cried, but the sub-sub-librarian did not answer, and stumbled backward out of the hotel in silence. For a moment, the children were too shocked to move as they watched him disappear into the cloud of steam rising from the laundry room funnel, but then they ran after him, hurrying down the stairs as they heard a splash! from the edge of the pond. By the time the Baudelaires reached him, he was already beginning to sink, his trembling body making ripples in the water. There are those who say that the world is like a calm pond, and that anytime a person does even the smallest thing, it is as if a stone has dropped into the pond, spreading circles of ripples further and further out, until the entire world has been changed by one tiny action, but the Baudelaires could not bear to think of the tiny action of the trigger of the harpoon gun, or how the world had changed in just one instant. Instead, they frantically rushed to the edge of the pond as the sub-sub-librarian began to sink. Klaus grabbed one hand, and Sunny grabbed the other, and Violet reached for his face, as if she were comforting someone who had begun to cry.
"You'll be O.K.," Violet cried. "Let us get you out of the water."
Dewey shook his head, and then gave the children a terrible frown, as if he were trying to speak but unable to find the words.
"You'll survive," Klaus said, although he knew, both from reading about dreadful events and from dreadful events in his own life, that this simply was not true.
Dewey shook his head again. By now, only his head was above the surface of the water, and his two trembling hands. The children could not see his body, or the harpoon, which was a small mercy.
"We failed you," Sunny said.
Dewey shook his head one more time, this time very wildly in violent disagreement. He opened his mouth, and reached one hand out of the water, pointing past the Baudelaires toward the dark, dark sky as he struggled to utter the word he most wanted to say. "Kit," he whispered finally, and then, slipping from the grasp of the children, he disappeared into the dark water, and the Baudelaire orphans wept alone for the mercies denied them, and for the wicked, wicked way of the world.
CHAPTER Ten
"What was that?" a voice called out.
"It sounded like a harpoon gun being fired!" cried another voice.
"A harpoon gun?" asked a third voice. "This is supposed to be a hotel, not a shooting gallery!"
"I heard a splash!" cried someone.
"Me too!" agreed someone else. "It sounded like somebody fell into the pond!"
The Baudelaire orphans gazed at the settling surface of the pond and saw the reflections of shutters and windows opening on every story of the Hotel Denouement. Lights went on, and the silhouettes of people appeared, leaning out of the windows and pointing down at the weeping children, who were too upset to pay much attention to all the shouting.