“Well, I wish you’d stop,” Moxie said sourly. “Anyway, I found something that I thought you might think was helpful. It’s from an article published when the town was arguing about draining the sea: ‘Porter Roeman, who runs the Roe House, told reporters that he opposed the draining, as it would adversely affect local marine life.’ What’s ‘adversely’ mean?”
“Badly,” I said, and we gave each other one grim nod each. Some years ago, the town had decided to drain the sea so the last few octopi could be found and harvested for ink. The idea was to save Ink Inc, which was Stain’d-by-the-Sea’s largest and most important company. It was the wrong idea. The draining of the sea had drained the town along with it. The town’s stores and restaurants had folded as quickly as The Stain’d Lighthouse. A fancy, top-drawer school on an island was now nothing but empty buildings on a pile of craggy rocks, connected by a bridge that was no longer necessary. Where once had been countless fish and swirling waves, there was now the Clusterous Forest, a vast, lawless landscape of shivering seaweed. And Ink Inc had been affected as adversely as the rest of town, and had recently shut its doors for good. A young woman of my acquaintance, a brilliant chemist named Cleo Knight, was in a small cottage working on a solution to the ink problem, but I didn’t know if she’d finish her work before the town disappeared completely. Nobody knew.
Moxie continued to read from her notes. “A successful fish business requires loyal workers and a steady supply of food. Mr Roeman said that without a local source of plankton, Roe House would likely go out of business. And it did, Snicket. Stain’d-by-the-Sea’s fishing industry is gone, just like everything else.” She reached into her typewriter case and took out a photograph. “I developed this photograph myself, in the basement darkroom. It’s Roe House on its last day of business. Feast your eyes, Snicket.”
My eyes tried to feast but they nearly starved. The photograph showed a large, empty room, with small rectangular marks on the scuffed floor. In the far corner of the room was a small door, the only thing to look at. I looked at it. It could have led anywhere. A back room, I thought. An exit someplace. “It’s a big room,” I said finally.
Moxie looked at me. “Big enough to be Hangfire’s new headquarters?”
“It doesn’t look big enough to hold a large group of kidnapped children,” I said, “but perhaps Hangfire has given up on that part of his plan.”
“But what’s the rest of his plan, Snicket?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “The Inhumane Society had all that aquatic equipment at the Colophon Clinic, so I thought the fishing industry might be involved somehow. But it doesn’t seem like your search through the archives has turned up much.”
“That’s what I thought,” Moxie said, and scratched at the bandage on her arm. She had told me to stop asking her if it still hurt. “But then I thought maybe we should go see for ourselves.”
“Good idea.”
“Come on, then. The address is 350 Wayward Way.”
“350 Wayward Way? I don’t know where that is.”
“Good thing you have an associate who grew up in this town,” Moxie said with a smile. “Come on, Snicket. Stop lollygagging.”
It is true that I was moving slowly, trying to figure out how to stand up and keep the newspaper article hidden at the same time. “I’ll be with you in a moment,” I said, using a phrase that rarely works.
Moxie cocked her head at me. “What is roe, anyway, Snicket?”
“Fish eggs,” I said. “Caviar.”
Moxie looked down at my reading. “So all this has to do with that book?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Because I thought it might have to do with that newspaper article you’re hiding under it.”
“What newspaper article?”
“I’m a journalist, Snicket. You’ll have to do better than that. Take out that newspaper article nice and slow, and don’t use any cheap tricks to try and distract me.”
“Fire! Fire! ” The sudden cry almost made me drop the newspaper. I looked quickly around the library, as I’d been trained to do in such emergencies. Sprinkler system, I thought. Northeast corner. But without a compass, the phrase “northeast corner” might as well have been “I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“Help has arrived,” I called. “Where is the fire? ”
“There isn’t one, Snicket,” said the voice, familiar now. “I was just looking for you.”
Moxie and I sighed, like we were both balloons pricked by the same needle, and down the aisle came the person who had deflated us. Part of my education required each apprentice to have a chaperone, and S. Theodora Markson was mine. The function of a chaperone is to serve as an example of the adult you might become, and Theodora served as a bad example. Her hair, for instance, was always a frightful mess, particularly when it was struggling against the leather helmet she seemed to enjoy wearing. She refused to tell me what the S stood for in her name, no matter how many times I asked her. But neither her hair nor her first name was the main problem with Theodora. I don’t need to tell you what the problem is. You have met impossible people, and you know when you are stuck with them. They are of no more use than a heap of old boxes left in the middle of the sidewalk, but you end up tripping on them anyway.
“You’re not supposed to scream fire in a library,” I said, “unless you mean it.”
“I wouldn’t have had to scream,” Theodora said, “if you’d left me a note saying where you were, as I specifically instructed.”
“I did leave a note. It said I’d be at the library.”
“Well, I didn’t have time to read it all. We’re in a hurry, Snicket. We have to stop screaming fire and investigate a case of arson.”
“Arson?” Moxie said, rolling a new page into her typewriter. A suspicious fire was just the sort of thing that Moxie liked to write about.
My chaperone looked down at her and frowned. “Who are you?”
Moxie reached into the brim of her hat, which was where she kept printed cards stating her name and occupation. “We’ve met on a number of occasions,” Moxie said, handing her one. “It’s lovely to see you, Ms. Markson. Your apprentice was just returning a scrap of newspaper I lent him.”
I frowned at Moxie while Theodora frowned at the card. “I believe this is my scrap of newspaper,” I said, trying to sound dignified. “You must have left your scrap someplace else.”
“Be sensible, Snicket,” Theodora said. “We don’t have time to fight over scraps. Give it to your playmate and let’s go.”
Moxie gave me a sly smile and held out her hand. I didn’t want to give her the newspaper article, and I certainly didn’t want to think of her as my playmate. But under Theodora’s supervision I could not think what else to do. I surrendered the article, and in no time at all my sister’s dilemma was folded up into a neat square and tucked into Moxie’s hat.
“Maybe later,” Moxie said to me, “you and I can take that trip we were discussing.”
I thought of 350 Wayward Way, and the large, empty room in the photograph with the door in the corner and the rectangles on the floor. Secrets, I thought. Hidden in plain sight. “Maybe later,” I agreed.
Theodora frowned. “Whatever playdate you two had planned,” she said, “it will have to wait. Come along, Snicket. We’ve got to go to 350 Wayward Way.”