350 Wayward Way turned out to be in a particularly deserted part of town. Theodora steered her shaky roadster past Diceys Department Store and then onto a street full of dead buildings with boarded-up doors and broken windows. It was like a garden that someone had stopped watering. Those gardens always look slightly sinister. You never know what’s hiding amongst all the wild and ragged weeds.
“You know what I like about neighborhoods like this?” Theodora asked, as the brakes squeaked us to a halt. “There’s plenty of parking.”
“There’s plenty of parking because nobody wants to come here,” I said.
“Not sensible, Snicket,” my chaperone said, with a shake of her helmet. “Not proper. We want to be here. There are questions that S. Theodora Markson needs to have answered.”
“What does the S stand for?” I asked.
Theodora glared at me. “Smart,” she said. “You’re a smart boy, Snicket, but you need to apply yourself.”
“I’ve never really understood what that means,” I said.
“It means your predecessor never gave me such problems.”
“You must miss having him as an apprentice.”
“I do.”
“Maybe you should send him a bunch of heart-shaped helium balloons just to let him know you’re thinking about him.”
“Don’t laugh at me, Snicket. I am not a puppet show. We’re very lucky to get such a prestigious client as the Department of Education. You’ll have to adjust your attitude accordingly. For instance, we are not to reveal anything about this case, or who has hired us to solve it. I expect my apprentice not to say a word about the whole thing.”
“What is the whole thing?”
“I told you, we shouldn’t say a word about it.”
“How can I say a word about something I don’t know about?”
She did not answer but got out of the car and slammed the door unnecessarily hard. I did the same. “Prestigious” is a word which here means “important or having great influence,” although the Department of Education didn’t look prestigious as we approached the door. It was a tall, thin building, sagging against another tall, thin building to its right, and being sagged on by a tall, thin building to its left. The tall, thin buildings kept going, saggy and shabby, all the way down the block, like grass curved over in the wind. Just over the door was a cardboard sign reading DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION that I wanted to remove, just so I could see the words ROE HOUSE that were probably carved into the stone beneath it.
Before we could get to the door, it opened and a man walked out, putting on his hat and taking out a cigarette. Theodora nodded to him as he held the door open, and he turned briefly to her and said something she had to ask him to repeat.
“Do you have any fire?” he repeated.
“We are in fact here to investigate a case of arson,” Theodora said, “but that is a secret I am not to reveal.”
The man frowned impatiently and pointed to his cigarette to show what he meant. The cigarette sat tucked in his mouth, hanging over his beard, unlit.
“Oh!” Theodora said. “No, I’m sorry, I don’t have any matches.”
The man turned his eyes to me and I shook my head. I did in fact have a box of matches in my pocket, but I don’t think adults should be encouraged to smoke. He frowned again and started to walk away before turning around and asking me a question.
It is not a question anyone enjoys hearing, especially people my age. It is the question printed on the cover of this book.
“I’m in a special program,” I said, as Theodora stepped inside the building.
“Are you indeed,” the man said. It didn’t sound like it was news to him, or perhaps he just didn’t care much. He reached up and took the cigarette out of his mouth and turned around and walked away. I watched him, but I didn’t know why. He looked like nothing to watch. He was just a man, moving quickly down the block. At the corner he tossed his cigarette into a dented trash can with a noise louder than it should have been. Most of Stain’d-by-the-Sea’s trash cans were as empty as its sidewalks. I stopped watching and followed Theodora in.
I’d expected to be in the large, empty room Moxie had shown me in the photograph. Instead I found myself in a small waiting area, separated from the large room by a wall that looked like it would fall over if you gave it one good push. In the middle of the wall was a swinging door, not swinging, and tacked to the door was a sign that said WELCOME TO THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, WHERE LEARNING IS FUN! LEARNING IS IMPORTANT! said another sign, on another wall. There was one that said BOOKS ARE FOR LEARNING! that hung over a bookshelf, and one that said TAKE TIME FOR LEARNING! hanging over a table. On a table were a stack of stickers reading LEARNING! that you could affix to the bumper of your car or boat, and a bowl of badges reading LEARNING! that you could pin to your shirt or jacket or lampshade. They’d pinned a few of them to the lamp’s lampshade, was how I knew, along with a small sign that read LEARNING! It seemed like a lot of learning.
There was a boy about my age going clickety-clack into a typewriter at a large wooden desk. His hair had been trimmed into a sort of tilted spike, like the fuse on a stick of dynamite, and his eyes were wide and not looking at us. When he was done typing the page, he took it out of the typewriter and put it on a large pile of other pages. Then he started up on another sheet of paper. He typed faster than I’d ever seen Moxie type, much faster. His hands hardly moved around the keyboard, as if he were typing the same thing over and over again. There had been a sign pasted onto the side of the desk, and the sign had probably said LEARNING!, but somebody had tried to unpeel it and now it was just a scratchy white mess, like a cloud you might stare at after a picnic. Through the flimsy wall I could hear more typewriters, plus the shuffle of papers and the other muttery noises of a busy office, but the boy behind the desk was the only person from the Department of Education to be seen.
“S. Theodora Markson,” announced S. Theodora Markson, “and her associate. We have an appointment.”
“Please wait,” the boy said, without looking up from his typing.
Theodora sat in one chair and I sat in another, near the bookshelf. I took down a book that had been recommended to me by several people I didn’t like.
The swinging door swung, and a tall, neatly dressed woman strode to the desk where the boy was typing and took a few papers from the tall pile. Pinned to her collar was a very shiny gold badge shaped like a lime, and pinned to her face was a smile that shone much less brightly. Theodora stood, but the woman did not look at us or say anything, just retreated back into the busy office. Theodora sat. I tried the book. A man gave his son Jody a pony, and Jody had to promise to take care of it. Then the pony got sick. I could see where this was going and put the book down. It was more pleasant to sit and think what the cloud looked like.
We waited awhile. The boy kept typing and typing and typing and then finally stopped but he was just scratching his elbow and then he was typing again. The tall woman made several trips through the swinging door and back again without looking at us. Theodora took up the book and seemed quite interested in it. I stood up. He might not talk to me, but I would talk to him, so I asked him if it would be much longer.
“I don’t know,” he said, and typed and typed and typed.
“You don’t have to look busy on my account,” I said.
Now he stopped. “I look busy because I am busy.”
“So you say,” I said.
“You don’t have to take my word for it,” the boy said, and pointed to the pile he was making. “Look at what I’m typing if you don’t believe me.”
“I’m not a math tutor,” I said. “I don’t feel the need to check your work.”
“The