Chapter FOUR
“While you were mucking about with that flatfooted girl,” Theodora said to me as she started her roadster and put on her helmet, “I managed to solve the mystery. I have reason to believe that the Bombinating Beast is in that very lighthouse.”
“It is,” I said.
“Then we’re in agreement,” Theodora said. “I had quite a talk with that Mr. Mallahan. He told me he used to work in the newspaper business but lately has had quite the run of bad luck! Aha!”
My chaperone looked at me like I should aha! back, but all I could manage was a quiet “ah.” I made a note to ha later. We drove past the mansion toward the center of town. Moxie was right. It was an unpeopled place. Stain’d-by-the-Sea looked like it had been a regular town once, with shops full of items, and restaurants full of food, and citizens looking for one or the other. But now the whole place had faded to gray. Many of the buildings had windows that were broken or boarded up, and the sidewalks were uncared for, with great cracks in the concrete, and empty bottles and cans rolling around in the bored wind. Whole blocks were completely empty, with no cars except our own and not a single pedestrian on the streets. Some ways away was a building shaped like a pen that towered over the rest of the town, as if Stain’d-by-the-Sea were about to be crossed out. I didn’t like it. It looked like anyone could move in and do anything they wanted without anyone stopping them. The Clusterous Forest almost looked friendlier.
“No job, no wife, a man like that can get desperate,” Theodora was saying. “Desperate enough to steal a very valuable statue from one of his enemies. When I asked him if there was anything in his house that was worth upward of a great deal of money, he looked at me strangely and said something about his only daughter. I think he has it hidden away somewhere.”
“It’s upstairs,” I said, “on a table covered in a sheet.”
“What?” Theodora stopped at a red light. I had seen no other cars on the road. Only the stoplights were around, telling nobody but us when to stop and when to go. “How did you find it?”
“His daughter showed me,” I said. “She’s not flatfooted, by the way. She just wears heavy shoes.”
“Be sensible,” Theodora said. “How did you get her to show it to you?”
“I asked her,” I said.
“She must be onto us,” Theodora said, with a frown. “We’d better act quickly if we want to steal it back.”
“How do we even know it was stolen?” I asked.
“Don’t be a numbskull, Snicket. Mrs. Sallis told us it was stolen right off her mantel.”
“Moxie said the statue belonged to her family. The beast was the mascot of The Stain’d Lighthouse.”
“That lighthouse wasn’t stained. It just needed painting.”
“We need to investigate further,” I said.
“No, we don’t,” Theodora said firmly. “We’re not going to call a distinguished woman a liar and believe the word of a little girl. Particularly one with a ridiculous name.”
“That reminds me,” I said. “What does the S stand for?”
“Silly boy,” she said with a shake of her head, and pulled the car to a stop. We were parked in front of a building with a sagging roof and a porch crowded with dying plants in cracked flowerpots. A painted wooden sign, which must have been magnificent to look at centuries ago when it was painted, read THE LOST ARMS. “This is our headquarters,” Theodora said, taking off her helmet and shaking her hair. “This is our lodgings and our nerve center and our home office and our command post. This is where we’ll be staying. Carry the suitcases, Snicket.”
She bounded up the stairs, and I got out of the roadster and looked around the dreary street. Down the block I could see one other open business, a lonely-looking restaurant called Hungry’s, and in the other direction the street came to a dead end at a tall building with gray carved pillars on either side of the doors. There was no one about, and the only other car I could see was a dented yellow taxi parked in front of the restaurant. I was hungry again, or maybe I was still hungry. Something in me felt empty, certainly, but the more I stood there the less sure I was that it was my stomach, so I leaned into the backseat and pulled out two suitcases—the one that Theodora had said was mine and another, larger one that must have been hers. It was burdensome to carry them up the stairs, and when I entered the Lost Arms, I put them down for a minute to catch my breath in the lobby.
The room had a complicated smell, as if many people were in it, but there were very few things in the place. There was a small sofa with a table next to it that was even smaller, and it was hard to say from this angle which was grimier. It was probably a tie. On the table was a small wooden bowl of peanuts that were either salted or dusty. There was a small booth in the corner, where a tall man with no hat was talking on the phone, which I looked at wistfully for a moment, hoping he would hang up and give me a chance to use it. There was a desk in a far corner, where Theodora was talking to a thin man who was rubbing his hands together, and right in the center of the room was a tall statue made of plaster, of a woman who wore no clothes and had no arms.
“I guess you have it worse than I do,” I said to her.
“Stop dawdling, Snicket,” Theodora called to me, and I trudged our suitcases to the desk. The thin man was handing two keys to Theodora, who handed me one of them.
“Welcome to the Lost Arms,” the man said in a voice as thin as he was. His manner reminded me of a word I’d been taught and then had forgotten. It was on the tip of my tongue, as was one last cookie crumb. “I’m the owner and operator of this establishment, Prosper Lost. You can call me Prosper, and you can call me anytime you have a problem. The phone is right over there.”
“Thank you,” I said, thinking I’d probably just walk over to the desk rather than wait for the phone.
“As you requested,” Prosper continued, “I’ve arranged for you two to have the least expensive room, the Far East Suite, located on the second floor. I’m afraid the elevator isn’t working today, so you’ll have to take the stairs. May I ask how long you plan on staying?”
“For the duration,” my chaperone said, and walked quickly toward a carpeted staircase with banisters that looked too fragile to touch. I did not need Theodora or anyone else to explain that “for the duration” was a phrase which here meant nothing at all. Instead, I followed Theodora up the stairs, dragging the suitcases behind me, and down a narrow hallway to a room marked FAR EAST SUITE. Theodora got the key into a fight with the keyhole, but after a few minutes the door was open, and we stepped into our new home.
You’ve probably never been to the Far East Suite at the Lost Arms in Stain’d-by-the-Sea, but I’m sure you’ve been in a room you couldn’t wait to leave, which is about the same thing. Most of the room was a large bed and a small bed, separated by a squat chest of drawers that appeared to be frowning. There was a door to a bathroom, and a small table in a corner with a metal plate that plugged into the wall, probably for heating up food. Overhead was a light fixture shaped like a complicated star, and the only thing on the walls was a painting, hung over the smaller bed, of a little girl holding a dog with a bandaged paw. The room was quite dark, but even when I unshuttered the lone window, the Far East Suite was no brighter than it had been.
“We’re sharing a room?” I asked.
“Be sensible, Snicket,” Theodora replied. “We can change our clothes in the bathroom. Now why don’t you slide your suitcase under your bed and go out to the lobby to play or something? I’m going to unpack and take a nap. That always helps me think, and I need to think of how we can get our hands on that statue.”
“There’s a hawser,” I said, “that runs from the lighthouse down to the Sallis mansion.”
“Hawser?”
“A hawser is a cable,” I said.
“I knew that.”
“Really?” I couldn’t help asking. “I had to learn it from a little girl.”
Theodora sat on the large bed with a long sigh and ran her hands through her endless hair. “Let me rest, Snicket,” she said. “Be back for dinner. I think we’ll dine later this evening.”
“Later than what?”
“Later than usual.”
“We’ve never dined together.”
“You’re not helping me rest, Snicket.”
I was restless, too, and slid my suitcase under the bed and walked out of the room, shutting the door behind me. A minute later I was back on the sidewalk, looking at the empty street with my hands full of peanuts I’d grabbed from the lobby. I had more privacy outside the Lost Arms than I did in the Far East Suite. I liked privacy, but I still didn’t know how to fill the time I had before dinner, so I turned and walked down the block to the building with the pillars, which looked like my best bet for something interesting.
I used to be that young man, almost thirteen, walking alone down an empty street in a half-faded town. I used to be that person, eating stale peanuts and wondering about a strange, dusty item that was stolen or forgotten and that belonged to one family or another or their enemies or their friends. Before that I was a child receiving an unusual education, and before that I was a baby who, I’m told, liked looking in mirrors and sticking his toes into his mouth. I used to be that young man, and that child, and that baby, and the building I stood in front of used to be a city hall. Stretched out in front of me was my time as an adult, and then a skeleton, and then nothing except perhaps a few books on a few shelves.
And now stretched out in front of me was a scraggly lawn and a tall metal statue so worn from rain and age that I could not tell what it was a statue of, even when I was close enough to touch it. The shadows of the building’s two pillars were wiggly stripes, and the building itself looked like it had been slapped several times by a giant creature that had lost its temper. The pillars held an arch with the words STAIN’D-BY-THE-SEA written in letters that had once been darker, and carved into the wall were the words CITY and HALL, although they were difficult to read, as someone had hurriedly nailed up two other signs on top of them. Over CITY was a sign that read POLICE STATION, and over HALL was a sign that read LIBRARY. I walked up the steps and made the sensible choice.
The library was one enormous room, with long, high metal shelves and the perfect quiet that libraries provide for anyone looking for an answer. A mystery is solved with a story. The story starts with a clue, but the trouble is that you usually have no idea what the clue is, even if you think you know. I thought the clue was the Bombinating Beast, sitting under a sheet in a forgotten room of a lighthouse, and I wondered how I might find out more. I crossed the room looking for the librarian, and soon found him behind a desk, swatting at a couple of moths with a checkered handkerchief. The moths were fluttering over a small sign at the desk that read DASHIELL QWERTY, SUB-LIBRARIAN. He was younger than I think of librarians as being, younger than the father of anyone I knew, and he had the hairstyle one gets if one is attacked by a scissors-carrying maniac and lives to tell the tale. He was wearing a black leather jacket with various metallic items up and down the sleeves, which jangled slightly as he went after the moths.
“Excuse me,” I asked, “are you the librarian?”
Qwerty waved his handkerchief one more time at the moths and then gave up. “Sub-librarian,” he said in a voice so deep I thought for a moment we were both at the bottom of a well. “Stain’d-by-the-Sea cannot afford a permanent librarian, so I am here instead.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Since I replaced the other one,” he said. “Can I help you?”
“I am looking for information on local legends,” I said.
“Dame Sally Murphy is probably Stain’d-by-the-Sea’s most famous actress,” Qwerty suggested. “There should be a book about her career in the Theater Section.”
“Not that kind of legend,” I said. “I mean old stories about strange creatures.”
Qwerty stepped around the desk. “Allow me to lead you to Mythology,” he said, and without hesitating he walked me toward a row of shelves in the center of the room. “There’s also a good Zoology and Oceanography Section, if you’re interested in real animals.”
“Not today, thank you.”
“One never knows. They say in every library there is a single book that can answer the question that burns like a fire in the mind.”
“Perhaps, but not today.”
“Very well. Shall I help you further, or do you like to browse on your own?”
“Browse on my own, please,” I said, and Qwerty nodded and walked away without another word. The Mythology Section had several books that looked interesting and one that looked like it would be helpful. Sadly, it was not one of the ones that looked interesting. I found a table in a far corner where I could read without being disturbed and opened Stain’d Myths.
According to chapter 7, the Bombinating Beast was a mythological creature, half horse and half shark—although some legends claim half alligator and half bear—that lurked in the waters just outside Stain’d-by-the-Sea. It had a great appetite for human flesh and made a terrifying bombinating sound—I had to get up from the table and find a dictionary to learn that “bombinating” was a word which here meant buzzing—when looking for prey. Moxie had struck me as a somewhat unusual girl but not a liar, and, sure enough, there was a story that Lady Mallahan had slain the Bombinating Beast hundreds of years ago, although the author said that in all likelihood Lady Mallahan had just found a dead walrus on the beach at the bottom of the lighthouse’s cliffs, and the local townspeople gossiped about it until it became much more interesting. Other stories said that people could tame the Bombinating Beast by imitating its fearsome buzz, and there was a myth about a wizard who held the beast under his power, as long as the terrible monster was kept fed. In the olden days, a gong was rung in the town square to warn away the beast on moonless nights. The gong was long gone, but the legend lingered. Mothers still told their children and their husbands that the Bombinating Beast would eat them if they did not finish their vegetables, and locals still dressed as the Bombinating Beast on Halloween and Purim, with masks that looked not very different from the one I’d donned in the roadster, at least in the book’s illustrations. Supposedly sailors still saw the Bombinating Beast, swimming with its body curled up like an underwater question mark, although with the sea drained, I couldn’t imagine that this could be true, at least not anymore.
The book did not say anything about a statue, valuable or otherwise, and so I stopped reading about the Bombinating Beast and got interested in the chapter about the Stain’d witches, who had ink instead of blood in their veins. I wondered what they kept in their pens.
I read for quite some time before I was distracted by a noise that sounded like a rock being thrown against the wall, just above my head. I looked up in time to see a small object fall to the table. It was a rock, which had been thrown against the wall, just above my head. It would be nice to think of something clever to say when something like that happens, but I always ended up saying the same thing.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey,” repeated a mocking voice, and a boy about my age stuck his head out from behind a shelf. He looked like the child of a man and a log, with a big, thick neck and hair that looked like a bowl turned upside down. He had a slingshot tucked into his pocket and a nasty look tucked into his eyes.
“You almost hit me,” I said.
“I’m trying to get better,” he said, stepping closer. He wanted to tower over me, but he wasn’t tall enough. “I can’t be expected to hit my target every time.”
“That’s your idea of fun?” I said. “Slinging rocks at people in the library?”
“I prefer to hit birds,” he said, “but there aren’t very many birds around here anymore.”
“I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t want to be frolicking with a nice guy like you,” I said.
“Hold still,” the boy replied, taking out his slingshot. “Let me see if I can hit that idiotic smile of yours from across the room.”
Qwerty appeared as if from nowhere. “Stew,” he said, a word that sounded much scarier in such a deep voice. “Leave this library at once.”
“I’m allowed in here,” Stew said, glaring at the librarian. “This is a public library.”
“And you are a public nuisance,” Qwerty replied, grabbing Stew’s arm and propelling him toward the door. “Out.”
“See you soon,” Stew called out nastily to me, but he left without further insult, and Qwerty went over to examine the wall.
“I’m sorry about that,” he said, frowning at a small dent and rubbing it with his finger. “Stew Mitchum is like something stuck at the bottom of a waste bin. I try and try to throw him out, but he just sticks there, getting older and older. Did you find what you were looking for?”
“Sort of,” I said. “Can I check out books if I don’t live in town?”
“Regrettably, no,” Qwerty said. “But I open the library very early every day. You’re always welcome to come in and read anything you like. It’s not often we get people interested in theater.”
I did not bother to remind him that famous actresses were not the legends I was researching. “Thank you,” I said. “I suppose I should get going.”
“Of course,” Qwerty said, “if you have a library card, you can send requests for books from the library close to where you live.”
“You mean, my library in the city can send books here that I can check out?”
“No,” Qwerty said, “but you could fill out the paperwork here, and the book would be waiting for you in the city.”
“I don’t know when I’ll be back there,” I said. The city, and the people I liked best in it, seemed even farther away than they were.
Qwerty reached into a pocket of his jacket and pulled out a blank card. “You see, how it works is that you write down your name and the title of the book, and the person working at the research desk sees what book you are requesting.”
I thought quickly. “So the person at the research desk sees the title of the book I want?”
“Yes.”
“Or their apprentice?”
“I suppose so,” Qwerty said. “Have you changed your mind?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’d like to request a book from the Fourier Branch.”
“The Fourier Branch?” Qwerty repeated, taking a pencil from behind his ear. “Isn’t that near where they’re building that new statue?”
“I’m not sure,” I said, perfectly sure.
“And what is your name?” he asked me.
I told him, and told him it was spelled like it sounded. He wrote it down in careful block letters and then paused with his pencil in the air.
“And the author of the book you’re looking for?”
I was blank for a moment. “Sorry,” I said.
“Sorry is the author’s name?”
“Yes,” I stammered. “I believe she’s Belgian.”
“Belgian,” he said, and looked at me and wrote it down and looked at me again. “And the title of the book?” he said, and it was a perfectly reasonable question. I hoped my answer sounded reasonable, too.
“But I Cannot Meet You at the Fountain.”
Qwerty looked at me, his face as blank as one of those extra pages tucked in the back of a book for notes or secrets. “So your complete request,” he said, “is ‘Sorry, But I Cannot Meet You at the Fountain.’”
“That’s right,” and Qwerty looked at me just for a second before slowly writing it down.