A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Vile Village by Lemony Snicket Read Free Book Online

alone. Without speaking, Violet unrolled the paper so the siblings could read the couplet again. For sapphires we are held in here. Only you can end our fear. "It's her," Klaus said, speaking quietly so Hector wouldn't hear him. "I'm sure of it. Isadora Quagmire wrote this poem." "I think so, too," Violet said. "I'm positive it's her handwriting." "Blake!" Sunny said, which meant "And the poem is written in Isadora's distinct literary style!" "The poem talks about sapphires," Violet said, "and the triplets' parents left behind the famous Quagmire sapphires when they died." "Olaf kidnapped them to get ahold of those sapphires," Klaus said. "That must be what it means when it says 'For sapphires we are held in here.'" "Peng?" Sunny asked. "I don't know how Hector got ahold of this," Violet replied. "Let's ask him." "Not so fast," Klaus said. He took the poem from Violet and looked at it again. "Maybe Hector's involved with the kidnapping in some way." "I hadn't thought of that," Violet said. "Do you really think so?" "I don't know," Klaus said. "He doesn't seem like one of Count Olaf's associates, but sometimes we haven't been able to recognize them." "Wryb," Sunny said thoughtfully, which meant "That's true." "He seems like someone we can trust," Violet said. "He was excited to show us the migration of the crows, and he wanted to hear all about everything that has happened to us. That doesn't sound like a kidnapper, but I suppose there's no way of knowing for sure." "Exactly," Klaus said. "There's no way of knowing for sure." "The tea's all ready," Hector called from the next room. "If you're up to it, why don't you join me in the kitchen? You can sit at the table while I make the enchiladas." The Baudelaires looked at one another, and nodded. "Kay!" Sunny called, and led her siblings into a large and cozy kitchen. The children took seats at a round wooden table, where Hector had placed three steaming mugs of tea, and sat quietly while Hector began to prepare dinner. It is true, of course, that there is no way of knowing for sure whether or not you can trust someone, for the simple reason that circumstances change all of the time. You might know someone for several years, for instance, and trust him completely as your friend, but circumstances could change and he could become very hungry, and before you knew it you could be boiling in a soup pot, because there is no way of knowing for sure. I myself fell in love with a wonderful woman who was so charming and intelligent that I trusted that she would be my bride, but there was no way of knowing for sure, and all too soon circumstances changed and she ended up marrying someone else, all because of something she read in The Daily Punctilio. And no one had to tell the Baudelaire orphans that there was no way of knowing for sure, because before they became orphans, they lived for many years in the care their parents, and trusted their parents to keep on caring for them, but circumstances changed, and now their parents were dead and the children were living with a handyman in a town full of crows. But even though there is no way of knowing for sure, there are often ways to know for pretty sure, and as the three siblings watched Hector work in the kitchen they spotted some of those ways. The tune he hummed as he chopped the ingredients, for instance, was a comforting one, and the Baudelaires could not imagine that a person could hum like that if he were a kidnapper. When he saw that the Baudelaires' tea was still too hot to sip, he walked over to the kitchen and blew on each of their mugs to cool it, and it was hard to believe that someone could be hiding two triplets and cooling three children's tea at the same time. And most comforting of all, Hector didn't pester them with a lot of questions about why they were so surprised and silent. He simply kept quiet and let the Baudelaires wait until they were ready to speak about the scrap of paper he had given them, and the children could