The Penultimate Peril - Snicket Lemony - Страница 12

"Hello?" Klaus called, knocking on the door.

"Hello yourself," called back a voice that sounded slightly familiar and utterly unconcerned. "Are you one of those concertinas?"

"I'm a concierge," Klaus said, not bothering to explain that a concertina is a kind of accordion. "Can I be of assistance?"

"Of course you can be of assistance!" the voice called back. "That's why I rang for you! Enter at once!"

Klaus, of course, did not want to enter a room that was filled with smoke, but working, even for the purposes of secretly observing the mysteries of a hotel, usually means doing things you do not want to do, so the middle Baudelaire opened the door, releasing an enormous amount of smoke into the hallway, and took a few hesitant steps into the room. Through the smoke he could see a short figure, dressed in a suit of shiny green cloth, standing at the far end of the room, facing the window. Behind his back he held a cigar that was clearly responsible for all the smoke wafting past Klaus into the hallway. But Klaus did not care about the smoke. He hardly even noticed it. He merely stared in dismay at the person standing at the window, a person he had hoped he would never see again.

You have probably heard the tiresome expression "It's a small world," which people use to explain a coincidence. For instance, if you walk into an Italian restaurant and encounter a waiter you recognize, the waiter might cry, "It's a small world!" as if it were unavoidable that the two of you would be at the same restaurant at the same time. But if you've ever taken even the shortest of walks, you know the truth of the matter. It is not a small world. It is a large world, and there are Italian restaurants sprinkled all over it, employing waiters who have crucial messages for you and waiters who are trying to make sure you never receive them, and these pairs of waiters are engaged in an argument that began many years ago, when you were so young that it was not safe to feed you even the softest of gnocchi. The world is not small but enormous, and Klaus had hoped that this enormous world was big enough that a guest of the Hotel Denouement employed in the lumber industry and staying in Room 674 would not be the horrid man who had employed him and his sisters at Lucky Smells Lumbermill. During their dreadful stay in Paltryville, the Baudelaires never saw the man's face, which was always covered by a cloud of smoke from his cigar, and they never learned the man's real name, which was so difficult to pronounce that he made everyone call him "Sir," but they learned plenty about his greedy and cruel behavior, and Klaus was not happy to learn that this enormous world was going to treat him to another helping of Sir's selfishness.

"Well, don't just stand there!" Sir shouted. "Ask what you can do for me!"

"What can I do for you, Sir?" Klaus asked.

Sir whirled around, and the cloud around his head whirled around, too. "How did you know my name?" he asked suspiciously.

"The concierge didn't know your name," said another voice patiently, and Klaus saw, through the smoke, a second person he had not noticed, sitting on the bed in a bathrobe with hotel denouement embroidered on the back. This man was also familiar from the Baudelaires' days at Lucky Smells, although Klaus did not know whether to be happy to see him or not. On one hand, Charles had always been kind to the children, and although his kindness had not been enough to save them from danger, it is always a relief to discover there is a kind person in the room that you had not noticed previously. On the other hand, however, Klaus was sorry to see that Charles was still partners with Sir, who enjoyed bossing around Charles almost as much as he did the Baudelaires. "I'm sure the concierge calls all the male guests in this hotel 'sir.'"

"Of course he does!" Sir shouted. "I'm not an idiot! Now then, concertina, we want to be taken to the sauna right away!"

"Yes sir," Klaus said, grateful that either Frank or Ernest had mentioned that the sauna was in Room 613. A sauna is a room constructed out of wood and kept very, very hot, in which people can sit in steam, which is believed to be beneficial to one's health, and Klaus would have found it very difficult to find such a room in the Hotel Denouement without a catalog. "The sauna should be down the hall, on the opposite side," Klaus said. "If you gentlemen will follow me, I'll take you there."

"I'm sorry we made you come all the way to our rooms just to take us right down the hall," Charles said.

"It's my pleasure," Klaus said. As I'm sure you know, when people say, "It's my pleasure," they usually mean something along the lines of, "There's nothing on Earth I would rather do less," but the middle Baudelaire was hoping that he could learn why the Baudelaires' former guardian and his partner had journeyed from Paltryville to the Hotel Denouement.

"Let's go this very instant!" Sir shouted, marching out into the hallway.

"Don't you want to change into a bathing suit?" Charles asked. "If you're fully clothed, you won't get the health benefits of the steam."

"I don't care about the health benefits of the steam!" Sir shouted. "I'm not an idiot! I just love the smell of hot wood!"

Charles sighed, and followed Klaus out of Room 674 and into the hallway. "I was hoping my partner would relax during our stay here," he said, "but I'm afraid he's taking a busman's holiday."

"Busman's holiday" is an expression which refers to when people do the same thing on vacation that they do in their everyday lives, such as plumbers who visit the Museum of Sinks, or villains who disguise themselves even on their days off. But Klaus could not believe that these two men were merely vacationing in the Hotel Denouement, just two days before V.F.D. was to gather. "Are you here on business?" he asked, hoping that Charles would keep talking as they approached the sauna.

"Don't tell that concertina anything!" Sir cried, continuing to use the word for "accordion" instead of the word for "hotel employee." "He's supposed to be at our beck and call, not nosing around in our business like a spy!"

"Forgive me, Sir," Klaus said, as calmly as he could. "We've arrived at the sauna."

Sure enough, Klaus, Sir, and Charles had arrived at Room 613, which had a mass of steam pouring out of the gap between the door and the floor, like a mirror image of Sir's cigar smoke pouring out of Room 674. "You can wait outside, concertina," said Sir. "We'll shout for you when we're ready to be escorted back to our room."

"We don't need to be escorted," Charles said timidly, opening the door. Inside, Klaus could see nothing but a mass of whirling steam. "It's just down the hallway. I'm sure the concierge has enough to do without waiting around for us."

"But someone has to hold my cigar!" Sir shouted. "I can't walk into a room full of steam with a head full of smoke! I'm not an idiot!"

"Of course not," Charles said with a sigh,and walked into the sauna. Sir handed Klaus the cigar and strode into the sauna before the cloud of smoke around his head could clear. Behind him, the door started to close, but Klaus thought quickly and stuck out his foot. The door remained open just a crack, and as quietly as he could he swung the door back open and slipped inside, pausing to balance Sir's cigar on the rim of one of the ornamental vases. As he suspected, the steam was so thick inside the sauna that he could not see Sir or his partner, which meant the Paltryville citizens could not see him, either, while they sat and talked in the heated room. It was a flaneur's perfect opportunity to eavesdrop on a private conversation.

"I wish you could be more polite," Charles said, his voice drifting through the steam. "There was no reason to accuse that concierge of being a spy."

"I was just trying to be cautious!" Sir said gruffly, a word which here means "in a tone that indicated he had no intention of being more polite." Klaus heard the crinkle of his shiny suit, and imagined that the lumbermill owner was shrugging. "You're the one who said enemies might be lurking in this hotel!"