"I see what you mean," Quigley said. "If the V.F.D. motto is 'The world is quiet here,' we ought to be doing something less noisy and violent than trapping someone, no matter how wicked they are."
"When I was looking into the pit," Klaus said quietly, "I was remembering something I read in a book by a famous philosopher. He said, 'Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.'" Klaus looked at his sister, and then at the sight of Esm approaching, and then at the weakened wood that the three children had placed on the ground. "'Abyss' is a fancy word for 'pit,'" he said. "We built an abyss for Esm to fall into. That's something a monster might do."
Quigley was copying Klaus's words into his commonplace book. "What happened to that philosopher?" he asked.
"He's dead," Klaus replied. "I think you're right, Violet. We don't want to be as villainous and monstrous as Count Olaf."
"But what are we going to do?" Quigley asked. "Sunny is still Olaf's prisoner, and Esm will be here at any moment. If we don't think of the right thing right now, it'll be too late."
As soon as the triplet finished his sentence however, the three children heard something that made them realize it might already be too late. From behind the archway, Violet, Klaus, and Quigley heard a rough, scraping sound as the toboggan reached the bottom of the waterfall and slid to a halt, and then a triumphant giggle from the mouth of Esm Squalor. The three volunteers peeked around the archway and saw the treacherous girlfriend step off the toboggan with a greedy smile on her face. But when Esm adjusted her enormous flame-imitating dress and took a step toward the smoking Verdant Flammable Devices, Violet was not looking at her any more. Violet was looking down at the ground, just a few steps from where she was standing. Three dark, round masks were sitting in a pile, where Violet, Klaus, and Quigley had left them upon arriving at the ruins of headquarters. They had assumed that they would not need them again, but the eldest Baudelaire realized they had been wrong. As Esm took another step closer to the trap, Violet dashed over to the masks, put one on and stepped out of her hiding place as her brother and her friend looked on.
"Stop, Esm!" she cried. "It's a trap!"
Esm stopped in her tracks and gave Violet a curious look. "Who are you?" she asked. "You shouldn't sneak up on people like that. It's a villainous thing to do."
"I'm a volunteer," Violet said.
Esm's mouth, heavy with orange lipstick that matched her dress, curled into a sneer. "There are no volunteers here," she said. "The entire headquarters are destroyed!"
Klaus was the next to grab a mask and confront Olaf's treacherous romantic companion.
"Our headquarters might be destroyed," he said, "but the V.F.D. is as strong as ever!"
Esm frowned at the two siblings as if she couldn't decide whether to be frightened or not "You may be strong," she said nervously, "but you're also very short." Her dress crackled as she started to take another step toward the pit. "When I get my hands on you "
"No!" Quigley cried, and stepped out from the arch wearing his mask, taking care not to fall into his own trap. "Don't come any closer, Esm. If you take another step, you'll fall into our trap."
"You're making that up," Esm said, but she did not move any closer. "You're trying to keep all the cigarettes for yourself."
"They're not cigarettes," Klaus said, "and we're not liars. Underneath the wood you're about to step on is a very deep pit."
Esm looked at them suspiciously. Gingerly a word which here means "without falling into a very deep hole" she leaned down and moved a piece of wood aside, and stared down into the trap the children had built. "Well, well, well," she said. "You did build a trap. I never would have fallen for it, of course, but I must admit you dug quite a pit."
"We wanted to trap you," Violet said, "so we could trade you for the safe return of Sunny Baudelaire. But "
"But you didn't have the courage to go through with it," Esm said with a mocking smile. "You volunteers are never brave enough to do something for the greater good."
"Throwing people into pits isn't the greater good!" Quigley cried. "It's villainous treachery!"
"If you weren't such an idiot," Esm said, "you'd realize that those things are more or less the same."
"He is not an idiot," Violet said fiercely. She knew, of course, that it was not worthwhile to get upset over insults from such a ridiculous person, but she liked Quigley too much to hear him called names. "He led us here to the headquarters using a map he drew himself."
"He's very well-read," Klaus said.
At Klaus's words, Esm threw back her head and laughed, shaking the crackling layers of her enormous dress. "Well-read!" she repeated in a particularly nasty tone of voice. "Being well-read won't help you in this world. Many years ago, I was supposed to waste my entire summer reading Anna Karenina, but I knew that silly book would never help me, so I threw it into the fireplace." She reached down and picked up a few more pieces of wood, which she tossed aside with a snicker. "Look at your precious headquarters, volunteers! It's as ruined as my book. And look at me! I'm beautiful, fashionable, and I smoke cigarettes!" She laughed again, and pointed at the children with a scornful finger. "If you didn't spend all your time with your heads stuck in books, you'd have that precious baby back."
"We're going to get her back," Violet said firmly.
"Really?" Esm said mockingly. "And how do you propose to do that?"
"I'm going to talk to Count Olaf," Violet said, "and he's going to give her back to me."
Esm threw back her head and started to laugh, but not with as much enthusiasm as before. "What do you mean?" she said.
"Just what I said," Violet said.
"Hmmm," Esm said suspiciously. "Let me think for a moment." The evil girlfriend began to pace back and forth on the frozen pond, her enormous dress crackling with every step.
Klaus leaned in to whisper to his sister. "What are you doing?" he asked. "Do you honestly think that we can get Sunny back from Count Olaf with a simple conversation?"
"I don't know," Violet whispered back, "but it's better than luring someone into a trap."
"It was wrong to dig that pit," Quigley agreed, "but I'm not sure that walking straight into Olaf's clutches is the right thing to do, either."
"It'll take a while to reach Mount Fraught again," Violet said. "We'll think of something during the climb."
"I hope so," Klaus said, "but if we can't think of something "
Klaus did not get a chance to say what might happen if they couldn't think of something because Esm clapped her hands together to get the children's attention.
"If you really want to talk to my boyfriend," she said, "I suppose I can take you to where he is. If you weren't so stupid, you'd know that he's very nearby."
"We know where he is, Esm," Klaus said. "He's at the top of the waterfall, at the source of the Stricken Stream."
"Then I suppose you know how we can get there," Esm said, and looked a little foolish. "The toboggan doesn't go uphill, so I actually have no idea how we can reach the peak."
"She will invent a way," Quigley said, pointing at Violet.
Violet smiled at her friend, grateful for his support, and closed her eyes underneath her mask. Once more, she was thinking of something she had heard sung to her, when she was a very little girl. She had already thought of the way that the three children could take Esm with them when they ascended the hill, but thinking of their journey made her think of a song she had not thought of for many years. Perhaps when you were very young, someone sang this song to you, perhaps to lull you to sleep, or to entertain you on a long car trip, or in order to teach you a secret code. The song is called "The Itsy Bitsy Spider," and it is one of the saddest songs ever composed. It tells the story of a small spider who is trying to climb up a water spout, but every time its climb is half over, there is a great burst of water, either due to rain or somebody turning the spout on, and at the end of the song, the spider has decided to try one more time, and will likely be washed away once again.