Who Could That Be at This Hour?

CHAPTER THREE

After the sixth ring of the doorbell, I could hear faint footsteps approaching the door, but my thoughts had drifted someplace else. Instead of standing at the door of a mansion in this strange, faraway place, I imagined myself back in the city, standing at the top of a hole with my tape measure and my trusted associate. I pictured myself in possession of all the belongings I had put in my suitcase. I pretended that I had no need of a strange, shiny mask. And most of all I had a vision of myself in which I was not so very hungry. I had planned to eat something on the train but instead had journeyed a great distance in Theodora’s roadster with not even the tiniest of snacks, and while in my mind I was quite full from an excellent meal, in Stain’d-by-the-Sea my stomach was growling something awful.

It was for this reason that I took little notice of the butler who opened the door for us or the hallway he led us down before opening a set of double doors and asking us to wait in the library. I should have paid attention. An apprentice should pay close attention to the details of a new location, particularly if the furniture seems wrong for the room, or if the library seems to have only a handful of books in it. But I didn’t even look back as the butler shut the doors behind us, and instead cast my eyes across the large, dim room to a small, bright table where tea had been laid out on a tray, along with a dozen cookies on a plate. I walked over to get a closer look. They were almond cookies, although they could have been made of spinach and shoes for all I cared. I ate eleven of them, right in a row. It is rude to take the last cookie.

Theodora had sat down on a small sofa and was looking at me with disgust. “Not proper, Snicket,” she said, shaking her head. “Not proper at all.”

“I saved you one,” I said.

“Sit right here next to me and stop talking,” Theodora said, tapping the sofa with a glove. “The butler told us to wait, and wait we shall.”

Wait we did. We waited long enough that I looked for something to read. The few books on the shelves looked like the sort of books someone would leave behind rather than ever look at again. I read five chapters of a book about a boy named Johnny. He lived in America when America was still England. One day he burned his hand and was no longer able to work as a silversmith, which sounded like a miserable line of work anyway, so he took an interest in local politics. I felt sorry for the guy, but I had other things on my mind and put the book back on the shelf just as the double doors opened and an old woman walked into the room with a limp and a black cane to go with it.

“Thank you for waiting,” she said in a voice even creakier than I’d thought it would be. “I am Mrs. Murphy Sallis.”

“S. Theodora Markson,” said S. Theodora Markson, standing up quickly and yanking me up beside her. “I had been told that my client was a man.”

“I am not a man,” said the woman, with a frown.

“I can see that,” Theodora said.

“It’s very nice to meet you,” I said quickly. Theodora glared at me, but Mrs. Murphy Sallis gave me a brief smile and offered me her hand, which was as smooth and soft as old lettuce.

“Charming boy,” she said, and then frowned again at Theodora. “What does the S stand for?”

“Standing next to me is my apprentice,” Theodora said, and handed the old woman an envelope. Mrs. Sallis tore it open and lowered herself into the largest chair to read it, without offering to ring for more cookies. Even in the dim room, I could see the insignia on the letter, which matched that of my letter of introduction. I’ve never cared for it. The old woman looked about as interested in the letter as I was in Johnny’s silversmithing. “This will do,” she said, and put the letter down on the tray with a quick look at the crumb-covered plate. Then, with a great sigh, as if preparing herself for an important performance, Mrs. Sallis looked at Theodora and began to speak.

“I’m in desperate need of your assistance,” she began. “A priceless item has been stolen from my home, and I need to get it back.”

“First,” Theodora said, “we’ll need to know what the item is.”

“I know that,” the woman snapped. “I was just about to tell you. It’s a small statue, about the size of a bottle of milk. It’s made of an extremely rare species of wood that is very shiny and black in color. The statue has been in my family for generations and has been valued at upward of a great deal of money.”

“A great deal of money,” Theodora repeated thoughtfully. “When was it stolen?”

“That I do not know,” Mrs. Sallis said. “I have not been in this room for quite some time, and normally the statue is kept here in the library, on the mantel over there.”

We looked at the mantel. Sure enough, there was nothing on it.

“Two days ago I came in here looking for something and saw that it was missing. I’ve been upset ever since.”

“Hmm,” Theodora said, and walked quickly to the windows of the library, which were shrouded by heavy curtains. She yanked them aside and then fiddled with both of the windows, first one and then the other. “These are latched.”

“They’re always latched,” Mrs. Sallis replied.

“Hmm.” Theodora crossed slowly to the mantel and then leaned her head down to look at it very closely. There was still nothing on it. She took two large, slow steps backward and then stared up at the ceiling. “What is above this room?”

“A small parlor, I believe,” the old woman said.

“The burglar could have broken into this room from the parlor,” Theodora said. “He or she would have had to saw a hole in the ceiling, of course, but then gravity would have done the rest, dropping the burglar right in front of the mantel.”

Everyone in the room looked at the ceiling, which was as red and blank as the surface of an apple.

“Glue,” Theodora said. “Glue and plaster could cover it up.”

The old woman put her hand to her head. “I know who stole it,” she said.

Theodora coughed a little. “Well, that doesn’t necessarily mean they didn’t come in through the ceiling.”

“Who stole it?” I asked.

The old woman rose and limped to one of the windows. She pointed out at the lighthouse we had passed on the way. “The Mallahan family,” she said. “They’ve been enemies of my family for many lifetimes. They always swore they’d steal the statue, and at last they have.”

“Why didn’t you call the police?” I asked.

Mrs. Murphy Sallis looked surprised and stammered for a few seconds before Theodora butted in. “Because she called us,” she said. “Rest assured, Mrs. Sallis, we will find this statue and bring the thieves to justice.”

“I just want the statue back with its rightful owner,” the old woman said hastily. “I want nobody to know you are working for me, and I want nothing done to the Mallahans. They’re nice people.”

It is not common to hear someone refer to enemies of their family for many lifetimes as “nice people,” but Theodora nodded and said, “I understand.”

“Do you?” the woman demanded. “Do you promise to return the statue to its rightful owner, and do you promise to be discreet about the Sallis name?”

My chaperone waved her hand quickly, as if an insect were flying in her face. “Yes, yes, of course.”

Mrs. Sallis turned her gaze to me. “And what about you, lad? Do you promise?”

I looked right back at her. To me, a promise is not an insect in my face. It is a promise. “Yes,” I said. “I promise to return the statue to its rightful owner, and I promise to be discreet about who has hired us.”

“Mrs. Sallis has hired me,” Theodora said sternly. “You’re just my apprentice. Well, Mrs. Sallis, I believe we’re all done here.”

“Perhaps Mrs. Sallis could tell us what the statue looks like,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” Theodora said to Mrs. Sallis. “My apprentice apparently wasn’t listening. But I remember. It’s the size of a milk bottle, made of shiny, black wood.”

“But what is it a statue of?”

Mrs. Murphy Sallis limped one step closer and gave us each a long, dark look. “The Bombinating Beast,” she said. “It is a mythical creature, something like a sea horse. Its head looks like this.”

She lifted one limp hand from her cane to reveal the head of a creature carved into its top. The creature looked like a sea horse like a hawk looks like a chicken. Its eyes were thin and fierce, and its lips were drawn back in a snarl to reveal rows and rows of tiny, sharp teeth. Even at the end of a cane, it looked like something you’d want to avoid, but plenty of people put nasty things on their mantels.

“Thank you,” Theodora said briskly. “You’ll be hearing from us, Mrs. Sallis. We’ll let ourselves out.”

“Thank you,” the old woman said, and took another deep sigh as we walked back down the hallway and out of the mansion. The butler was standing on the lawn, facing away from us with a bowl of seeds he was throwing to some noisy birds. They whistled to him, and he whistled back, mimicking their calls exactly. It would have been pleasant to watch that for a few more minutes, and I wish I had. But instead Theodora started the roadster’s engine, put her helmet back on her head, and was halfway down the driveway before I had time to shut the door.

“This will be an easy case!” she crowed happily. “It’s not often that a client gives us the name of the criminal. You’re bringing me luck, Snicket.”

“If Mrs. Sallis knew who the burglar was,” I asked, “why wouldn’t she call the police?”

“That’s not important,” Theodora said. “What we need to figure out is how the Mallahans broke in through the ceiling.”

“We don’t know that they broke in through the ceiling,” I said.

“The windows were latched,” Theodora said. “There’s no other way they could have gotten into the library.”

“We got in through a pair of double doors,” I said, but Theodora just shook her head at me and kept driving. We passed the small white cottage and then came to a stop in front of the lighthouse, which needed painting and seemed to lean ever so slightly to one side.

“Listen, Snicket,” she said, taking off her helmet again. “We can’t just knock on the door of a house of thieves and tell them we’re looking for stolen goods. We’re going to have to use a con, a word which here means a bit of trickery. And don’t tell me you already know what that means. In fact, don’t say anything at all. You hear me, Snicket?”

I heard her, so I didn’t say anything at all. She marched up to the door of the lighthouse and rang the doorbell six times.

“Why do you always—”

“I said don’t say anything,” Theodora hissed as the door swung open. A man stood there wearing a bathrobe and a pair of slippers and a large, yawning mouth. He looked like he was planning on staying in that bathrobe for quite some time.

“Yes?” he said when the yawn was done with him.

“Mr. Mallahan?” Theodora asked.

“That’s me.”

“You don’t know me,” she said in a bright, false voice. “I’m a young woman and this is my husband and we’re on our honeymoon and we’re both crazy about lighthouses. Can we come in and talk to you for a minute?”

Mallahan scratched his head. I started to hide my hands behind my back, because I wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, but it occurred to me that there were lots of reasons not to believe that a boy of almost thirteen was married to a woman of Theodora’s age, so I left my hands where they were. “I guess so,” the man said, and ushered us into a small room with a large, winding staircase leading up. The staircase undoubtedly led to the top of the lighthouse, but to get there, you would have had to step over the girl sitting on the stairs with a typewriter. She looked about my age, although the typewriter looked a lot older. She pecked a few sentences into it and then paused to look up at me and smile. Her smile was nice to look at, along with the hat she was wearing, which was brown with a rounded top like a lowercase a. She looked up from her typing, and I saw that her eyes were full of questions. “I was just trying to find the coffee,” Mallahan said, gesturing to an open door through which I could see a small kitchen stacked with dishes. “Do you want some?”

“No,” Theodora said, “but I’ll come along and talk to you while we let the children play.”

Mallahan gave a shrug and walked off to the kitchen while Theodora made little shooing motions at me. It is always terrible to be told to go play with people one doesn’t know, but I climbed the stairs until I was standing in front of the typing girl.

“I’m Lemony Snicket,” I said.

She stopped typing and reached into the band of her hat for a small card, which she gave me to read.

MOXIE MALLAHAN. THE NEWS.

“The News,” I repeated. “What’s the news, Moxie?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out,” she replied, and typed a few more words. “Who’s that woman who knocked on the door? How could she be married to you? Where did you come from? What makes you crazy about lighthouses? Why did she shoo you away? And is Snicket spelled like it sounds?”

“Yes,” I said, answering the last question first. “Are you a reporter?”

“I’m the only reporter left in Stain’d-by-the-Sea,” Moxie replied. “It’s in my blood. My parents were both reporters when this place wasn’t just a lighthouse but a newspaper, too. The Stain’d Lighthouse. Maybe you’ve heard of it?”

“I can’t say I have,” I said, “but I’m not from around here.”

“Well, the newspaper’s out of business,” Moxie said, “but I still try to find out everything that’s happening in this town. So?”

“So?”

“So what’s happening, Snicket? Tell me what’s going on.”

She put her fingers down on the keys, ready to type whatever I was going to say. Her fingers looked ready to work.

“Do you generally know everything that’s happening in this town?” I asked.

“Of course,” she said.

“Really, Moxie?”

“Really, Snicket. Tell me what’s going on and maybe I can help you.”

I stopped looking at her typewriter and looked at her eyes. Their color was pretty interesting, too—a dark gray, like they’d once been black but somebody had washed them or perhaps had made her cry for a long time. “Can I tell you without you writing it down?” I asked.

“Off the record, you mean?”

“Off the record, yes.”

She reached under the typewriter and clicked something, and the whole apparatus folded into a square with a handle, like a black metal suitcase. It was a neat trick. “What is it?”

I looked back down the stairs to make sure nobody else was listening. “I’m trying to solve a mystery,” I said, “concerning the Bombinating Beast.”

“The mythical creature?”

“No, a statue of it.”

“That old gimcrack?” she said with a laugh. “Come on up.”

She stood and ran quickly up the spiral staircase, her shoes making the sort of racket that might give your mother a headache, if you have that sort of mother. I followed her up a few curves to a large room with high ceilings and piles of junk that were almost as high. There were a few large, dusty machines with cobwebbed cranks and buttons that hadn’t been pressed for years. There were tables with chairs stacked on them, and piles of paper shoved underneath desks. You could tell it had been a busy room once, but now Moxie and I were the only people in it, and all that busyness was just a ghost.

“This is the newsroom,” she said. “The Stain’d Lighthouse was here on the waterfront, typing up stories day and night, and this was the center of the whole operation. We’d develop photographs in the basement, and reporters would type up stories in the lantern room. We’d print the paper with ink made just that day, and we’d let the papers dry on the long hawser that runs right out the window.”

“Hawser?” I said, and she clomped to the window and opened it. Outside, hanging high over the trees, was a long, thick cable that ran straight down the hill toward the gleaming windows of the mansion I’d just visited.

“It looks like that goes right down to the Sallis place,” I said.

“The Mallahans and the Sallises have been friends for generations,” Moxie said. “We got our water from the well on their property, and our science and garden reporters did research on their grounds. Our copy editor rented their guest cottage, and we would turn on the lighthouse lantern for midnight badminton parties. Of course, all that’s gone now.”

“Why?”

“Not enough ink,” Moxie said. “The industry is down to its last few schools of octopi. This whole town is fading, Snicket. There’s a library, and a police station, and a few other places open for business, but more than half of the buildings in town are completely unpeopled. The Stain’d Lighthouse had to shut down publication. Most inkworkers have been fired. The train passes through about once a month. Soon Stain’d-by-the-Sea will be gone completely. My mother got a letter from the city and left for a job with another newspaper.”

“When are you joining her?” I asked.

Moxie looked quietly out the window for a moment, giving me an idea about who had made her cry. “As soon as I can,” she said with a sigh, and I realized it had been the wrong thing to say.

“The Bombinating Beast,” I reminded her.

“Oh, right,” she said, and walked over to a table covered in a sheet. “The Bombinating Beast was sort of the mascot of the newspaper. Its body made the S in Stain’d. Legend has it that hundreds of years ago Lady Mallahan slew the Bombinating Beast on one of her voyages. So my family has quite the collection of Bombinating merchandise, although no one’s ever cared about it except—”

“Snicket!” Theodora’s voice came from the bottom of the staircase. “Time to go!”

“Just one minute!” I called back.

“Right this minute, Snicket!” Theodora answered, but I didn’t leave right that minute. I stayed as Moxie drew back the sheet to reveal another table piled with items nobody wanted. The sea horse face of the Bombinating Beast wasn’t any less hideous no matter how many times I saw it. There were three stuffed Bombinating Beasts that you might give to a baby you wanted to frighten, and a deck of cards with Bombinating Beasts printed on the back. There were Bombinating Beast coffee mugs and Bombinating Beast cereal bowls stacked up with Bombinating Beast napkins on Bombinating Beast place mats. But beside this beastly meal, next to the Bombinating Beast ashtray and the Bombinating Beast candleholders, was an object very shiny and black in color. Moxie had called it a gimcrack, and Mrs. Murphy Sallis had called it a priceless item. It was about the size of a bottle of milk and said to be valued at upward of a great deal of money. It was the Bombinating Beast, the statue we were looking for, as dusty and forgotten as the rest of the items in the room.