"Who Could That Be at This Hour?" (All the Wrong Questions) by Lemony Snicket Page A

beginning to set behind the tall tower in the shape of a pen. I tried to think about the statue of the Bombinating Beast, but my mind wandered, first to the caves I had seen, where frightened octopi were giving uptheir ink, and then to a bigger, deeper hole back in the city. I told myself to stop thinking about things I couldn’t do anything about, and looked out the window as the taxi passed the Sallis mansion and continued on up the hill.
    “Has your father ever driven Mrs. Sallis anyplace?” I asked.
    “I don’t think so,” Pip replied. “When the Sallis family was in town, they had their own chauffeur.”
    “Aren’t they in town now?”
    “If they are, nobody told us,” Squeak said from the floor of the car.
    In a few minutes we had passed the small white cottage, and Squeak brought the taxi to an expert stop in front of the lighthouse door. “Do you want us to stick around and drive you back into town later?” Pip asked me.
    “No, thanks,” I said.
    “Well, I hope you know what you’re doing,coming out here without a way to get back,” Pip said, and reached around to open my door. “How about a tip?”
    “Here’s a tip,” I said. “Next time you’re at the library, check out a book about a champion of the world.”
    “By that author with all the chocolate?”
    “Yes, but this one’s even better. It has some very good chapters in it.”
    “That’s the kind of tip we can use,” Squeak said. “Pip reads to me between fares.”
    I shut the door behind me and gave the window of the cab a knock good-bye. Pip waved, and the taxi drove off. I waited until the sound of the engine had faded, and then stood for a moment looking up at the lighthouse. I hoped the same thing the two substitute drivers of Bellerophon Taxi hoped: that I knew what I was doing. I doubted it. I heard the eerie rustle of the wind through the seaweed of the Clusterous Forest,far below me, and then in front of me the more ordinary sound of a door opening.
    “Lemony Snicket,” said a voice.
    I turned to look at the girl who had spoken. “What’s the news, Moxie?”
    “You tell me,” she said. “You’re the one who showed up at my door.”
    I squinted into the dim sky until I could see the faint, thick line of the hawser stretched out above me and angling down the hill. Why not, I thought, and turned back to Moxie Mallahan. “I’d like to extend an invitation,” I said.
    She gave me a small smile. “Oh yes? For what?”
    “For a burglary taking place this evening at your home,” I said, and walked through the door.



CHAPTER SIX
    “That’s a very kind invitation, Snicket,” Moxie said to me, “but I’m not sure if it counts as a burglary if the item being stolen isn’t treasured by its owner.”
    “What do you mean?” I asked her.
    Moxie blinked at me under the brim of her hat. “You know what I mean, Snicket. You’re here to steal the Bombinating Beast, aren’t you?”
    “How did you know?”
    Moxie walked to her typewriter, which satin its usual spot on the stairway, with a sheet of paper still rolled into it. She scanned the paper to reread what she had typed earlier. “A stranger knocked on my door,” she said, “with an older woman who briefly pretended to be his wife. The stranger asked to see a particular item and was clearly surprised that I showed it to him. And here you are, talking about burglary. So?”
    “You’re a very good journalist,” I told her.
    “Flattery bores me, Snicket. Are you here to steal the statue or not?”
    “Yes,” I decided to say. “Do you mind terribly?”
    Her smile got quite a bit bigger. “Not at all,” she said, and leaned against the open door of the lighthouse. She adjusted a knob on her typewriter and then looked me straight in the eye. She wasn’t taller than I was, but I still had to look up to meet her gaze, as I had been taught never to do. “Lemony Snicket, I think it’stime to tell me exactly what’s going on.”
    “Are you really writing