A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Slippery Slope Read Online Free PDF

hands. It was true that she had been crying for most of the day, thoroughout a long drive that even the most dedicated of researchers would be unable to trace, and now as the sun set, she still had not been able to stop herself. But at Count Olaf's words, she was almost more irritated than frightened. It is always tedious when someone says that if you don't stop crying, they will give you something to cry about, because if you are crying than you already have something to cry about, and so there is no reason for them to give you anything additional to cry about, thank you very much. Sunny Baudelaire certainly felt she had sufficient reason to weep. She was worried about her siblings, and wondered how they were going to stop the runaway caravan from hurtling them to their doom. She was frightened for herself, now that Count Olaf had discovered her disguise, torn off her beard, and trapped her on Esme's lap. And she was in pain, from the constant pinching of the villain's girlfriend. "No pinch," she said to Esme, but the wicked and stylish woman just frowned as if Sunny had spoken nonsense. "When she's not crying," Esme said, "the baby talks in some foreign language. I can't understand a thing she's saying." "Kidnapped children are never any fun," said the hook-handed man, who was perhaps Sunny's least favorite of Olaf's troupe. "Remember when we had the Quagmires in our clutches, boss? They did nothing but complain. They complained when we put them in a cage. They complained when we trapped them inside a fountain. Complain, complain, complain, I was so sick of them I was almost glad when they escaped from our clutches." "Glad?" Count Olaf said with a snarl. "We worked hard to steal the Quagmire fortune, and we didn't get a single sapphire. That was a real waste of time." "Don't blame yourself, Olaf," said one of the white-faced women from the back seat. "Everybody makes mistakes." "Not this time," Olaf said. "With the two orphans squashed someplace underneath a crashed caravan and the baby orphan on your lap, the Baudelaire fortune is mine. And once we reach the Valley of Four Drafts and find the headquarters, all our worries will be over." "Why?" asked Hugo, the hunchbacked man who had previously been employed at the carnival. "Yes, please explain," said Kevin, another former carnival worker. At Caligari Carnival, Kevin had been embarrassed to be ambidextrous, but Esme had lured him into joining Olaf's troupe by tying Kevin's right hand behind his back, so no one would know it was as strong as his left. "Remember, boss, we're new to the troupe, so we don't always know what's going on." "I remember when I first joined Olaf's troupe," the other white-faced woman said. "I'd never even heard of the Snicket file." "Working for me is a hands-on learning experience," Olaf said. "You can't rely on me to explain everything to you. I'm a very busy man." "I'll explain it, boss," said the hook-handed man. "Count Olaf, like any good businessman, has committed a wide variety of crimes." "But these stupid volunteers have gathered all sorts of evidence and filed it away," Esme said. "I tried to explain that crime is very in right now, but apparently they weren't interested." Sunny wiped another tear from her eye and sighed. The youngest Baudelaire thought she'd almost rather be pinched again than hear any more of Esme Squalor's nonsense about what was in, the word that Esme used for "fashionable" and what was out. "We need to destroy those files, or Count Olaf could be arrested," the hook-handed man said. "We have reason to believe that some of the files are at V.F.D. headquarters." "What does V.F.D. stand for?" The voice of Colette came from the floor of the automobile. Count Olaf had ordered her to use her skills as a carnival contortionist to curl up at the feet of the other members of the troupe. "That's top-secret information!" Olaf growled, to Sunny's disappointment. "I used to be a member of the organization myself, but