If this account can be called a mystery, then Black Cat Coffee is a mystery inside a mystery. There were certainly mysterious things in the establishment. The shiny machinery in the center of the room—which produced bread or coffee, depending on which button you pressed—always worked perfectly, but I never saw anyone attending to it. The attic was a place where you could retrieve packages, but I never saw anyone delivering them. The player piano played tunes I couldn’t identify.
But these aren’t what I mean. I don’t care who oiled the machinery of Black Cat Coffee and made sure the bins were full of flour and roasted beans, or who delivered the boxes of books filled with blank pages or gears used in botanical extraction. The music doesn’t matter to me. The real mystery of Black Cat Coffee is the girl with the curved eyebrows and the unreadable smile, who was there at the counter when I arrived, an empty cup and saucer in front of her and another one steaming in front of the neighboring stool. Her hair was still pinned up, but my coat lay folded on the counter.
“I told myself that if you weren’t here by the time this coffee cooled,” she said, “then you wouldn’t be here at all.”
“I told you I would meet you,” I said.
“You didn’t even hide that,” she said, and pointed at the Bombinating Beast.
“True,” I said, although I kept it tucked underneath my arm.
“Are you going to give it back to me?”
“Are you going to tell me what it is?”
“It’s a statue of an imaginary beast.”
“It’s more than that, and you know it.”
“I only know that Hangfire wants it.”
“Then why hasn’t he gotten it from you?”
Ellington shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “Have a seat, Mr. Snicket. Have some coffee.”
She patted the neighboring stool, and I sat down but pushed the coffee away. “You know I’m a teetotaler when it comes to coffee.”
“You would like it if you tried it.”
“I prefer root beer.”
“I’ve looked all over this town for root beer for you,” she said. “I even checked for it yesterday, when I was fooling the woman at Partial Foods. They don’t carry it.”
“I know,” I said. “It’s one of the many drawbacks of this town.”
She sipped my coffee. “What are the others?”
The disappointments of Stain’d-by-the-Sea seemed too numerous to list. “This town is far from people I would prefer to be closer to,” I said, “and it’s in the shadow of the treachery of a terrible villain.”
“I suppose that’s what brought us both here,” she said.
“No,” I said. “I’m here because my chaperone is here.”
“But why is she here?”
“It’s complicated,” I said. “It’s like a story so long that you end up getting lost in it. Do you know that one about the big fight over an apple and a pretty woman?”
“The one that ends with a hollow statue and a ghost who likes to bury things? My father was reading me that when he disappeared.” She finished the coffee and turned the cup upside down on the saucer. It was a nice gesture to watch. “Every night, my father would get home from his fieldwork and leave his boots on the porch. It was during the floods, and his boots got so muddy there was no use washing them. He’d cook dinner in his socks, and then I’d do the dishes, and he’d pour himself a glass of wine and read me a chapter of something before we put the lights out.”
“It sounds like a cozy life,” I said.
“It was.” Ellington’s voice was far away, and I could scarcely hear her over the sounds of the player piano. “My father is a naturalist, so our house was always filled with wildflowers from nearby meadows, or baby animals he had rescued, recuperating in old shoe boxes until they were healthy enough to be set free. And he was a lover of music, so he would wind up the record player first thing in the morning so we’d have music with our breakfast. Then one night I didn’t hear his boots on the porch, and now that music is all I have.”
I thought of the record player, still playing music in that shabby apartment. “I’m sorry you had to leave that behind,” I said, “but you might be able to get it back.”
“I still have this.” Ellington reached into her pocket and laid a small object between the two coffee cups. It looked like the old-fashioned record player, except it was the size of a deck of cards. She wound the tiny crank, and we both leaned forward to hear the little, tinkly music. “My father always carried this music box,” she said, “so he could have music with him no matter how far into the wilderness he went. He left it behind on the day he disappeared, so I’ve been taking care of it.”
“I recognize the tune,” I said, remembering the first night Ellington and I met. The same music had been playing out of the record player at Handkerchief Heights. It was a tune that was sad but not weepy, as if it were trying to say there was no point in bursting into tears when there was so much work to be done. “What’s it called?”
Ellington just shook her head. There are some secrets you want to keep to yourself, even if they don’t matter. They might only matter if you keep them secret.
“I saw the rescued tadpole,” I said, “in the bowl on the bathroom sink. Do you think your father was there?”
“I don’t know. But rescuing a little animal like that is definitely something he would do.”
“It might be little, but it’s fierce.” I held up my finger and showed her the tiny scab where I had been bitten.
“That looks like it hurts.”
“It hurts as much as it looks.”
“If my father were here, he could fix that,” Ellington said. “He would pluck the right herbs growing from cracks in the sidewalk and concoct something that would work in no time. He’s a brilliant scientist.”
“Stain’d-by-the-Sea needs brilliant scientists,” I said. “Perhaps soon your father and Cleo Knight will be working side by side to stop this town from disappearing completely.”
“In the meantime,” Ellington said with a sigh, “we’re alone. We’re alone and it’s difficult. Don’t you find it difficult to be alone, Mr. Snicket?”
I put down the bundle I was holding, the mysterious statue covered in a blanket. “I don’t know,” I said. “I was taught not to mind.”
“Who would teach you a thing like that? S. Theodora Markson?”
“No, no, I learned it long before she became my chaperone.”
“Oh yes,” she said. “You told me you had an unusual education, but you didn’t tell me the details.”
“I don’t like thinking about the details.”
“Digging a tunnel, you told me once. Digging a tunnel to the basement of a museum.”
“That’s right.”
“There are no more museums in Stain’d-by-the-Sea.”
“No,” I said. “There aren’t.”
“So you’re not doing the digging. Someone else is.”
“Yes.”
“Someone you would prefer to be closer to, like you said.”
“Yes.”
“So I guess you mind being alone after all.”
“I told you, they taught us not to mind,” I said. “They can teach you anything. That doesn’t mean you learn it. It doesn’t mean you believe it.”
“Then can’t you go and help whoever is digging that tunnel?”
“No,” I said. “I need to stay here.”
“Because of you,” I said. “I promised to help you. Don’t you remember, Ms. Feint?”
Ellington looked at me, and her green eyes filled with water. “Yes,” she said. “Mr. Snicket, my father is such a gentle man. He must be very frightened, wherever he is. How can we find him?”
“If we find Cleo Knight,” I said, “I think we’ll find your father. Cleo is a brilliant chemist, and your father is a brilliant naturalist. Hangfire is collecting brilliant people and forcing them to do terrible things.”
“My father would never do anything terrible.”
I did not answer. I did not know the man. It seemed to me that every adult did something terrible sooner or later. And every child, I thought, sooner or later becomes an adult. I did not like to think this, so I listened instead to the sounds of the player piano tangling with the sounds of Armstrong Feint’s music box. I listened until a new sound joined in, a sound I was sad to recognize. It was the sound of a boy about my age, leaning out the window of a station wagon pretending to be a siren. In moments the Officers Mitchum were striding into Black Cat Coffee, followed by their sneering son and a great heap of wild yarn. I had to blink three times before realizing that the yarn was actually S. Theodora Markson, with her hair looking even crazier than it normally did.
“Snicket!” she cried. “There you are!”
“S!” I couldn’t resist answering. “Here I am.”
“These officers were looking for you, Snicket. They interrupted me in the middle of a shampoo. I told them that you like to waste your days here, mooning over your cupidity for Elaine.”
“Her name is Ellington Feint,” I said, “and she is sitting right here.”
“We’re not interested in where your friends are sitting,” Harvey Mitchum told me. “We’re interested in what you’re up to.”
“My chaperone told me to make myself scarce until dinnertime,” I said.
“Did she also tell you to send the police on a wild-goose chase?” demanded Mimi Mitchum. “You wasted the time of the law, and of the law’s son, who could have been doing something more constructive with his time.”
“It’s true,” Stew said to me with a phoniness the adults had no ear to catch. “I was going to give myself a spelling test, but instead you wasted my afternoon.”
It was useless to argue that Stew Mitchum was more likely going to continue his antics with his slingshot, which was sticking prominently out of his pocket.
“You told us to go see the Knight family,” Harvey Mitchum said. “You told us silly things about Dr. Flammarion. But instead—”
“Let me tell it, Harvey,” Mimi said. “I’m better at telling stories.”
“You are not!”
“I am so! Remember that time I told a story at that tea party that our friends’ mother held at that restaurant that used to be on the corner near the dry cleaner’s where that man used to—”
“You see?” Harvey Mitchum crowed in triumph. “That story is boring already, and you haven’t even told it!”
“If I haven’t told it, how could it be boring?”
“You could make anything boring, Mimi! You’re like a magic wand of boring!”
“Well, you’re like a magic wand of bad breath!”
“I get bad breath because I eat what you cook!”
“That’s right! You never do the cooking!”
Ellington Feint hadn’t spent much time with the Officers Mitchum, but she instinctively knew that the only way to stop them from arguing was to interrupt. “Excuse me,” she said, “but what happened when you went to see the Knights?”
Harvey Mitchum gave her an irritated frown. “Nothing happened,” he said. “The Knights have left Stain’d-by-the-Sea. The entire Ink Inc. building is boarded up, like almost every other building in town.”
I thought of what Zada and Zora had said. What could they do, if Mr. and Mrs. Knight gave the word to leave? They were only the servants. “Are the housekeepers gone?”
“Everyone’s gone. You led us to an empty building, Snicket, and we went to your chaperone to find out why.”
“I’ll tell you why,” I said. “Because I’m trying to solve the Cleo Knight case.”
“There is no Cleo Knight case,” Theodora said firmly. “As I told the officers, no crime has been committed. We know that the Knight girl ran away to join the circus, and we know that her parents moved out of the city.”
“We know no such thing,” I said. I turned to the officers. “Did you find Dr. Flammarion? Did you talk to him?”
Mimi Mitchum shook her head at me in that way that no one likes to have a head shaken at them. “In the first place,” she said, “Dr. Flammarion is a respected apothecary. And in the second place, well, there’s not really a second place. The case is closed.”
“But Miss Knight’s car is still parked in front of Partial Foods.”
“Be sensible, Snicket. Miss Knight was seen leaving Partial Foods and getting into a cab.”
“That wasn’t Miss Knight,” Ellington said calmly. “That was me.”
“You?” Harvey Mitchum said sternly.
“Yes. I was playing a trick on that grocer.”
“So you and the Snicket lad were fooling us together?”
“Mr. Snicket knew nothing of this,” Ellington said, “until he ran into me here.”
I once had a pair of pants that fit me like Ellington’s story fit the truth. They fell down as soon as I took a few steps.
“Then I’m afraid you’re under arrest,” Mimi Mitchum said sternly, and grabbed Ellington’s arm. “Playing tricks is called fraud, and fraud is a crime.”
“This isn’t right,” I said. “You should be looking for Miss Knight, not arresting Ms. Feint.”
“Don’t tell us our business,” Harvey Mitchum said sternly. “This girl was involved in robbery not long ago, and now is guilty of fraud. It’s still too early to make assumptions, but it wouldn’t be surprising if she were involved in all of the other suspicious shenanigans around town.”
“Like those threats to the library,” Mimi said.
“Or those stolen melons,” her husband said.
“Or the broken glass in that alley.”
Harvey Mitchum looked Ellington Feint straight in her green eyes. “You’re in a great deal of trouble, young lady. You’ll likely be on the next train to the city, where you will be imprisoned for your crimes. In the meantime, we’ll take you down to the station and lock you up until all of us know what’s what.”
I did not like to think about how long it would take for all of us to know what was what. My own chaperone did not yet know how to acceptably style her hair, and she’d been growing it for years. The Officers Mitchum marched Ellington out the door, and I put on my coat and tucked the Bombinating Beast under my arm before following them.
“What a beautiful blankie,” Stewart cooed to me, pointing at the light blue fringe.
“I’m glad you like it,” I told him, “but it’s not for sale.”
“It’s too bad you don’t want to do business with me,” he said, giving me a very dark look. “I’m going to be very important around here.”
“You already are,” I said. “You’re the sweetest boy the town’s ever seen.”
“Keep joking,” Stew said. “You just keep on joking and see where it gets you.”
“I guess I should be scared,” I said. “You’re good with a slingshot.”
The officers’ son leaned in close. “And I have a friend,” he murmured, “who is good with a knife.”
I blinked at him and saw him in a new light, a phrase which here means that I no longer thought he was harmless. We are all told to ignore bullies. It’s something they teach you, and they can teach you anything. It doesn’t mean you learn it. It doesn’t mean you believe it. One should never ignore bullies. One should stop them.
“Hop in, Snicket,” Harvey Mitchum said, hopping in himself. It was apparently his turn to drive. “We’ll give you and your chaperone a ride as far as the station.”
“Very kind of you,” Theodora said. “I’m sorry my youngster was so much trouble.”
The adults piled into the front of the car, and the children got into the back, which is the way of the world. Stew leaned his head out of the window and started sirening, and Ellington looked straight ahead and did not say anything to me. I let her think things through and listened to the adults. The difficulty of caring for children, they said. Disobedience, they said. Authority. A difficult age. When they were children, they never would have dared to do what children do nowadays without batting an eye. If their grandparents were alive to see this, they would roll in their graves. I began to listen to the sputter of the station wagon instead. It made more sense.
The Mitchums parked, and we walked across the lawn, past the statue that had melted in the explosion. We walked up the steps and into the station. The station looked even less impressive than it had that morning. Maybe it was because that morning I’d thought the police might do the right thing. They led Ellington Feint to the far end of the room and put her in the cell. I watched her sit down on the cot, and Stew took this opportunity to kick me in the calf while nobody else was looking. He kicked hard. I wished I had the biting tadpole handy. The adults were still shaking their heads over the sad state of today’s youth, so I went to Ellington and looked over her situation.
“It’s an ordinary enough pin tumbler lock,” I said to her in a quiet murmur. “You can do it with one of your hairpins. Think of the lock as containing a tiny chest of drawers. If you open all of the drawers the exact right amount, the lock will open.”
She gave me a tiny nod. “I won’t be able to do it,” she murmured back, “unless you lure them away.”
“The police are on to my tricks,” I said, “but I’ll try to give them a real reason to leave the station. In the meantime, at least you’re safe.”
“Anything is safe,” she said, “if it’s locked in here.”
I stepped back, just slightly. Ellington stood up from the cot.
“Give it to me,” she said. “It’s the best place for it.”
“Come along now, Snicket,” Theodora called to me. “We’ve been in these officers’ hair long enough.”
It was impossible not to smile when Theodora said the word “hair.” Ellington smiled too. “She’ll ask you what it is,” she said.
“She’ll notice.”
“Well, then I’ll tell her.”
“You won’t tell her.”
But Theodora had reached me. “What’s that?” she said, frowning at what I was holding. I looked at Ellington Feint. Ellington Feint watched me.
“It’s my security blanket,” I said.
“Security blanket?” Theodora repeated with a frown. “Be sensible, Snicket. It’s not proper for someone of your age to have a security blanket. Give it to me.”
“I thought I would give it to Ms. Feint,” I said, “in case she found it difficult to be alone.”
“I’m teaching myself not to mind,” Ellington said quietly.
“They can teach you anything,” I said, and took the statue from underneath my arm. Even covered by a childish blanket, it felt dark, and mysterious, and even menacing. I felt its weight in my hands as I passed it through the bars. They can teach you anything. It doesn’t mean you learn it. It doesn’t mean you believe it. I couldn’t believe it myself, that I was giving Ellington Feint the Bombinating Beast.