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
