LITMIR.BIZ

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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.

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