All three children thought of walking down the hall to Uncle Monty's room and waking him up to tell him what was wrong. But to get to his bedroom, they would have to walk past the room in which Stephano was staying, and all night long Stephano kept watch in a chair placed in front of his open door. When the orphans opened their doors to peer down the dark hallway, they saw Stephano's pale, shaved head, which seemed to be floating above his body in the darkness. And they could see his knife, which Stephano was moving slowly like the pendulum of a grandfather clock. Back and forth it went, back and forth, glinting in the dim light, and the sight was so fearsome they didn't dare try walking down the hallway.

Finally, the light in the house turned the pale blue-gray of early dawn, and the Baudelaire children walked blearily down the stairs to breakfast, tired and achy from their sleepless night. They sat around the table where they had eaten cake on their first morning at the house, and picked listlessly at their food. For the first time since their arrival at Uncle Monty's, they were not eager to enter the Reptile Room and begin the day's work.

"I suppose we have to go in now," Violet said finally, putting aside her scarcely nibbled toast. "I'm sure Uncle Monty has already started working, and is expecting us."

"And I'm sure that Stephano is there, too," Klaus said, staring glumly into his cereal bowl. "We'll never get a chance to tell Uncle Monty what we know about him."

"Yinga," Sunny said sadly, dropping her untouched raw carrot to the floor.

"If only Uncle Monty knew what we know," Violet said, "and Stephano knew that he knew what we know. But Uncle Monty doesn't know what we know, and Stephano knows that he doesn't know what we know."

"I know," Klaus said.

"I know you know," Violet said, "but what we don't know is what Count Olaf-I mean Stephano-is really up to. He's after our fortune, certainly, but how can he get it if we're under Uncle Monty's care?"

"Maybe he's just going to wait until you're of age, and then steal the fortune," Klaus said.

"Four years is a long time to wait," Violet said. The three orphans were quiet, as each remembered where they had been four years ago. Violet had been ten, and had worn her hair very short. She remembered that sometime around her tenth birthday she had invented a new kind of pencil sharpener. Klaus had been about eight, and he remembered how interested he had been in comets, reading all the astronomy books his parents had in their library. Sunny, of course, had not been born four years ago, and she sat and tried to remember what that was like. Very dark, she thought, with nothing to bite. For all three youngsters, four years did seem like a very long time.

"Come on, come on, you are moving very slowly this morning," Uncle Monty said, bursting into the room. His face seemed even brighter than usual, and he was holding a small bunch of folded papers in one hand. "Stephano has only worked here one day, and he's already in the Reptile Room. In fact, he was up before I was-I ran into him on my way down the stairs. He's an eager beaver. But you three- you're moving like the Hungarian Sloth Snake, whose top speed is half an inch per hour! We have lots to do today, and I'd like to catch the six o'clock showing of Zombies in the Snow tonight, so let's try to hurry, hurry, hurry."

Violet looked at Uncle Monty, and realized that this might be their only opportunity to talk to him alone, without Stephano around, but he seemed so wound up they weren't sure if he would listen to them. "Speaking of Stephano," she said timidly, "we'd like to talk to you about him."

Uncle Monty's eyes widened, and he looked around him as if there were spies in the room before leaning in to whisper to the children. "I'd like to talk to you, too," he said. "I have my suspicions about Stephano, and I'd like to discuss them with you."

The Baudelaire orphans looked at one another in relief. "You do?" Klaus said.

"Of course," Uncle Monty said. "Last night I began to get very suspicious about this new assistant of mine. There's something a little spooky about him, and I-" Uncle Monty looked around again, and began speaking even softer, so the children had to hold their breaths to hear him. "And I think we should discuss it outside. Shall we?"

The children nodded in agreement, and rose from the table. Leaving their dirty breakfast dishes behind, which is not a good thing to do in general but perfectly acceptable in the face of an emergency, they walked with Uncle Monty to the front entryway, past the painting of two snakes entwined together, out the front door, and onto the lawn, as if they wanted to talk to the snake-shaped hedges instead of to one another.

"I don't mean to be vainglorious," Uncle Monty began, using a word which here means "braggy," "but I really am one of the most widely respected herpetologists in the world."

Klaus blinked. It was an unexpected beginning for the conversation. "Of course you are," he said, "but-"

"And because of this, I'm sad to say," Uncle Monty continued, as if he had not heard, "many people are jealous of me."

"I'm sure that's true," Violet said, puzzled.

"And when people are jealous," Uncle Monty said, shaking his head, "they will do anything. They will do crazy things. When I was getting my herpetology degree, my roommate was so envious of a new toad I had discovered that he stole and ate my only specimen. I had to X-ray his stomach, and use the X-rays rather than the toad in my presentation. And something tells me we may have a similar situation here."

What was Uncle Monty talking about?

"I'm afraid I don't quite follow you," Klaus said, which is the polite way of saying "What are you talking about, Uncle Monty?"

"Last night, after you went to bed, Stephano asked me a few too many questions about all the snakes and about my upcoming expedition. And do you know why?"

"I think so," Violet began, but Uncle Monty interrupted her.

"It is because this man who is calling himself Stephano," he said, "is really a member of the Herpetological Society, and he is here to try and find the Incredibly Deadly Viper so he can preempt my presentation. Do you three know what the word 'preempt' means?"

"No," Violet said, "but-"

"It means that I think this Stephano is going to steal my snake," Uncle Monty said, "and present it to the Herpetological Society. Because it is a new species, there's no way I can prove I discovered it. Before we know it, the Incredibly Deadly Viper will be called the Stephano Snake, or something dreadful like that. And if he's planning that, just think what he will do to our Peruvian expedition. Each toad we catch, each venom sample we put into a test tube, each snake interview we record-every scrap of work we do-will fall into the hands of this Herpetological Society spy."

"He's not a Herpetological Society spy," Klaus said impatiently, "he's Count Olaf!"

"I know just what you mean!" Uncle Monty said excitedly. "This sort of behavior is indeed as dastardly as that terrible man's. That is why I'm doing this." He raised one hand and waved the folded papers in the air. "As you know," he said, "tomorrow we are leaving for Peru. These are our tickets for the five o'clock voyage on the Prospero, a fine ship that will take us across the sea to South America. There's a ticket for me, one for Violet, one for Klaus, one for Stephano, but not one for Sunny because we're going to hide her in a suitcase to save money."

"Deepo!"

"I'm kidding about that. But I'm not kidding about this." Uncle Monty, his face flushed with excitement, took one of the folded papers and began ripping it into tiny pieces. "This is Stephano's ticket. He's not going to Peru with us after all. Tomorrow morning, I'm going to tell him that he needs to stay here and look after my specimens instead. That way we can run a successful expedition in peace."