Chapter Seven Summary

Klaus, Violet and the masked boy reach the top of the chimney at the beginning of Chapter Seven and climb up into a long passageway that has a little morning light shining in through a hole in the ceiling. The masked boy explains that the passage leads to the center of the Valley of Four Drafts where the four winds disperse the smoke so nobody will notice it. He also shows them a small package of green cigarette-like tubes the same as those that Esme Squalor had tried to smoke in the previous chapter.

The tubes are not cigarettes, he tells the Baudelaires, but signaling flares called Verdant Flammable Devices to alert other members of the VFD, called "volunteers," that there is trouble. Violet and Klaus recall having seen such a device hidden in the drawer of their father's desk and...