The Penultimate Peril

The Baudelaires arrive at a hotel in the company of Kit Snicket, who explains that the building has been chosen as the meeting place for the volunteers of the organisation their parents served, and that the three of them are to work as concierges for two days while they try to identify a guest known only by two initials. The managers are identical twins, and one of them belongs to the other side. On the first day the children split up to look after the guests, who include a woman they have met before and her unpleasant daughter, the owners of a sawmill, a hotel employee, and several teachers from a school the orphans once attended, and each of the adults has something to say about the initials. The twins are Frank and Ernest, and only one of them is working for the side the orphans serve; the guest they are looking for is known as J.S.

The three compare the errands they were sent on and find that each of them was asked for something different. A poem their father liked gives Klaus a way to read the pattern.