Floors: (14 page)

Remi leaned out as they entered the darkness, Leo’s flashlight guiding the way, the gold ring within his reach. But this time, he leaned too far.

“Remi!” yelled Leo.

Pointing the flashlight at Remi’s car, he saw his friend dangling along the tracks as they flew by. The only thing holding Remi and Blop in the car was Remi’s tennis shoe, which had caught on the door. They exited the first tunnel as Remi’s red jacket flapped in the wind and he tried, without success, to grab hold of the train car door. All nine rings flew out of his pocket, bouncing along the tracks behind them.

“Take my hand!” Leo yelled, unbuckling his seat belt and holding out his arm. A sharp right turn was seconds
away, and Leo knew if he didn’t get Remi in time, his shoe would come loose and Remi and Blop would go flying into the trees.

“Come on! Grab my hand! Now, Remi!”

Remi held his hands over his head just as they entered the turn and the shoe came unhooked from the train car. Leo had Remi by the hands, and as they rounded the sharp turn, he was nearly pulled out of his own car. Remi flew wide through the air, like a trapeze artist holding on to a partner. When the track turned straight again, Leo pulled hard and Remi tumbled into the second car, knocking Leo onto the floor.

“I lost it!” yelled Remi, pulling Leo up onto the seat by his overalls. “I lost the gold ring!”

But Remi needn’t have worried, because the gold ring was safely held in Leo’s hand.

“I have it,” he said. It was big, about as wide around as a billiard ball, and Remi thought it looked like a ring fit for a giant. There was a string attached to the ring, and attached to the string was an envelope the size of a postage stamp.

The train was nearing the second tunnel, and as it did, both boys saw flames.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Leo. The dragon in the second tunnel was breathing a steady stream of fire that filled the darkness. Without warning, the two
cars began to tilt backward, until they locked into place with Leo and Remi lying flat on their backs, staring at the ceiling of the railroad room.

“What’s happening?” Remi asked, looking to Leo for help.

“No time for seat belts; just hold on as tight as you can!”

When the train engine neared the tunnel, it cut the cars loose, racing through the fire all by itself. A hole opened in the floor, but Leo and Remi couldn’t see it.

“Double Helix time!” yelled Leo.

“What do you mean, Double Helix time?” Remi yelled back.

The two cars dropped into the hole, missing the dragon flames by inches, and careened down the center of the hotel.

“Awesooooooooooooome!” Remi howled, for he’d never been on the Double Helix before.

“I knew I recognized these cars,” Leo said, trying his best to hold on as the Double Helix spun them down five stories. Or was it six? The Double Helix lurched to a stop and Remi banged his head on the padded rail.

“Are you okay?” Leo asked worriedly.

“Are you
kidding
? Best hour of my life!” said Remi. He looked around the dark space and added, with grave concern, “Where’s Blop?”

Both boys checked the jacket and the floor of the train car, but Blop was nowhere to be found.

“He must have flown out of your pocket in the Railroad Room,” Leo said.

Remi looked like his dog had run away, his cat had been hit by a car, and his mother had grounded him for a week.

“What if he’s smashed to pieces? What if we never find him?”

Leo was worried, but in a way, he was a little bit relieved to have left Blop in the Railroad Room. Merganzer D. Whippet built things tough, and Leo was sure Blop was rolling around, talking to the trees and the bushes and the grass.

“Don’t worry. Blop is a very sturdy robot. We’ll find him.”

Remi brightened just a little. “You think?”

Leo put a hand on his buddy’s shoulder. “Trust me, we’ll find him.”

Remi took a deep breath, nodded a couple of times, and seemed to regain some of the excitement he’d lost.

“I’ve never known the Double Helix to stop below ground,” Leo said, glancing from side to side. “I think we’re
under
the Whippet.”

Both boys got out and stood next to the car, looking up into the tunnel they’d just fallen through. They were
standing at the bottom of the shaft, where a ladder led up to a metal-grated landing.

“That’s the lobby right there,” Leo said, pointing up. “But we’re ten feet below that.”

Leo scratched his head and looked at the gold ring. He noticed the postage stamp–size note tied with a string, and he was just about to take a closer look when Remi whispered.

“There it is.”

“There’s what?”

Leo followed Remi’s gaze into the corner of the shaft. It was the same size as the others, but this one was bright green.

They’d lost a robot, but they’d found the third hidden box.

N
o matter how hard they pulled on the wooden cover, Leo and Remi could not get the green box open. They were afraid of breaking whatever was inside, so rather than smash it against the wall, they carried it up the metal ladder. Leo went first, holding the box, and Remi followed, which was how Remi saw the message first.

“Something’s written on the bottom.”

When they reached the landing, Leo lifted the box over his head and read the words.

“What do you think it means?” asked Remi, feeling
in his jacket pocket and wishing, badly, that Blop were hiding there.

“Maybe if we slide all three boxes together, this one will open,” said Leo.

“That’s a great idea!”

They opened the orange door that led back into the lobby, but only a little, and saw Remi’s mom sitting at the front desk. Leo left the green box behind and they crept out, bruised and battered, then shut the orange door behind them a little too loudly.

Remi’s mom turned in their direction and tilted her head, staring curiously at the two boys.

“Ms. Sparks isn’t back yet?” asked Remi, trying his best both to distract his mom and to act like nothing very exciting had happened in the past hour.

Pilar looked at her disheveled son and wondered why his hair was standing up wildly on top of his head.

“Leo, are you keeping my boy safe? I hope you’re staying out of trouble.”

“Oh yes, ma’am.
Very
safe,” said Leo, thinking as he said it that he’d almost allowed Remi to fall out of a moving train.

“I’d like to ride that thing sometime,” said Pilar, staring at the closed orange door. There was no hiding the fact that Leo and Remi had just ridden the Double
Helix, but she didn’t seem to mind, switching to a different topic. “Jane Yancey says you tried to scare her. Is that true?”

Remi jumped in. “She just wants to follow us around and bug us to death,” he said. “You know how spoiled she is.”

Pilar put her finger to her lips and looked across the lobby toward the Puzzle Room. “Mr. Phipps is in there with Captain Rickenbacker. You know how he can be.”

Leo knew, all too well, that Captain Rickenbacker was a terrible gossip who loved to entertain himself by stirring up trouble. If he’d heard them, he’d surely tell Mr. Yancey what they thought of his daughter for the pure plea sure of seeing the sparks fly.

“Shoo,” said Pilar. “Ms. Sparks will be back at five o’clock sharp. I want you back at that door before she gets here.”

Remi nodded his agreement and hurried off with Leo, glancing back at the door to the Double Helix and wishing they didn’t have to leave the green box behind.

“It’s a very small letter,” said Remi. “We’re going to need a magnifying glass.”

They had arrived in the empty basement and opened the tiny envelope tied to the gold dragon ring.

“I’ve got just the thing,” said Leo, going to one of the many toolboxes in the basement in search of a lens that had once been part of a pair of reading glasses. Mr. Phipps had bought the glasses at a thrift store, thinking they might help his reading, but they’d only given him head aches, so he’d passed them on to Leo.

As Leo passed by the call center, he saw a note left by his father with a list of jobs to do.

“What’s it say?” asked Remi. Leo had carried the note back with him to where Remi sat on the cot.

“I’ve got some work to do, and it sounds like Betty might need another walk.”

Remi didn’t seem to mind.

“I can walk the ducks if you need me to. I just wish we could get our hands on those boxes.”

It was true; they were losing boxes almost as fast as they were finding them. The purple box was tucked safely under Leo’s cot, but the blue one was in the Central Park Room, and the green one, which they hadn’t even opened yet, was sitting in the first car of the Double Helix, which gave Leo an idea.

“I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” he said. “I need to check in with Dad and fix the trouble on seven. That shouldn’t take more than an hour. We’ll tell your mom we need to get to the roof and fast or Betty and the rest of the ducks will revolt —”

“I see where you’re going,” Remi interrupted. “We’ll get the green box on the way up, then split up on the way down in the duck elevator.”

“You walk the ducks, I’ll finish my work, then we meet in the Central Park Room —”

“— where we’ll find the blue box and rescue Blop from the Railroad Room!”

Leo hadn’t thought about the part that included rescuing the robot, but they could cross that bridge when they came to it. Remi gave him the note that was in the envelope attached to the gold dragon ring, and the two boys leaned in close over the makeshift magnifying glass.

“How could anyone write so small?” asked Remi, but he was beginning to understand that a great many strange things could be found in the Whippet Hotel.

“That’s odd,” said Leo. “No one has stayed in that room for years.”

“What’s odd? What does the note say?”

Leo put his eye to the glass and read the note aloud.

“ ‘You are cordially invited to a dinner party on eight. Arrive 8 sharp. Do not be late! MR. M.’ “

“It has to be Merganzer! He’s here,” said Remi. “He’s come back.”

But Leo wasn’t so sure. There had been clues, but could it
really
be him, moving around in the hotel, secretly setting things in motion? He added things up in his head:

And now this: A very tiny invitation to a dinner party on the only haunted floor of the hotel. It was all quite mad, really, but more than that, there was something about the whole business that didn’t feel like Merganzer D. Whippet at all.

“I think there’s something else going on here,” Leo said, stepping to the call center to make a red Double Helix key card. “And I think you and I are going to get to the bottom of it.”

“I’m with you,” Remi said, standing up and putting the gold dragon ring in his jacket pocket. “Just tell me one thing. What’s on the eighth floor?”

Leo handed Remi the red key card and started for the door.

“It’s the Haunted Room. Didn’t you know?”

Remi’s face went pale. He hated ghosts and ghouls of any kind.