Floors: (4 page)

Leo opened the duck elevator and crawled inside, where he found that Remi was right.

The purple box didn’t just have Merganzer’s head on it. There were two words on the box as well, words that had been covered by a feather before, but were now clear as day.

  
For Leo

Bernard sat in the backseat of the black town car as Milton raced through town, speeding past yellow cabs on an errand of the highest importance.

“I think this will do just fine,” Bernard said as he watched the world race by. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Oh yes,” said Milton, pulling to a stop at a red light and staring into the rearview mirror. “I think we’ve got the right person for the job.”

“Let’s hope so.”

Milton riffled through his silver briefcase and removed a file folder.

“The files you were asking about? This is the first. It wasn’t easy to find, let me tell you.”

“Thank you, Milton. I do believe this is going to turn out marvelously.”

Bernard Frescobaldi took the folder as the car lurched forward. They would be driving for a while, plenty of time to read more about Merganzer D. Whippet. Bernard knew he had to understand the man’s past in order to complete his plan. There were clues here, he was sure. He knew how rare these documents were, how hard they must have been to find. They could prove useless in the end, these old papers, but they could also reveal a clue that would help him get what he wanted.

Bernard searched the sky with his dancing eyes, nodding his head with assurance as he closed the folder. He had big plans for the hotel and the vast land it sat on, and more information than anyone else who might be trying to bring these things under their control.

“What are you hiding, Mr. Whippet?” he asked.

T
he elevator had been so crammed with ducks on the way up to the roof that Leo couldn’t properly examine the purple box. He’d counted the minutes while the elevator rose ever so slowly. Betty had held a sideways gaze on Leo, like she was sure he was hiding more snacks, and now he felt glad to be going back down, alone at last with a box that had his name on it.

There were many ways into the maintenance tunnels of the Whippet Hotel, one of which required stopping between floors in the duck elevator. This Leo did, pulling the lever to the middle position just two minutes into the ride. The duck elevator stopped and Leo turned a latch on the roof, popping it open to the
shaft above. The opening wasn’t very big, but it was large enough for Leo to slide the wooden box through and set it carefully to the side. Leo climbed through the opening as well and realized he’d stopped late. The round hole to the maintenance tunnel was almost out of reach, but not quite. Leo stretched up and pushed the purple box into the darkness of the tunnel.

His walkie-talkie squawked to life.

“Leo, come in. You there?”

It was his father. Leo’s heart sank. He pulled the walkie-talkie from its latch and clicked the red button.

“Yeah, I’m here. Coming down from the roof.”

He stared up at the large hole and wished he hadn’t once again let the box out of his sight.

“New short-stays on six say the AC is out,” his father reported. “Can you double back?”

Leo rolled his eyes. The air-conditioning on the sixth floor worked fine; it just had an unusual way of turning on that Ms. Sparks never wanted to explain.

“I’m on it. Give me five.”

“Perfect. After that, head over to that water leak in tunnel number eight. I’ll be there working on the pipes.”

“See you when I get there,” said Leo. He was between floors four and five, but there were ladders he could use in the tunnel system to get where he needed to go. Best to stay with the box if he could, so he didn’t lose it.

Leo reached down into the elevator and pulled up on the lever, feeling himself move slowly upward. When the opening to the maintenance tunnel was a foot away, he jumped in. Turning back, Leo flipped the top shut on the elevator and heard it snap closed, then watched it go by on its way back to the roof.

Finally, he had a chance to sit in the light of the twisting tunnels and get a look inside the box. It took only a moment for Leo to discover he could slide off the top, which he did. What he saw made him gasp with delight.

“Where in the world is this place?” he whispered to himself. Looking inside the box was sort of like staring into a house with the roof torn off. There were walls and rooms and curves, and he could peer inside and see it all. From the top, the walls made a rat’s maze of five circles, each circle smaller than the last. There were round rooms inside, too, growing smaller as they neared the center. Closer and closer to the center the circles went, but that wasn’t all. All the pathways were filled with brightly colored hoops of different shapes and sizes, turned at different angles. It was a marvel of ingenuity — intricate and perfect — and yet totally wacky.

Is it a ring of rooms or a room of rings?
Leo wondered.
I think it must be both at once. How odd.

Leo was leaning in for a closer inspection, pointing his standard-issue flashlight into the purple box, when his walkie-talkie came to life again. This time it was Ms. Sparks.

She was cranky.

“Leo Fillmore, if you’re in the building, pick up. NOW.”

He wanted desperately to turn off the walkie-talkie and figure out what the Room of Rings or the Ring of Rooms was supposed to mean. Why on earth had it shown up in a box with his name on it?

Leo pushed the button on the walkie-talkie.

“I’m heading to six now. Just need a few minutes more.”

“You haven’t fixed that AC problem yet?” yelled Ms. Sparks, her voice bouncing off the tunnel walls. “Do you realize who’s in there? He’s worth about a zillion dollars and his daughter gets very cranky in the heat. If she’s cranky, HE’S cranky. Get on it, Fillmore!”

“Almost there,” Leo said.

“And get back to the lobby the moment you’re done. Remi needs a bathroom break and YOU need to watch the door. There’s been too much mischief around here lately.”

What did she mean by mischief? Was it the black town car or the ducks in the lobby, or something else? Whatever the reason, Ms. Sparks was on the alert, and Leo took that as a bad sign.

He couldn’t believe how busy his day was getting. AC units, water pipes, door duty, duck walking — his head was spinning as he grabbed the purple lid and saw what he hadn’t seen before. On the underside was taped a fancy envelope. A message had been written above the envelope, on the wood of the box itself, in Merganzer’s big and round writing, which Leo recognized instantly.

Leo felt an immediate sense of goodwill and comfort. Merganzer D. Whippet only spoke in such strange turns of phrase when he was at his happiest, like when they were flying up the Double Helix and he would scream, “Dancing sharks go jumping Bob!” Mr. Whippet was the smartest man Leo had ever met
most
of the time, but his happiness brought out a wild glee that tumbled out of his mouth like candy.

Floor and three and one half
had an authentic Whippet ring to it.

“LEOOOOOOOOOO!” Ms. Sparks screamed into the walkie-talkie.

Leo turned the volume dial down, her voice growing quieter, as if she were falling down an elevator shaft.

He turned his attention to the fancy envelope, carefully pulling it free from the lid of the purple box. Time stood still for Leo as he opened and read the note. No thoughts of a zillionaire with a cranky daughter. No Ms. Sparks or leaky pipes.

There was only the letter and the box.

Leo felt the weight of the entire hotel resting on his shoulders. Was it really up to him, a ten-year-old boy, to save the hotel? And what did four weird boxes have to do with saving a hotel, anyway?

He looked at the walkie-talkie, the red light blinking on and off: Ms. Sparks or his father, no doubt. He’d stayed too long exploring the purple box of rings. Leo put the fancy envelope and the letter in the front pocket of his overalls and started to put the lid back on the box. As he did, he heard his father’s voice echoing down the maintenance tunnel.

“Leo? You in there?”

Leo slid the cover of the box quietly until it was firmly back in place. Then he picked it up, searching for a place to hide it before his father came lumbering around a corner. The tunnel was narrow but tall, filled with all sorts of pipes and meters, and it snaked all the way around the building in a complete circle. This was one of the oddities of the Whippet Hotel: It was true that there were nine floors, but there was a lot of space between each floor. The tunnels ran all through many of those sections, with ladder tubes here and there between the floors the guests stayed on. Leo had long since memorized every nook and cranny of the tunnel system, and one thing was abundantly clear: There was no place to hide a purple box where his father wouldn’t see it.