Hocus Pocus Hotel (5 page)

“You look like you ran into a wall,” said Charlie. “A couple of walls.”

Ty snorted. “Well, man, it's all over. I can't get rent money from a guy who jumped out a window. Even if he is a magician.”

Charlie looked at Ty's reflection in the mirror. “I'm not so sure of that,” he said.

“That he's a magician? He definitely is,” Ty said.

“No,” Charlie said. “That he really jumped out the window.”

“Are you kidding?” said Ty. He balled a towel up tightly in his fist. “Madagascar jumped out that window. We both saw him.”

“We need to go back upstairs,” said Charlie. “Before the police get here. We need to examine the scene of the crime. And,” he added, “we need to figure out what these are.” He pulled the strange plastic tubes from Madagascar's apartment out of his pocket.

“And figure out what those dates on them mean,” said Ty.

“The dates are from one week ago today,” said Charlie. “And didn't you say the lights were blinking off and on last week, too?”

Ty nodded thoughtfully. “Hey, have you noticed that the lights aren't blinking anymore?” he said.

Good call
, thought Charlie.

In fact, the lights had stopped flickering ever since Mr. Madagascar jumped. Was the blinking light somehow connected with the magician's disappearance?

“Okay, let's go back,” said Tyler, throwing down the towel. “Come on.”

Tyler and Charlie ran down a hall behind the Yus' apartment.

“There's a way back to the elevators around here,” called Ty.

When they got to the elevator bank, Mr. Brack's car was open. The boys quickly rushed inside.

“The fourteenth floor?” asked the operator. Charlie was silent. He was busy thinking of all the clues in this puzzle.

“Hey, Hitch,” said Ty. “We're going back to Mr. M's, right?”

The old elevator operator leaned toward Charlie and grinned. “A penny for your thoughts, Master Hitchcock.”

Penny?
thought Charlie.

Yes, pennies made sense!

“Wait!” he said. “All the stuff I've seen tonight. It's all smooshed together like a jigsaw puzzle. You know that the teachers said I had a —”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Ty. “A photographic memory. Acute visual whatever. I get it.”

“Exactly,” Charlie said. “So here's what we definitely know.” He made a list of all the clues they'd come across that night.

“What does the sign have to do with anything?” Ty asked. “And the color of the drapes was purple. At least I think that's what I saw before I got knocked down. Let's go back up and check.”

“Not yet,” said Charlie. “We need to go to the basement.”

Mr. Brack kept grinning, and down the elevator zoomed. At the bottom, the boys found themselves in the huge cellar and power center of the hotel. “Where are the fuses?” asked Charlie.

Ty led him to a small room at the back of the cellar. The walls of the room were lined with old metal boxes. The boxes all hung about four feet above the damp floor. It reminded Charlie of a miniature locker room. On the closed doors of the metal boxes were labels: First Floor, Second Floor, and so on.

“I thought they'd have the old ones down here,” said Charlie. “We need to find the fuse box for the fourteenth floor.”

After a few minutes of searching, and reading faded numbers on the boxes, Ty found the right one. “Here it is,” he said.

“Did you have to come down here last week to check on things? When the power went out?” asked Charlie.

“No, the problem didn't last that long,” Ty said. “It came back on by itself. We thought maybe it was the thunderstorm that night.”

Charlie carefully opened the fuse box. Dust covered everything … except for some small round shapes on the bottom lip of the box.

As Ty took a step closer, his shoe crunched on something. He bent down. “Hey, it's another one of those plastic tubes,” he said.

“And I'll bet if you look around, you'll even find a few pennies,” said Charlie. “It's an old trick.”

It was a good thing he spent so much time playing
Sherlock Holmes Maximum Z
. The penny trick had been used by one of the criminals he'd faced in the game. Then he'd done a bunch of Internet research on it, because he thought it was cool.

Charlie went on, “But the trick only works on old fuse boxes like these that have the old glass fuses. If you put a penny next to the fuse, it can cause it to short out, or flicker. That's what was in those plastic tubes. When you go to the bank and get change, you get it wrapped in those things.”

“Oh yeah. I've seen people use them at cash registers when they run out of change,” said Ty.

“So someone was causing those blackouts on purpose,” said Charlie. “These circles where there isn't any dust? That's where someone put a stack of pennies. In fact, since the pennies were bought last week — the tubes had the date stamped on them, remember? — it means someone was planning for the lights going out.”

“Ha! And I thought they were for candy and he had a sweet tooth,” said Ty. “So how did you figure out the penny thing?”

“I'd seen those plastic tubes before, but couldn't remember where,” said Charlie. “Then when Brack said ‘A penny for your thoughts' it all came together.”

“Huh. Pretty smart, Hitch,” said Ty.

Brack doesn't miss much
, thought Charlie.
It's almost like he knows everything that's going on in the hotel. But now we need to go —

“I think we need to go back to the fourteenth floor,” said Ty.

“You read my mind,” said Charlie.

Tyler and Charlie knocked on Dotty Drake's apartment door. They heard noises behind the door and then a voice. “It's very late. Who is it?”

“It's me again,” said Ty. “Tyler Yu. Sorry to bother you, but it's very important.”

The door opened slowly. Dotty Drake stood there, wrapped in her red robe.

“I was asleep,” she said, yawning, patting her pile of hair.

Charlie noticed that the woman's cheeks were still pink. “Are you wearing makeup, Miss Drake?” he asked.

Miss Drake's eyes grew wide. “What on earth are you —”

“You said you were asleep, but you're wearing makeup,” Charlie said. “Just like you were when we first saw you.”

“Artists always wear makeup,” she sputtered.

“When they sleep?” said Charlie. “I think you were wearing makeup because you were expecting company. And I don't think you were sleeping just now, either.”

“Tyler, your friend is an insulting little boor,” said Miss Drake.

“And I think you know what happened to Mr. Madagascar,” said Charlie.

“I am going back to bed!” said Miss Drake. She tried to shut the door, but Charlie stopped her.

“The police are coming,” said Charlie. “The Yus are calling them. Don't you want to hear what I have to say before they get here?”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Miss Drake said.

“Just come over to the window,” said Charlie.

The three of them walked down the hall to the window where Mr. Madagascar had jumped out.

Charlie raised his eyebrow at Ty.

“Yeah, I see it now,” said Ty. “The drapes are red. They match the color of Miss Drake's bathrobe.”

“So?” Miss Drake said.

“That's right,” said Charlie. “When you and I came over to the window and saw that Mr. M. had vanished, I saw that your gown matched the drapes. Red. In fact, if you look, all the drapes in the hall windows are red. But when Mr. Madagascar jumped out the window, they were purple.”

“You must be mistaken,” said Miss Drake.

“No, I saw it too,” said Ty.

“So then I wondered how red drapes could turn purple,” said Charlie. He walked back down the hall toward the intersection where Ty had been hit.

Then Charlie turned to his left and walked down that side hall. He stopped at the end, next to its window.

“Look at these,” said Charlie. Ty ran up to him. Miss Drake slowly followed.

“Purple!” said Ty. “But how?”

The boys leaned out the window. To the right, they saw the blue neon sign of the rabbit and the magician's hat. “Blue and red make purple,” said Charlie.

“And look down there,” said Ty. A few feet below the window was a wide ledge that ran along that side of the hotel. “If someone jumped out this window, they'd land on that ledge.”

“But we all thought he jumped out the other window,” said Charlie. “Where there was a straight drop to the street.”

“It was an amazing magic trick,” said Dotty.

“Yes, it was,” said Charlie. “But not a trick of levitation, or floating. It was a trick with mirrors.”