Floors #2: 3 Below (5 page)

They had stopped.

This, in and of itself, was not that unusual. Leo had stopped the elevator many times and gotten out into secret passageways that ran between the floors. The same door they’d entered would open, and out he would go. But this time it was different, because a different place opened than had ever opened before. Or at least Leo had never seen it happen.

A wall simply dropped down, like it was on rollers that let it slide below the elevator. This was unfortunate for Remi, because he was leaning against it. Remi was a little bit on the round side, and before Leo could get over the fact that a wall of the duck elevator was no longer there, Remi was falling backward through the opening.

Leo was a lighter boy by almost half, but he grabbed Remi by the ankles, hoping he could somehow hold on. Remi’s tube socks rolled down in Leo’s hands until his
fingers reached the shoes and the shoes popped off like two bottle caps.

“Oh no!” Leo yelled. For a split second he thought he’d gained a brother only to lose him one day later in a horrible elevator accident. But then Betty jumped through the opening, too, and Leo heard the sound of a duck bill chomping on something crunchy. Maybe the duck elevator was closer to the bottom of the hotel than Leo had thought. He peered slowly over the edge and found Remi and Betty four or five feet below. Both of them were eating.

It’s a known fact that Whippet Hotel ducks love animal crackers more than any other treat. And Remi liked them, too. They’d landed in what appeared to be a separate shaft, next to the duck elevator and filled with animal crackers. Remi dug deep and threw handfuls up into the air. The crackers rained down on Betty, who caught one on the drop and swallowed it whole.

“I thought I was a goner there for a second,” said Remi, popping a crunchy, monkey-shaped cracker into his mouth. “Best cookies
ever
.”

“No wonder Betty wanted to come in here.” Leo smiled. “She must have known about the card and the cookies.”

“C’mon down, there’s something you should see.” Remi’s words were garbled because his mouth was so full.

Leo wasn’t so sure about leaving the safety of the elevator. What if it left without them? How long could they live on animal crackers with no milk to wash them down?

Instead, Leo hung his head into the open space, the blob of curly hair on his head nearly reaching the pile of cookies below. He saw what Remi saw, only upside down.

There were two slots in the bottom of the elevator, like the ones on a hotel door where a key card could be inserted to unlock the door. To the right of each slot was a symbol. The symbols were these:

• A tree
  
• A glass beaker
  

“What’s this do?” Remi asked, reaching toward something that was on the wall.

“No, don’t!” Leo said. He was worried the button Remi was reaching toward might send the elevator wall back up and cut him right in two, like a magic trick gone terribly wrong. But Leo was too late to stop Remi and his insatiable curiosity.

Leo closed his eyes, waiting for the wall to slam into his chest, but instead he heard a familiar voice.

Merganzer D. Whippet was back.

“Don’t let Betty eat too much or she’ll throw up in the duck elevator. And I hope you brought gloves. If you haven’t . . . actually, never mind. It will be fine.”

It was Merganzer’s voice, but he wasn’t there. The voice had the scratchy sound of a recording, and Merganzer was acting distracted, like he was doing nine things at once and his mind was only partly on the task of leaving a message. There was a pause in which Merganzer yelled something out of range, probably to Mr. Powell.

Leo dropped his arms over the edge and craned his neck so he could look at Remi. He pointed to one of his hands.
What did he mean about the gloves?
Leo said with his eyes and his hands, but Remi just shrugged, picked up a handful of animal crackers, and set them in Leo’s outstretched hand. Betty stole one with her lightning-fast bill. She was eating a lot.

“Can’t talk long, much to do!”
Merganzer’s voice was back. He was always busy, but Merganzer D. Whippet was never specific about anything he was doing, only that it was all very important and there was never enough time.

“If you’re not Leo and Remi, then you’ve gotten extremely lost in the hotel. Push the green lever down. And never get in a tiny elevator again.”

Merganzer started banging on something Leo and Remi couldn’t see. It sounded like he was hammering dents out of a car door, waiting patiently for someone to leave in case the card had fallen into the wrong hands. Remi was slowly reaching for a green lever, but Leo slapped his hand away just in time.

“Are you nuts? The floor probably falls out and sends you, Betty, and ten thousand animal crackers down a twisting slide going a million miles an hour!”

Remi liked the sound of that and began reaching for the green lever again.

“Not funny,” Leo said, but he couldn’t help smiling. Remi was the most curious kid in the world. He was the best.

Merganzer’s voice resumed.
“Now listen carefully, both of you. No more dilly-dally, no more fiddle-fuddle. All business! The card will work for the first subbasement — the one with the tree. The other key you’ll have to get along the way. Visit the floors in order; it’s the only way. You’ll find the money and some other items I’m in desperate need of. You must bring these items back to me! Ask for them by name: four Floogers, a zip rope, and the iron box. Can you remember? You WILL remember! Say it once more.”

Remi was like a zombie on cue: “Two flumpers, a burp bag, and the ironing board.”

“Excellent!”
said Merganzer’s voice.

Leo rolled his eyes as he tried to reach out and grab Betty but missed. She was really eating a lot of animal crackers and he wished he could get her back up in the duck elevator so she’d stop.

“Everything will be fine, just fine,”
Merganzer’s voice said, which meant he had no idea how things were going to go.
“You can get more fuses from Dr. Flart — he should have a few of them lying around. And if you’re really in a pinch, ask Ingrid — she’s got one. Also, Blop has one of the special fuses inside him. Just take off his head.”

“Fuses?” Leo said.

“Who’s Flart?” Remi said. “And who’s Ingrid? And what’s this business about taking Blop’s head off?”

Remi reached his hand into a place under the elevator Leo couldn’t see while Leo considered the situation. Maybe the duck elevator had blown a fuse he didn’t know about. As a second-generation maintenance man, his mechanical brain was spinning with ideas when Remi held out his hand.

“He must mean this.”

This time, Remi wasn’t holding an animal cracker. Instead he held a glass tube the size of a roll of pennies. It had a series of twisting red and green wires inside and metal caps on each end.

“That’s not like any fuse I’ve ever seen,” Leo said. “Better be careful with it.”

“There’s also this one,” said Remi. He pulled something loose and held it up in his other hand. The same fuse, only this one was charred with black soot.

“Blown,” Leo said. “And it looks like it’s been that way for a while.”

Remi started to put the new fuse in place, but Merganzer’s voice (and Leo’s arm) stopped him.

“Don’t put the fuse in until you’re sure you’re ready to go. It will take you to places you’ve never been. Dangerous places. But you can do it! I know you can! I trust you.”

Remi beamed. He loved being trusted with important things to do.

“Give me the fuse,” Leo said, and Remi handed it up. Leo could hang down and insert the card and the fuse when they were ready. It would be a snap — at least until the door flew up and pinned his arms to the ceiling.

Leo dug around in his overalls for a metal fuse grabber, which was a lot like a pair of pliers only it had soft, curved grippers for grabbing delicate objects.

“Remember!”
Merganzer boomed once more.
“Four Floogers, a zip rope, and the iron box!”

“Two flip-flops, a zonker, and a sneeze!”

“It’s really not that funny,” Leo said. “This is serious.”

“Oh, right. Sorry,” Remi said, but inside he was giggling. Zonkers and flip-flops and sneezes hit him square in the funny bone.

“One last thing and you’re off. Very important. You’ll need some instructions for later, but you should get them as soon as you can. You’ll find the instructions in a secret place.”

There was a slight pause, like Merganzer was trying to decide if he should continue, and then he did and it made no sense at all.

“An isle of Penguins, a boy named Twist, Robinson Crusoe!”

“He’s gone completely mad,” Remi whispered, but Leo was used to the puzzles and the rants. He and Merganzer went way back.

“You’ll have to grab Betty,” Leo said, and suddenly he knew why Merganzer had mentioned gloves. “There’s no other way.”

Betty was turned away from Remi, eating animal crackers as fast as her orange bill could pick them up. Remi hadn’t picked up a duck before, but Leo had. He was fairly sure it would not go well.

“You can’t just lift her,” Leo said, placing the clamped fuse in the front pocket of his overalls. “You’ll have to
grab hard and throw her up here. Otherwise she’ll get loose and bite you.”

“Thanks for the warning,” Remi said. He filled his red jacket pockets with animal crackers and rubbed his hands together for good luck.

“Here goes nothing,” he said, and lunged for Betty. He got his arms around her big middle and hugged, but as Leo had suspected, Betty was no dummy. She bit down hard on Remi’s finger, which made Remi raise his arms and throw the duck over his head. Feathers were flying everywhere and Betty was quacking loudly, but she was back in the duck elevator and Leo was up on his knees, blocking her way out.

“Nice job!” Leo yelled. “Throw me some crackers!”

Remi shook the sting out of his finger and started picking up fistfuls, throwing them up into the elevator until Leo told him to stop. This seemed to calm Betty down, and she went to work on the thirty or so treats on the floor while Leo reached down and hoisted Remi up into the space. It was totally cramped inside again, and Betty started acting weird. She sat down, burped, then burped again. The third time she burped was more violent. A slobbery, projectile animal cracker launched from her throat and tagged Remi in the side of the head.

Leo went to work on the fuse, prying it into position as he leaned down over the edge of the opening and hung upside down.

“Incoming!” Remi yelled, shielding himself behind his red jacket. Betty burped again, this time shooting Leo in the butt with a slobbery thing that had recently been a giraffe cookie.

“Hurry up!” Remi said. “She looks like she might go machine-gun mode on us!”

Leo had the fuse in place and it hummed with red and green light.

“Cool,” he said, for Leo loved all mechanical things. He slid Merganzer’s special key card out of the side pocket of his overalls and inserted it into the top slot. The tree next to the slot glowed green. Pulling the card out, Leo moved as fast as he could back into the duck elevator.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then Betty burped up an animal cracker, which flew over Leo’s head and caught in his hair.

“I’m just glad she eats them whole,” Remi said. “This could be a lot worse.”

The wall suddenly shot back up with alarming speed. Betty became very still, like she’d seen this happen before. She hiccupped and sat down.

Then something scary happened.

It felt like the cable snapping in two overhead.

The duck elevator was free-falling, and as Leo and Remi and Betty screamed and quacked and burped up animal crackers, the duck elevator zoomed past the lobby, gaining speed.

It kept going, and going, and going . . . far below the Whippet Hotel, to secret places few had ever seen.

T
he duck elevator slowed from out-of-control fast to very slow in the blink of an eye. This made Leo and Remi feel like they were being squashed, pinned to the floor by an almost unbearable gravity. When it stopped completely, they were left dizzy and confused.

How long had they fallen, and how far?

How would they get back up?

And what was that noise from the other side of the door?

“Where are we?” Leo wondered out loud. He hadn’t gotten up the nerve to open the small door because of the noise he heard. Something was moving out there.

“I wish we’d brought Blop with us,” Remi said. “He’d know what to do.”

Betty shook her head and wobbled to her feet. She had a certain look in her eyes Leo knew all too well.

“We need to get this duck out of here,” he said.

“Why? I don’t think we should,” Remi argued. This was becoming a little more adventurous than he’d bargained for.

“She needs to use the bathroom,” Leo said.
“Now.”

Whatever was outside couldn’t be more frightening than Betty using the duck elevator as a bathroom with Leo and Remi stuck in the same space.