Floors #2: 3 Below (21 page)
Read Floors #2: 3 Below Online
Authors: Patrick Carman
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Mysteries & Detective Stories, #Fantasy & Magic, #Action & Adventure, #General
“See,” Mr. Bump mumbled to LillyAnn Pompadore. “I told you there was a monkey in the hotel.”
“Not anymore there’s not.”
Ingrid had gotten what she came for and turned on a dime, marching back in the direction of the lobby.
“Dr. Flart,” she said over her shoulder. “Will I be seeing you soon?”
There was a certain something in her voice that made Dr. Flart blush.
“I believe my duties are about to change,” he said. “You’ll be seeing me again.”
Mr. Carp leaned down low and whispered into Captain Rickenbacker’s ear. “Lovebirds, though they
are very slow about their business. They’ve been close to holding hands for going on seven years.”
“Remarkable,” Captain Rickenbacker said.
“What is the meaning of this?!” Ms. Sparks yelled. She could feel the wheels coming off of her plan but didn’t know what to do. It was all so confusing!
“Ms. Sparks,” Mr. Carp said. “You hold in your hand a copy of a receipt showing full payment of taxes to the great state of New York. The Whippet Hotel is, in fact, more than a year ahead on its payments as of earlier this evening. I’m afraid the auction will not be taking place.”
“But that’s impossible! We had a deal, you little sea urchin!”
Dr. Flart was the one person in the group tall enough to look down at Ms. Sparks. He even towered over her tall beehive hairdo. He stepped between Mr. Carp and Ms. Sparks and leaned down, staring at her through his thick glasses.
“Why is this hideous man staring at me?” Ms. Sparks asked, but no one answered her.
Claudius purred against Ms. Sparks’s leg, startling her.
“Hello, cat!” Dr. Flart said, picking up Claudius and petting him with great enthusiasm. Claudius tried to
squirm free, but it was no use. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”
“Sorry about that,” Mr. Carp said. “You were out and I needed a little something to sell the idea.”
“Have I got an experiment for you!” Dr. Flart said, which made Claudius go wide-eyed with concern. Dr. Flart wandered off toward the lobby, happy to have his cat and return to his very important work. Over his shoulder he said, “Breakfast tomorrow, Karl? I have something new to show you.”
“I thought you might,” Mr. Carp answered. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
Ms. Sparks was starting to back away toward the gate, for she knew that she was once again defeated. She couldn’t quite understand how or why, but she was sure her plans had failed her when she heard, from way up high in the sky, the wild and whimsical laugh of Merganzer D. Whippet.
“This is not over!” she said, turning for the gate. “Not even close! I will prevail!”
“She’s fun to have around,” Captain Rickenbacker said. “Never a dull moment.”
“So true, so true,” said Mr. Phipps. “Shall we work on the puzzle and have a root beer?”
“And then some pinball!”
“Might I join you?” Ms. Pompadore asked.
“Me, too,” Theodore Bump piped in. “I don’t feel like writing a novel tonight. There’s magic in the air.”
And with that, Captain Rickenbacker and Mr. Phipps and the others were moving off. Mr. Yancey was on the phone, calling a limo to take his family away, ignoring Jane complaining about her missing monkey. They, too, moved off together in search of an expensive restaurant to make themselves feel better.
Mr. Carp stood alone on the grounds of the Whippet Hotel, staring up at the sky, where a blimp was moving quietly and secretly to places unknown to him. He took a key card out of his pocket with his greasy hand and talked into it.
“All finished up here,” he said. “Taxes paid, hotel at rest, gears stopped once again.”
“You have done very, very well,” Merganzer answered. “You are, without a doubt, a man of many talents.”
“Thank you, sir. It was a little touch-and-go at the end. Tell Remi I found the note from the governor where he dropped it. It’s all taken care of.”
Mr. Carp could hear Remi whooping and hollering in the background.
“Can I return to my work?” Mr. Carp asked. “Some problems down there.”
“Of course,” Merganzer said. “And keep an eagle eye on things in the hotel for another week, won’t you? I have need of Leo and Remi. Big things. Big things!”
Mr. Carp smiled and said he would. He looked once more into the night sky, waved, and began walking toward his true home.
“Oh yes, he’s brilliant,” Merganzer said. They were far above the city, moving silently below the clouds. “One of my best men.”
“So Mr. Carp works for you?” Remi asked. He was still terribly confused, trying to piece it all together.
“They all do, but Mr. Carp is my favorite. You might say he’s my underground wingman.”
Mr. Powell, at the wheel of the blimp, winked at Leo. “Merganzer is the only fellow I know who needs two wingmen, one below and one above ground.”
“I am terribly forgetful about taxes and bills. I have no idea why,” Merganzer said. “It’s the strangest thing. Anywho, Ms. Sparks was aware of my shortcomings. She knew I’d forget, knew how to manipulate the system. By the time George reminded me for the ninth time, it was too late. Too dangerous. I needed to bring in Mr. Carp.”
“He seems so . . . I don’t know.” Leo tried to find the words. “Harmless, I guess.”
Mr. Powell laughed, turning the blimp to the right as he did.
“You won’t believe it’s true, but he built the Realm of Gears,” Merganzer said.
“And most of the hotel, too,” Mr. Powell added.
“Did not,” Remi said. He simply couldn’t believe someone as drab and boring as Mr. Carp could be so smart and resourceful.
“Oh, but he did,” Merganzer said. “And he’s quite good at playing the part of a tax agent as well.”
“The role was tailor-made for Mr. Karl Carp,” Mr. Powell said. “He was perfect.”
Betty flew up from the roof and landed on the ledge of the cab, honking.
“I do love a good duck,” Merganzer said, fishing around in his pocket for a treat. “It will be nice to have them with me again.”
“Why in the world did you pull the top of your hotel off?” Remi asked. Remi was a great question asker, everyone agreed.
“Well, I wanted the ducks with me, so there’s that,” Merganzer said. “But it’s so much more. You see, I’m working on something big. The biggest.”
“Huge,” Mr. Powell said.
“And I knew the day would come when I’d need my books, my plans, my notes.”
“You mean your library?” Leo asked, for really, that’s what they were carrying across the sky.
“Precisely! The library. But not just the library, something else, too.”
“What?” Leo asked.
“Why, I needed you, of course,” he said, putting one arm around Remi and one around Leo.
Leo and Remi smiled and looked at each other. For whatever reason, they had been handpicked by Merganzer D. Whippet to own the hotel, travel through its many rooms and secret places, and fly across the sky in the middle of the night.
“Oh!” Leo said, remembering that he had one more item for Merganzer, something he’d asked for. Leo fished the iron box out of his maintenance overalls and held it out.
“Is the Wyro inside?” Merganzer asked, awed and delighted.
“See for yourself,” Leo said, tossing it into the air and watching Merganzer catch it.
“Light as a feather,” Merganzer marveled. “And safely strapped inside with duct tape. I wish I’d invented that one.”
“So does Dr. Flart,” Remi said.
“Well,” Merganzer said, smiling with deep satisfaction, “this calls for a toast.”
Merganzer tossed the iron box to Mr. Powell, who regarded it as something extremely dangerous and volatile. He gently placed it in a basket under the steering wheel and sighed with relief.
Leo was happy the hotel was still his and, more important, that it was safe. He was excited about the adventure under the hotel he and Remi were a part of. He was glad Ms. Sparks, at least for one night, was not a threat.
But he’d been wanting to ask about something else, and finally he did.
“Where are we going, Merganzer D. Whippet?”
Merganzer gazed out over the city below, which shimmered with lights. He knelt down and turned away from Leo and Remi, opening a small refrigerator. When he turned back around, he held four bottles of Flart’s Fizz in his hands.
“Flart’s Fizz!” Remi said. “Oh man, I hope I don’t get a dud!”
Merganzer handed out the bottles and they all popped the tops at the same time.
“My last four bottles,” Merganzer said. And then he made the toast: “To the field of wacky inventions, where anything is possible!”
They all agreed at once. “To the field of wacky inventions!”
And then they drank and burped and laughed.
Leo would soon find that by
anything
, Merganzer really did mean
anything
.
Some of those things were scary (like the genetically altered twelve-foot chicken).
Some were dangerous (the electric eel ponds, for one, were a terrible hazard).
And some Merganzer had lost complete control of (things that went bump in the night had become especially difficult to manage).
Troubles were mounting far below, waiting to be had.
But on that one night, burping like sailors as they moved unseen across the city, all was well in the world of Leo, Remi, and Merganzer D. Whippet.
Copyright © 2012 by Patrick Carman
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc.,
Publishers since 1920
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available
First edition, September 2012
Cover art by Chris Turnham
Cover design by Christopher Stengel
e-ISBN 978-0-545-46971-5
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: A Wedding at the Whippet
Chapter 2: Four Floogers, a Zip Rope, and the Iron Box!
Chapter 4: Trouble Brewing Up Above
Chapter 5: An Isle of Penguins, a Boy Named Twist, Robinson Crusoe!
Chapter 6: The Trapdoor Closes
Chapter 10: The Door of Warnings
Chapter 11: Into the Realm of Gears