Floors: Read Free

ledge.
    “I have treats,” said Leo, digging into his front pocket and pulling out three slices of pumpernickel bread. Betty was off the ledge in a flash, followed by the other two, and then by three more swimming out of the pond.Now Leo was surrounded by all six ducks, each of them quacking for some pumpernickel.
    “What you really need is a good long walk on the grounds,” said Leo, tearing off bits of dark bread as he inched his way toward the duck elevator. Betty and the other ducks were like dogs, really — if they had a good long walk every day and they got fed, they were happy on the roof. But if they were left alone for too long, they grew restless and irritable. They’d fly down to the lobby and start biting people.
    Leo threw open the wooden door to the duck elevator and a poof of feathers filled the air. He turned to watch the line of ducks follow after Betty as they crowded inside, filling nearly the entire space before Leo could cram himself inside and shut the door, trapped with six noisy quackers. He pulled the DOWN lever, knowing it would be a long, slow journey to the lobby, nothing like the Double Helix. But soon enough, he’d be walking the ducks, something he and Merganzer D. Whippet had done together before the maker of the hotel had vanished so unexpectedly.
    Leo sighed deeply and stared at his feet. There wasn’t much light in the duck elevator, and it felt even more cramped than usual.
    “You guys are eating too much pumpernickel. I can barely fit in here anymore.”
    He would have done well to pay closer attention to the inside of the little elevator, for something new was hidden inside.
    Leo’s life was about to change forever.

     
    On the fifteenth floor of a New York hotel, two men stared out a window. One wore an expensive-looking gray fedora with a soft black band around the middle. In fact, every thing Bernard Frescobaldi wore looked expensive: a three-piece suit, shiny cuff links, a silky gold tie — appropriate attire for an Italian land baron on the hunt for a bargain.
    “Let me see our most recent report once more,” Bernard demanded, squinting through a pair of high-power binoculars, trying with all his might to get a better look at the Whippet Hotel.
    “As you wish, sir.”
    Bernard Frescobaldi’s assistant, Milton, clicked open a silver metal briefcase and removed a manila envelope marked
Private: Keep out!
    Inside were research documents, surveillance reports, dozens of photographs of the Whippet Hotel, and a collection of private papers. Milton removed the top sheet and handed it to Bernard for his inspection.
    Bernard reviewed the document before him for the hundredth time.

Field Report, Whippet Hotel — June 21
     
Upon his untimely death, the billionaire Walter E. Whippet left his entire fortune to his son, Merganzer. Years later, Merganzer D. Whippet purchased one entire square block, had every building torn down, and spent the next six years building the strangest hotel anyone has ever seen.
From the beginning, deep mystery has shrouded the Whippet. It’s a shockingly small hotel on an enormous block in a city known for taking advantage of every square inch of space. There are only nine floors, or so it seems from the outside, and each floor has an unknown number of rooms. The roof houses a pond, for Merganzer D. Whippet is obsessed with ducks. Rumors abound of countless hidden passageways and secret rooms, known only to a few.
The Whippet’s design is alarmingly off-kilter — it appears to wobble in the slightest gust of wind. Some say a child could spit on the Whippet and it would fall over, though this seems highly unlikely. And then there are the grounds, vast and useless, a colossal waste of space. Giant bushes carved into the shapes of ducks tower over the winding paths that surround the hotel, which only serve to make the Whippet look even smaller than itactually is. At the sidewalk’s edge runs a tall iron fence with a gate that opens only for