Read Floors: for Free Online

him. In his other hand he held his dinner, which was a repeat of what he’d had for lunch.
    Hearing the distant sound of ducks quacking on the pond, he gazed out over the grounds and wondered what Leo and Betty were doing.

     
    There were two ways into Captain Rickenbacker’s room on the third floor — one in the hallway and one in the maintenance tunnel. Not all the rooms were designed this way, but there had been some problems over the past two years in that room, so Mr. Whippet had shown Leo a secret way in. Captain Rickenbacker had a habit of pushing large pieces of furniture in front of the door and refusing to come out, which was usually becausehis archnemesis, MR. M., had entered the hotel. MR. M. was, as far as the hotel staff could tell, a figment of Captain Rickenbacker’s imagination. It was usually Leo’s dad who was sent in to reassure the Captain and move the furniture away from the door so that Pilar could clean the room.
    Leo looked down at Betty. “Be careful in here, okay? It’s really no place for a duck.”
    Betty didn’t seem to be paying attention as Leo spun the combination lock on the secret door from the maintenance tunnel. On the room side, it looked as if part of the wall were swinging open, and when the door was closed again, it would look like there was no door at all. Betty waddled through the opening, and Leo, holding the purple box under one arm, followed her. He was careful not to let the door shut all the way, marveling at one of the most dangerous rooms in the hotel.
    “It looks like fun, but really, it’s a duck killer. Be
super
careful, Betty.”
    She honked, nodded her head, and waddled forward.
    Captain Rickenbacker stayed in a large and colorful room known as the Pinball Machine. The Pinball Machine had windows high up on the walls, from which the setting sun cast a golden glow over all the parts and pieces.
    “I’ve always liked this room,” said Leo. He was tempted to set the purple box down and play one of the twenty-three pinball machines that lined the bedroom wall, but he knew his time was limited. It would require some luck getting into the Ring of Rooms as it was, so there was no time for goofing off. The last thing he needed was for Captain Rickenbacker to return, thinking this little kid in his room was a manifestation of his made-up archenemy, MR. M. If that happened, Captain Rickenbacker might go bananas and start throwing things. And there were some dangerous, heavy things to throw in the Pinball Machine.
    Leo walked into the main room, which was long and narrow in the same way that a pinball machine was. This was the centerpiece of the Pinball Machine, with giant molded pinball bumpers that doubled as couches and chairs, all of them lit up with bright lights and springs. The slanted floor was covered in lights and arrows and circled numbers, just like a real pinball machine. At the far end of the room was a hole as big as a tire, which had a flipper on each side. Behind that was the doorway that led to the third-floor landing.
    Betty waddled down the room and honked into the hole, listening to the echo as Leo looked around. While he’d eaten dinner next to the glugging boiler in thebasement, he’d reread Merganzer’s message, searching for clues.
    Floor and three and one half!
     
    This, he was sure, meant to say there were hidden rooms in the hotel, and one of them was above the third floor and below the fourth. He was now standing in the Pinball Machine, which was on the third floor, staring at the ceiling and wondering what was up there.
    Strike the purple ball in the kitchen by the hall.
     
    Leo walked down the slick, slanted floor, careful not to slip, and arrived at the control booth. He set the box down, and found himself feeling happy about the fact that the purple ball was stuck under a blue ball. They were big, like bowling balls, and just about as heavy. The blue ball would have to be played in order to retrieve the purple one from the track. In