3 Below

  “Ladies first,” Alfred said, nodding gentlemanly at Lucy as she came near. “I’ve got a feeling you have a good story to tell. Am I right?”

  “Pretty good,” Lucy said, smiling at the enigmatic gentleman before her. She grabbed a ladder rung and started climbing. “See you at the top.”

  “That you shall,” Alfred offered with another polite nod of his head.

  Remi moved in close to Alfred and beckoned him near.

  “Let me handle the interrogation with this new kid. I’m good at that stuff. She could be really dangerous. Like a master spy or something.”

  Alfred nodded, Leo arrived, and the rest of the party started climbing up the winding ladder. The ladder extended through the long hole, which they’d all arrived inside of, when the shadow of a head leaned over the opening at the top.

  “Get out of my way — I’m coming back down!” Sheezley screamed.

  And so it was that everyone on the long, twisting ladder climbed back down four or five rungs in order to make room for Miss Sheezley.

  “The top floor of my very own hotel is out there,” Miss Sheezley said, with characteristic awe in her voice. “It would have crushed me!”

  But Leo and Remi only smiled. They’d made it through another portion of the contest, and they were still in it! And if this adventure was anything like all the others, the next stage would be even more dangerous and exciting than the last.

  A little while before Miss Sheezley found herself staring up at the roof of her hotel about to land on her head, someone else was making a very important call. It is not known for certain where or who this person was, only that he or she had found their way to a private place long enough to call Ms. Sparks and provide an update. “Everything is going as planned. Miss Harrington is already out of the race!”

  “Please tell me that’s not all you’ve managed to rid us of. That Bosco character — now he’s trouble. Have you gotten rid of him yet?”

  There was a pause on the sat phone line.

  “Working on it. He’s a brute.”

  “And you are a fool!” Ms. Sparks roared. She was sitting in her crummy apartment, soaking her feet in a plastic kiddie pool she’d set in her living room. Water was splashing everywhere as she kicked her feet in frustration.

  “Let me remind you — we are nothing with just one hotel. Nothing! Not if those boys or any of the other idiots end up running the whole empire. We could get thrown out on our cans! We must control all the hotels.”

  “I do understand. Really I do.”

  “I repeat: Do not lose track of Leo Fillmore or his intolerable sidekick, Remi. That boy couldn’t open a door properly, let alone run an empire. But together they have Merganzer’s favor. He’s rigging this entire thing so they’ll win! I know it!”

  “That’s not going to happen — I promise. I’m in control. I have them right where I want them.”

  “Stay on them! They’re clever little urchins. They’ll walk away with an empire and leave us with nothing if you’re not careful.”

  “I better get back,” the caller said. “I’ll be missed. Don’t worry — it’s all going as planned.”

  “It better be.”

  Ms. Sparks hung up the phone and sloshed her long feet around in the shallow water of the kiddie pool. She began to smile, because for all her screaming and yelling, she was still in the hunt for the Whippet Hotel empire. She would rule from the shadows. That lunatic Merganzer will never even know! she thought, laughing to herself.

  It was a diabolically brilliant plan … if only her accomplice could stay with those meddling boys.

  E. J. Bosco was traveling exceptionally fast when he entered the Whippet Library for the first time. The tube he slid down turned in many directions on its path to the vast room of books below, and when it launched him out into the open air, he felt sure he’d eaten his last plate of chicken-fried steak (his favorite food, which was a specialty at the Boomtown, Bosco’s hotel). He couldn’t imagine living through a fall at that speed and from such a great height, but Merganzer D. Whippet was not a man who enjoyed seeing people expire inside any of his hotels, especially this hotel, which wasn’t even finished yet. No, Bosco was not to die on that day, but he did find himself landing in a slightly painful and more-than-slightly ungentlemanly way.

  Merganzer had rigged the exit from the tube so that the first thing a person would hit was a trampoline turned at a forty-five-degree angle from the floor of the library. The library was a tall space, forty feet or more, with tall shelves of books everywhere. Bosco belly flopped into the trampoline, landing on his legs, his chest, and his face. When it launched him back into the air, his limbs were flailing around so wildly that Miss Harrington, who was reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in a comfy chair down below, thought she’d seen an enormous flying octopus pass through her line of sight. (Stranger things than this have been seen in a Whippet hotel.) There were four more trampolines, also at forty-five-degree angles, that bounced E. J. Bosco ever closer to the floor as if he were a tennis ball bouncing down an escalator. He landed badly on the cold marble, but only his ego was bumped and bruised as he stood and took notice of his surroundings.

  “Pull up a chair,” Miss Harrington said as Bosco stumbled in her general direction. “I have a feeling we’re going to be here until this ridiculous competition is over.”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Bosco said, twisting as he cracked his back. “I’ve had about enough competition for one day.”

  The truth was, Bosco hated losing. They both did. But what were they to do?

  “Times like these, it’s hard to beat a good book,” Harrington conceded. She picked the top volume off a pile of novels that sat beside her and handed it to her companion. Bosco sat down heavily, took the book, and kicked his feet up on a coffee table covered with a whimsical painting of a monkey riding an elephant.

  “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” Bosco said, and he smiled the way a walrus might smile, with a big, bushy mustache turned up on both ends. “You know, I’ve wanted to read this for quite some time. I’m rather glad I’ve been knocked out of these wacky proceedings. Does he send snacks?”

  “Oh yes, every hour or so. We should be getting some tea and biscuits any time now.”

  “Marvelous!” Bosco said, and then he continued in his best British impression, “I do rather enjoy the tea and the crumpets. Delightful, don’t you think?”

  Miss Harrington was far too preoccupied with Captain Nemo’s underwater adventure to pay any more attention to her new companion’s attempt at humor. So E. J. Bosco took a deep, relaxing breath and turned to the first page of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Glancing momentarily up at him then, Miss Harrington understood how she had been feeling all afternoon. There was always time to work, never time enough to enjoy the pleasure of a good book. Being trapped in the Whippet Hotel library was a gift; it was what she and Bosco really needed — a small vacation with books to read and treats delivered by the hour.

  More often than not, Merganzer D. Whippet knew what his managers needed even more than they did.

  There were many well-documented incidents at Miss Sheezley’s hotel, the Foxtrot, to earn her a reputation as a serious overreactor. Kicking E. J. Bosco with all her might was but one example of this aspect of her personality. Once, a single ant was seen crawling through her lobby, prompting a hotel-wide evacuation, followed by a room-to-room search-and-destroy mission for anything having the appearance of a bug. And so it was to be expected that Miss Sheezley’s insistence on going back down the ladder was, probably, a little bit hasty.

  “How long are we going to stand on this ladder?” Remi asked. He was getting tired of waiting around for Miss Sheezley to stop blocking their way out.

  Leo had been able to glance around Miss Sheezley a little bit, and as far as he could tell, the top of her hotel wasn’t anywhere near hitting bottom.

  “I think maybe it’s stopped,” Leo offered. “Let’s go out and have a look. We can’t stay here all day.”


  Miss Sheezley reluctantly agreed to go back up — if only for a chance to get everyone out and then race back down the ladder to safety. She didn’t like being in the pole position, where people were more likely to get hurt. Better to let someone else lead until the very end, then swoop in and take the victory.

  When they’d all emerged into the light of day, Miss Sheezley stared up into the sky and had to admit she might have had one of her classic overreactions.

  “It seemed closer than that,” she said.

  In fact, the roof of the Foxtrot Hotel, which was now being held aloft by an enormous blimp, was at least fifty feet overhead. And Leo was right: It looked as though it had stopped moving.

  “It would appear that Merganzer isn’t ready to continue just yet,” Alfred observed. He glanced at his wristwatch, then began limping toward the middle of the roof.

  “That thing could come crashing down at any moment!” Miss Sheezley said. “I say we stay close to the ladder in case we need to get out of the way in a hurry.”

  “Why not enjoy a bite of lunch instead?” Alfred countered. “After all, it’s been laid out so nicely for us. Wouldn’t you say?”

  Leo had been too busy looking up at the building, which swayed slowly in the gentle breeze, to notice what Alfred had found.

  “He’s delivered some lunch, don’t you see?” Alfred said as he arrived in the middle of the roof and looked back.

  This got Remi’s attention in a hurry, and Leo’s, too. They hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and they were both starving. Miss Sheezley’s stomach growled, but she wasn’t going anywhere near the lunch, because it was too far away from the ladder. She took two steps down and stood her ground, where she looked like someone standing knee-deep in a shallow pond. If the need arose, she would be the first one down the ladder to safety.

  “Come on, Lucy, let’s eat,” Leo said, for he was sure the girl he’d found on the tiny dino floor hadn’t eaten anything but dino treats for some time. “I know Merganzer D. Whippet. He wouldn’t set us out a nice lunch unless he wanted us to eat it.”

  Lucy licked her lips, and it seemed to Leo that she was thinking of all the food she hadn’t had in a long time. Her maintenance overalls — which he really wanted to know more about — looked about three sizes too big, like she’d shrunk since first putting them on.

  “Race you,” she said with a twinkle in her bright blue eyes, and before Leo could respond, she was running for the middle of the roof at a dead sprint. Leo took chase but found that Lucy was not only resourceful but also very fast. By the time he arrived at the picnic blanket, she was already sitting down. And Remi, never one to waste any time on formalities, was already chewing a mouthful of cheese and crackers. When it came to a race for lunch, Remi was faster than either one of them.

  Merganzer had indeed provided a lovely scene on the former top of the Rochester Hotel. There was a large quilt with duck images sewn into it, plates of cheese and fruit, baskets of bread and crackers, and something else very special.

  “Flart’s Fizz!” Remi screamed. “No way!”

  “What’s Flart’s Fizz?” Lucy asked, ripping off a piece of bread and handing it to Phil. The tiny dinosaur burrowed back out of sight in one of Lucy’s many pockets and made a lot of munching sounds.

  “What’s Flart’s Fizz?” Remi asked incredulously. “Only the best soda pop in the entire universe, that’s all.”

  “Remi, be polite,” Leo said. “How is she supposed to know what Flart’s Fizz is?”

  “I don’t know what it is, either,” Alfred said. He had arrived last, but wasted no time building a sandwich out of the bread and the cheese as Leo handed him a bottle. Remi gave bottles to everyone else, and found there was one left over.

  “Hey, Miss Sheezley!” Remi yelled across the roof. “Wanna burp your brains out?”

  “No, thank you,” she replied tersely.

  “Didn’t think so.” Remi smiled. Leo was pretty sure his brother was planning to drink the extra.

  Remi popped the lid on his bottle and instructed everyone else to do the same as Leo explained about Dr. Flart, the incredible hidden underground floors of the Whippet Hotel, and the even more incredible burps that Flart’s Fizz produced.

  “Bottoms up,” Remi said, tipping his bottle and guzzling all but the very last of its contents in one superhuman swig.

  Alfred was game, drinking half of his bottle in no time flat, while Leo watched and waited. Remi’s eyes went wide, like he was holding something gigantic inside that was getting bigger by the second. His mouth opened and he looked to the sky, letting rip a burp that started low and slow and built to a high-pitched wheezer of unbelievable awesomeness. About halfway through, Alfred chimed in with his own world-class effort, and the two performed a burping duet until, finally, after what seemed like a month, Remi’s burp fizzled out. Albert quickly chugged the rest of his bottle and kept burping, like a big balloon slowly releasing air, until Miss Sheezley yelled, “Disgusting!” and he laughed and laughed. There’s nothing quite like the sound of laughing and burping at the same time — in the pantheon of burpdom, this is known as lurping — and pretty soon Lucy and Leo were laughing, too. Then a magical sort of thing happened, a rare and wacky thing. From somewhere far below, there came a sound unlike any other — full of honks and whoops as it carried up through the trees.

  “Merganzer!” Leo said, standing up and running to the edge of the roof in a flash. When he reached the rail and leaned over, he realized how far up into the trees they’d gotten. There were branches all around him, but there was a clear view to the ground where Merganzer D. Whippet could be seen walking the ducks.

  “Merganzer!” Leo cried out. Merganzer stopped making his distinct laughing sound and looked up.

  “Well, if it isn’t Leo Fillmore! I thought I heard some burping. Or better yet, some lurping.”

  Remi leaned his head over next to Leo’s.

  “And Remi! Very glad to see you both safe and sound and still in the hunt.”

  “Thanks for the Flart’s Fizz!” Remi shouted. “That was a real pick-me-up.”

  “How’s Betty doing?” Leo asked as Alfred hobbled near.

  Merganzer looked down at the mother duck and her ducklings and shook his head.

  “She’s in a bit of a funk. I can’t figure why. I’ve been giving her animal crackers and taking her for walks. But nothing seems to help.”

  “I believe I know what’s bothering her,” Alfred Whitney said. He held Comet carefully in both hands, for Comet wasn’t a flyer just yet. He’d never make it to the bottom on his own. But he did make whatever that sound is that ducklings make, an almost honk.

  Looking up, Betty went bonkers.

  “I believe this is one of hers,” Alfred said. “That must be why she’s so upset.”

  Merganzer D. Whippet looked thoughtfully at the duck in his charge and the duckling way overhead.

  “Well, there’s nothing to be done just now. At least I know why Betty’s been so difficult.”

  “And you know the first rule of an adventure,” Leo said.

  Betty was honking like crazy, but Merganzer didn’t seem to mind.

  “Always bring a duck!” Merganzer called out. “And Comet is a very good little duck.” With a nod, he started off, his long walking stick before him, and the rest of Betty’s ducklings followed.

  “I enjoyed the burping,” Alfred added. “First class.”

  Betty looked up. If it was possible for a duck to have a stern look on its face, this one did. It was hard to say if the last few quacks and the scowl were directed at Alfred (you better bring my duckling back in one piece) or Comet (boy, are you ever gonna get it when you finally get down here). Either way, she’d said her piece and at least knew her missing duckling was only on an adventure, not captured by a monkey or wandering off for a swim in an electric eel pond.

  Lucy had stayed at the picnic all alone, staring at her bottle of Flart’s Fizz. Leo felt sorry for her and became more cur
ious than ever about her story.

  “Let’s show them what a real burp sounds like,” Leo said, smiling at Lucy as he walked back toward her. Lucy smiled back nervously. She was not one to play it safe, and before Leo knew it, she downed her entire bottle of Flart’s Fizz in five seconds flat, picked up the extra bottle, and downed that one, too.

  “Whoa,” Remi said, suddenly in awe of Lucy. He’d never seen a girl drink an entire bottle, let alone two bottles, of Flart’s Fizz in one shot. Even he hadn’t thought of trying that!

  Remi and Albert made their way over to the picnic again as Leo tipped his bottle back and started gulping as fast as he could, hoping he’d be able to match whatever Lucy was about to produce.

  Lucy’s burp was, in a word, outstanding. Years later it would take on legendary status as one of the three biggest burps of all time. It was so big it nearly knocked Lucy off her feet. And it went on for twice as long as Remi’s had. It had a long, deep middle that went on for half a minute, followed by a perfectly executed whiz-tail ending that left her with a beaming smile on her face.

  “That was one incredible burp,” Remi said. “No, seriously. Epic.”

  It was made even more so by the fact that Leo had drank a dud. Leo could muster only the most anemic of burps, a true runt in comparison to Lucy’s masterpiece.

  Phil was curious about all the noise, and when he stuck his head out, Lucy poured the last few drops of Flart’s Fizz from her bottle down the dinosaur’s gullet. There are few things in the world more hilarious than a salt-shaker-size dinosaur burping for a really long time. It sounded like a miniature buzz plane sputtering through the air.

  “I think he enjoyed that,” Remi said when Phil was through. “I know I did.”

  There was, however, an awkward silence settling over the picnic as everyone but Alfred sat back down.

  “If I get that close to the floor again this soon, it will take some work putting me back on my feet. I’ll stand, thank you.”

  Remi looked directly at Lucy, and minced no words.