The Yggyssey by Daniel Pinkwater

through the hotel and watch for Chase. To signal one another, we had Oscar Mayer Wiener Whistles. Seamus Finn had left his in his room at the military school, but I had two, so loaned him one of mine. These are whistles you get for free when the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile comes around. It is a car shaped like a hot dog, and there is a little person dressed as a chef who hands out the Wiener Whistles. They are shaped like a hot dog too, and make a nice hollow hooting kind of sound. The idea was that if any of us saw Chase, we would toot our Wiener Whistle, and the other two would head for the sound.
    "Won't that alert Chase that she is being watched?" Seamus Finn asked.
    "If I understood what she said to me, she expects to be watched. She wants to tell me where the secret entrance to the secret world is, but she can't come right out and just say it. Some kind of ghostly rule, I guess. So I am betting she will ignore the whistle and just go about her business. Toot softly, and every few seconds, so the others can find you."
    We spread out. Neddie took the upper floors, Seamus took the middle ones, and I took the lower stories of the hotel, the lobby, and the basement. It wasn't long before I heard a faint tooting coming from above. I raced up the stairs. The tooting was getting clearer. I passed the middle floors, with no sign of Seamus Finn, and when I reached the second-to-the-top-floor hallway, both boys were there.
    "Where is she?" I asked.
    "She was here a minute ago. Now she's disappeared again."
    "Spread out again."
    We spread out. It would have been much better if we had walkie-talkies or some kind of two-way radios for this. Then I heard tooting from above—it was Seamus this time. I raced up and Neddie raced down. Again, Chase had disappeared by the time we assembled.
    There were a few more false alarms, and sightings of Chase scurrying through the corridors only to vanish before we could all converge.
    "Chase covers a lot of territory in the course of a day," Seamus Finn said.
    "She's a busy bunny," I said.

CHAPTER 37

Through the Cooking Class
    We were all on the ground floor of the Hermione, in the utility area behind the lobby—I had seen Chase in the vicinity of Mr. Mangabay's room. The door was partly open, and Mr. Mangabay was inside, ironing and listening to anti-Communist hillbilly music.
    "Wait! There she is again!" Neddie said.
    "She's heading for the old restaurant," I said. We hurried down the corridor after her. Chase went into the former restaurant, now made tidy and set up for Gypsy Boots's health food cookery lessons. We saw Chase make her way into the kitchen and then squeeze through a little door standing ajar at the very back.
    "What do we do now, just crowd in after her?" Neddie asked.
    "Better let me go in first," I said. "She and I are friends."
    I slipped through the partially open door and found myself in a little room not much bigger than a closet. It was fairly dark—I could barely see anything, but I could see I was alone—Chase was not present. The little room was empty, the walls were of tile, and there was a small iron door, over which there was a sign: bomb shelter. I tooted my Wiener Whistle a couple of times, and Neddie and Seamus appeared.
    "Where's the bunny?" they asked.
    "As you see," I said.
    "Could she have opened that iron door? It looks heavy."
    "She's a ghost. She could have passed right through it."
    "Well, we're not ghosts. Let's see if we can open it."
    "Bomb shelter. I know about those. In case of an atomic attack, you come down here and there is food and water—enough to keep you alive until it is time to go outside and see the total ruination of the city, everybody dead, and huge mutant monsters, pets like white mice turned into gigantic killers by the radiation."
    "Help me get this thing open," I said. We pulled the iron door open. Another little room, this one was almost totally dark.
    "Look! Here's a candle and a box of matches," Seamus Finn said.