Floors

Merganzer Whippet was an impulsive young man of fifteen when he raced into his father’s room just in time to hear these fateful words. Merganzer had just finished his tenth consecutive year of boarding school, during which his father had been busy building a financial empire. Needless to say, the two had never been close.
The words were not the sort of thing Merganzer’s father was known for saying. People close to the old man would have expected something like Buy cheap, sell high! And whatever you do, don’t squander the family fortune. But twelve seconds later, Walter E Whippet was dead. You will prosper in the field of wacky inventions were the only words of advice Merganzer had been given.
If only Merganzer had known they were spoken by a man who’d been talking gibberish for weeks.