Selby Screams Read online

  This one’s for Eliot

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  FINISHED IN A FLASH

  NUMBER FUMBLER

  A HAIL OF SNAILS

  SELBY’S SELLING SPREE

  HIGH TIME

  BOMBS AWAY!

  RALPHO’S MAGIC SHOW

  A BALLOON TOO SOON

  NOSE BUSINESS LIKE SNOW BUSINESS

  SELBY SHAKEN

  THE MUMMY’S CURSE

  THE BEAST OF BOGUSVILLE

  THE AWFUL TRUTH

  BEATING AROUND THE BUSH

  BOGUSVILLE’S BOXING BALLET

  SELBY TIPPED TO WIN

  SELBY FLIES THE SMILING SKIES

  SELBY IN LOVE

  SEVEN WARNING SIGNS OF A TALKING DOG

  PIGGOTT PLACE

  PIGGOTTS IN PERIL

  SELBY’S JOKE BOOK

  SELBY SNAPS!

  SELBY SCRAMBLED

  About the Author

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  Copyright

  FINISHED IN A FLASH

  “What a great camera!” Dr Trifle said as he whipped around and snapped a picture of the bewildered Selby. “It’s amazing! All you have to do is point it and press the button and it does everything else. It focuses itself and decides if it needs the flash and it even winds the film!”

  “That was a close call,” Selby thought, as he looked up from the newspaper he’d been lying on. “He almost caught me secretly reading. I’ve got to be very careful with Dr Trifle snapping pictures with his new Inig-Matic camera or my secret won’t be a secret for much longer.”

  “Look at all these exciting features!” Dr Trifle said, reading the camera brochure about all the buttons that could be pressed and dials that could be turned. “It’s even got Smile-Sensitivity!”

  “Smile-Sensitivity?” Mrs Trifle asked as she wondered why men were so interested in pressing buttons and turning dials. “Does that mean you’ll hurt its feelings if you smile at it?”

  “Nothing of the kind,” Dr Trifle said. “It’s something special that lets you press a button on the back of the camera and then run around to the front and it takes your picture — but not till you smile. Isn’t that great!”

  “And what if you don’t feel like smiling?” Mrs Trifle, who was watching a movie on TV about an orphan who was lost in the snow, asked.

  “Then it’ll refuse to take your picture.”

  “Refuse to take your picture?” Mrs Trifle said. “How dare it? I may be old-fashioned but, the way I see it, cameras should do what you tell them to do.”

  “That’s all well and good for your normal run-of-the-mill camera. But these new cameras have minds of their own. If it’s set for Smile-Sensitivity you’d jolly well better smile or it’ll just jack up and that’s that, no picture.”

  “Perhaps I’m missing the point,” Mrs Trifle said.

  “The point is that cameras don’t lie.”

  “Is that so?” Mrs Trifle thought as she tried to remember if she’d ever been lied to by a camera.

  “That just means that if someone is feeling sad or looking terrible or something it’ll come out in the photo. But if you click the Smile-Sensitivity button, this one will only take happy photos,” Dr Trifle said as he clipped his Super Bug-O-Rama magnifying lens on the front of the camera. “Now I’m going out to the garden to get some pictures of insects.”

  “But we’ve got to go shopping now,” Mrs Trifle said. “Besides, how will you ever get a bug to smile?”

  “That’s silly,” Dr Trifle laughed, and with this he spun around and took another snapshot of Selby, almost catching him reading again. “You don’t turn on the Smile-Sensitivity when you’re taking pictures of insects.”

  “This thing’s driving me crazy,” Selby thought, picking up the camera when Dr and Mrs Trifle had gone shopping. “I can’t do anything for fear of being photographed. Even if I’m lying innocently in front of the TV Dr Trifle might take a picture. When it was developed he might realise that I was actually watching the TV.”

  Selby pushed some buttons and turned some dials on the camera and then picked up the brochure. It showed a picture of a camera sliced down the middle and lots of arrows pointing to things.

  “This camera does have everything,” Selby thought, getting more interested by the minute. “It’s even got a shark alarm for when you’re taking pictures underwater.”

  The thought of swimming underwater with the Inig-Matic dangling from his neck suddenly brought a smile to Selby’s lips and — just as suddenly — there was a blinding flash.

  “What was that?” Selby said, dropping the brochure and hoping the flash was lightning striking or a light globe burning out. “Oh, no! I forgot about the Smile-Sensitivity. It’s taken a picture of me reading the brochure! When the Trifles see the photograph, they’ll know I can read! My secret will be out! Help! I’ve got to do something fast!”

  Selby lunged for the camera to destroy the film but just then Dr Trifle burst in the door.

  “My goodness!” the doctor exclaimed as he grabbed the camera from in front of the flying dog. “The film is finished. I’ll have to send it away to Celia’s to be processed straight away.”

  That night Selby couldn’t sleep.

  “I’m sitting on a time bomb,” he thought. “As soon as Dr Trifle gets his pictures back in the post, he’ll see the one of me reading and my days of freedom will be at an end. Oh, sure, at first it’ll be all friendly. They’ll ask me what it’s like to be a dog and I’ll tell them how horrible Dry-Mouth Dog Biscuits are and they may even give me some of their own people-food to eat. Then, gradually, there will be things to be done. ‘Selby, would you mind doing this and would you mind doing that?’ Before I know it, I’ll be their servant! I want to be their pet, not their servant. Or worse still, they’ll send me off to a laboratory where I’ll have to talk to boring scientists all day. Oh woe, woe, woe. The only sensible thing is to snitch the photo and the negative before Dr Trifle sees them. But how?”

  For the next few days when Postie Paterson put the mail in the Trifle’s letterbox, Selby was watching from the garage through Dr Trifle’s binoculars.

  “That’s it!” Selby said at last when he saw the unmistakable yellow envelope from Celia’s No-Scratch Photo Service. “Now if I can only get to the envelope …”

  Selby crept out to the letterbox and nudged the lid up with his nose as he often did when he brought in the mail. But just as he was about to grab the envelope, a hand shot in front of his face and beat him to it.

  “Never mind, Selby,” said Dr Trifle, who’d also been anxiously waiting for Postie’s delivery, “I’ll get it. Yooohooo!” he called over to Mrs Trifle. “Come and have a look at the photos!”

  The sweat dripped from Selby’s forehead as Dr and Mrs Trifle looked through the stack of photographs.

  “Isn’t that a good one of you?” Mrs Trifle said to Dr Trifle.

  “What do you mean?” Dr Trifle said. “It makes me look terrible.”

  “Well they say the camera doesn’t lie, dear,” Mrs Trifle chuckled as her husband flipped through the pack.

  “My goodness! What’s this?” Dr Trifle suddenly exclaimed as he looked at the last picture.

  “I do believe it’s Selby!” Mrs Trifle said, looking over at Selby who was lying innocently on the ground.

  “I can’t stand it,” Selby thought as he cleared his throat. “I’ll have to tell them. They’ve caught me. I’ll have to confess. Gulp.”

  “But how could he have taken it?” Mrs Trifle asked.

  “Well I don’t know,” Dr Trifle said, frowning at Selby. “Maybe he just bumped against it and flash! it went off.”

  For a minute, Dr and Mrs Trifle’s heads went back and forth from the photo to Selby lik
e two people watching a tennis match.

  “It’s really quite extraordinary,” Mrs Trifle said."I can’t imagine how it happened.”

  “I must have left the Super Bug-O-Rama magnifying lens on the camera,” Dr Trifle said. “It just looks like a close-up of fur with a tiny piece of his collar showing. What a laugh.”

  “Thank goodness,” Selby thought as he breathed a great sigh of relief. “Cameras may not lie but luckily for me they don’t always tell the whole truth either.”

  NUMBER FUMBLER

  “Remember when the council chose the town of Twin Castles in Tallstoria to be our sister town?” Mrs Trifle, who was the mayor of Bogusville, asked Dr Trifle.

  “Yes,” Dr Trifle said. “As I recall, the mayor of Twin Castles was planning to come here for a visit sometime.”

  “Not just sometime,” Mrs Trifle said. “Count Karnht and his wife, the countess, will be staying here for the night tonight. They’re due at five o’clock.”

  “How exciting! I do hope he speaks English. I don’t speak a word of Tallstorian.”

  “Count Karnht speaks perfect English but he has trouble with his numbers. He has a way of saying two when he means one and three when he means four and so on.”

  “You mean, Count Karnht can’t count?” “Yes. He grew up very rich and always had other people to count for him so he never learned. But Countess Karnht can count and she’s written to tell us to ignore anything that her husband says that has numbers in it.”

  “My goodness,” Dr Trifle said, as a huge black car with flags on it pulled into the driveway.“I think it’s them!”

  “The count that can’t count can’t tell time either,” thought Selby as he noticed the royal couple were two hours early.

  “Let’s not be formal,” Count Karnht said, kissing Dr and Mrs Trifle on both cheeks. “We’re not here as the royal single —”

  “He means the royal couple,” the countess whispered to the Trifles.

  “— but as the mayor of Triple Castles.” “He means, Twin Castles,” the countess said. “And I do apologise if we’re early or late. My husband said we were due at fifteen o’clock and I took a blind guess that he meant three.”

  “It’s six dozen of one or half of another,” the count said, suddenly seeing Selby and screaming: “Help! Get that three-legged creature out of here! I was attacked by two packs of them when I was a boy of thirty.”

  “But Selby wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Mrs Trifle said.

  “I don’t care how many flies he wouldn’t hurt,” Count Karnht said, jumping up on the table. “I can’t cope with dogs. My wife used to keep canines but we had to get rid of them. They frighten me out of my wit!”

  “You mean, your half wit,” Selby thought as he slinked out the door which Dr Trifle held open for him. “Now I’ve got to sleep outside just because Count Karnht who can’t count can’t cope with canines.”

  Selby went down to Bogusville Creek, curled up in a bush and slept for a couple of hours — which would have been okay if Count Karnht hadn’t come along on his evening walk and stood throwing stones in the water.

  “I can’t seem to get away from him,” Selby said to himself.

  “Another dog!” Count Karnht cried, seeing Selby and jumping into a deep part of the creek.

  “What a ninny,” Selby thought as he got up slowly and stretched. “I guess I’d better get out of here before this turns into an international incident.”

  “Heeeeelp!” yelled the count.

  “Now wait a minute,” Selby thought as he turned to go. “The count’s gone under and he hasn’t come up! In a minute he could be the drowned Count Karnht!”

  Selby watched as the count bobbed to the surface and thrashed around with his arms.

  “Learning to count wasn’t the only thing the count didn’t learn to do when he was young,” Selby thought. “It seems he didn’t learn much about swimming either.”

  Selby thought for a minute about diving into the creek and grabbing the count by the collar.

  “It’ll never work,” he thought. “He’s too frightened. He’d just pull us both under. I could hold out a branch for him to grab,” Selby thought, spying a long branch lying nearby, “but no matter what I do, he’ll know I’m not just an ordinary dog! My secret will be out! But I can’t let him drown …”

  Selby grabbed the branch and held it out but the floundering count was too frightened to grab it.

  “Don’t panic, your moronic majesty!” Selby said suddenly.“Just grab the branch!”

  “Good gracious!” sputtered the count. “You talked!”

  “Never mind about that,” Selby said, leaning further out.

  Selby pulled the count to shore just as the whole of the Bogusville police force — Constable Long and Sergeant Short — came running.

  “What’s wrong?” Constable Long asked. “What’s the fuss?”

  “It’s all right now, officers,” the count said, coughing out some water and wiping his eyes. “A nice dog frightened me into the water but then he rescued me so it was okay.”

  “You were rescued by a dog?” Constable Long said."What sort of dog?”

  “A dog sort of a dog,” the count said, looking around for Selby who’d run back into the bushes. “You know, the kind with five legs.”

  “A five-legged dog?” Sergeant Short asked.

  “Yes, of course,” the count said, combing his hair back, “and three ears and two heads. You know perfectly well what I mean and don’t pretend you don’t!”

  Constable Long pulled out a pad of paper and a pencil.

  “Let’s see,” he said, making some notes. “You were rescued by a dog with five legs, three ears and two heads. Just an ordinary dog, was it?”

  “Good heavens, no!” the count said sharply. “There was nothing ordinary about him. He talked to me in perfect English.”

  “He talked?” Sergeant Short said.

  “He certainly did. Now, if you don’t mind, I am His Highnesses Count Karnht, the mayor of Quadruple Castle in Tallstoria,” Count Karnht said, pulling out a soggie mayor’s ribbon and putting it around his neck. “I’m staying with your mayor, Mrs Trifle. Now take me to her house on the triple.”

  The two policemen stared at each other in disbelief.

  “Oh, so you’re Count Karnht who can’t count,” Constable Long said.

  “That, certainly, is I,” the count said, standing up very straight.

  “Very well then, Count, we’ll take you back to the mayor’s house. I know it’s in Bunya-Bunya Crescent but I’ve forgotten the number,” Constable Long said, winking at Sergeant Short. “You wouldn’t remember what it was, would you?”

  “Why yes, I think I do. It was either a thousand hundred or nought two six. Either way I know it had an eight in it,” Count Karnht said as he climbed into the police car. “It’s a pity that dog left so quickly. I wanted to say,‘Thanks.’”

  “I’m sure he’d have wanted to say, ‘You’re welcome,'” Constable Long said, holding back a giggle.

  “I’m sure of it,” the count said. “Now let’s get going. My pant is wringing wet and so are my shirts.”

  “Fortunately the count and countess will be leaving tomorrow morning,” Selby said, as the police car drove away. “So, in the meantime, I think I’ll just stay here and catch thirty winks. Thirty winks? Oh, no! Now he’s got me doing it!”

  A HAIL OF SNAILS

  “Jetty has asked us if she could have a get-together here, in our own backyard,” Mrs Trifle said. “She’s invited the Friends of Furry and Fishy Animals. What she wants to do is get some money for her next animal-collecting expedition to Africa.”

  “But do you think she’s up to braving the hardships of the African bush?” Dr Trifle said, looking up from a gadget he was making which looked curiously like a lettuce.

  “I don’t know,” Mrs Trifle said. “And I’m afraid the FFFA have their doubts and won’t be giving her any more money. She’ll just have to be prepared to take no for an
answer and pay her own way.”

  “I’ve never known Jetty to take no for an answer yet,” Dr Trifle said, adjusting one of the lettuce leaves with a tiny screwdriver. “She’s a very persuasive woman. She could charm a snail out of its shell if she wanted to. And if she can’t charm them, she’ll use some other method of persuasion, you wait and see.”

  “Charm, schmarm,” Selby thought as he lay on the carpet thinking of the dreadful woman. “She’s about as charming as a vampire bat. I wonder what Dr Trifle means when he says she’ll use another method of persuasion?”

  “Speaking of snails,” Mrs Trifle said,"we’ll have to get all the snails out of the garden by Thursday. Remember, Jetty goes quite bonkers when she sees them,” Mrs Trifle added, referring to the time when thousands of falling snails nearly pummelled her to death in a rainforest at the very moment she was being attacked by head hunters.

  “Funny you should mention snails,” Dr Trifle said, holding up his new device. “This is my Snail Slinger.”

  “What does a Snail Slinger do?”

  “Just what its name says, it slings snails. Come outside and watch.”

  Selby and Mrs Trifle watched as Dr Trifle put his invention down in the middle of a small lettuce patch and then pulled its leaves back till they clicked. In a minute a snail had made its way onto a leaf and with a terrifying noise that sounded something like whump-whizzang!, only louder, the snail shot up into the air and out of sight.

  “You see,” said Dr Trifle proudly as another luckless snail and then another was launched into the air, “it’s friendlier than poisoning them and it’s quicker than taking them across town in the car and then letting them go. Besides, I can never get them to leave the car when I open the car door.”

  “It’s all very well to launch them into the air, dear,” Mrs Trifle said, holding her hands over her head, “but aren’t they likely to come whizzing right back down?”

  “The Slinger is designed to always send them into someone else’s backyard. If they make their way back, kabam! — or rather, whump-whizzang! — they’re gone again. I’ll leave the Slinger here and the garden will be snail-free by the time the FFFA arrives on Thursday. Goodness me,” Dr Trifle added, “I haven’t had a success like this in years. I’d better make a few more test models just to be sure everything’s okay.”