Selby Sprung

by Duncan Ball

  Dedication

  For the Trifles, the dearest, most wonderful people on earth.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Hey!

  Selby and the Evil Genius

  Selby and the Sky-Riter

  As I Get Up This Morning

  Gary Gaggs’ Last Gag Gig

  Selby’s Fate

  Selby, Vampire Slayer

  The Contortionist

  Diary of a Dog

  Selby and the Curse of Death Island

  Please Don’t Make Me Go to School

  Bogusville’s Baby Boom

  Selby’s Last Stand

  Selby’s End

  CYA

  About the Author

  Other book by the Same Author

  Copyright

  Selby Sprung is different from the other Selby books. Yes, it’s another collection of funny and exciting stories about Selby, the only talking dog in Australia and, perhaps, the world but it’s more — much more.

  As you probably know, Selby is a real dog and he lives in a country town somewhere in Australia. His secret is that he knows how to talk and it’s a secret he wants to keep — even if it kills him. He rings me up and tells me his adventures and I just write them down. But before I even started to write these stories he said, ‘I want you to call this book Selby Sprung.’

  I said, ‘Why? Have you been sprung? Did someone find out your secret? Do the Trifles know? Does everyone in Bogusville know? Does the whole world know that you’re a real live talking dog? Selby, tell me!’

  ‘Nothing’s happened yet,’ he said, ‘but it will. I have a feeling that something terrible is going to happen to me, and my secret will get out.’

  In the months that followed, Selby rang me and told me about his adventures. When I had enough for a book, I kept asking him, ‘Is this the last one?’ And he’d say, ‘No.’ Then there was a long silence. No phone calls. No emails. Not a word. Selby has never let me know his real name or what his telephone number is, so all I could do is wait and hope that he’d get back in touch. Had something terrible happened to him?

  Then a package came in the mail with a tale written in Selby’s paw-writing. The strange thing is that my usual postie is a woman but this was delivered by a man. I now suspect that that last story was hand-delivered by Bogusville’s own postman — and Selby’s friend — Postie Paterson.

  I rewrote the story to make it easier to understand, and you’ll find it in the end of this book. But please don’t skip ahead till you’ve read the other stories or you won’t have the whole picture.

  Happy reading,

  Hey!

  Hey, thanks for picking up this book - you’re going to love it! Well, I hope you do, because it has the most thrilling stories of things that happened to me.

  I want to warn you that something terrible happens, and you’ll see when you get to the end. I’m not dead or anything, so don’t worry, but after all these years and so many close calls about keeping it a secret that I know how to talk-

  I’d better not tell you any more or I’ll spoil it. And the last thing I want to do is to ruin this book by telling you too much. Books have to have surprises, and this has some of the best surprises ever. (Well, I think so.)

  Happy reading!

  Selby

  Selby wondered if he was being watched. Everywhere he went he felt invisible eyes burning into him. He felt them when he walked through Bogusville and along Bogusville Creek and even when he lay in the backyard, trying to sleep.

  ‘Sheeeesh!’ he muttered as a chill crept through him, from the tips of his toes to the top of his head. ‘It’s like I’m being watched all the time. But there’s no one around.’

  The more he thought about it, the more he wondered if he was imagining it.

  ‘This is crazy. I’m just scaring myself. Who could be watching me? Who would want to watch me?’

  Little did he know …

  Far far away, in the tallest building in the biggest city in the world, an old man sat at the end of a table in a huge office. Sitting around it were men and women in suits. They waited for him to speak.

  The old man was none other than Morris Arthur, the richest, most powerful person on earth. His friends — and he didn’t have many — nicknamed him ‘Morrie Artie’, but to his enemies — and he had plenty of those — he was the Evil Genius.

  When he finally spoke, it was through clenched teeth. He said just four words: ‘Get. Me. That. Dog.’

  There was an awkward silence as everyone looked around nervously.

  A young man cleared his throat:

  ‘But, sir, this company is in big trouble. We owe billions of dollars. We have to find a way to pay back some of it or we’ll be out of business. Maybe we should postpone finding the dog. It’s costing us a huge amount of money.’

  ‘You fool!’ the old man screamed. ‘Don’t you understand anything?!’ He got up and looked out the window. ‘Who owns all the television stations and newspapers and magazines in the whole world? Who owns the news?’

  Everyone answered at once.

  ‘You do,’ they said.

  Morrie Artie spun around.

  ‘No, I don’t! That’s the point! I own most of the television stations and newspapers and magazines but I don’t own them all. When I own them all, I won’t have to report the news, I’ll make up the news. I will tell people what to think. I will tell them who to vote for. Then I’ll control banks and governments. I’ll start wars and stop wars. I’ll do anything I want. You can forget the money I owe, because soon everyone will be working for me.’

  ‘But, sir …’

  ‘Get. Me. That. Dog,’ the Evil Genius said. ‘Get me Selby, the only talking dog in Australia and, perhaps, the world. When I find him I will have the greatest news story ever. A dog that talks just like us — think about it. People will see him on my TV stations and read about him in my newspapers and my magazines. And with all the money I get, I will rule the world.’

  ‘But, sir …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What if there is no talking dog? What if those books about Selby are just made up? What if the author says that there’s a real dog who rings him up and tells him stories and he just writes them down, but it’s not true?’

  ‘Not true?????!!!!! Those stories can’t possibly be fake! I’ve read them. I know Selby is real and I will find him. Now, my helicopter is waiting. I’m off to CCS — Control Centre Selby.’ He walked to the door then turned and said, ‘By the way, you’re all fired. There, I just saved lots of money.’

  Morrie Artie’s helicopter landed on the roof of his mansion and he made his way down the winding staircase. Servants huddled in doorways or scurried out of his way.

  The walls were covered in old paintings; corridors were lined with ancient sculptures that seemed to blink as the old man hurried by.

  ‘Will sir be having dinner now?’ a butler asked as he took Morrie Artie’s hat and coat.

  ‘Not now,’ the old man muttered. ‘I’m going down to CCS.’

  Deep beneath the mansion was a vast floor of offices: the secret headquarters of Control Centre Selby. When the lift door opened, the Evil Genius was met by a young woman.

  ‘It’s so good to see you, sir,’ the woman said.

  Morrie Artie scowled. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m Myrna. I’m the new manager of Control Centre Selby.’

  ‘Where’s Colonel Blansky?’

  ‘You fired him last week, sir.’

  ‘So I did. Have you found the dog?’

  ‘Not yet, but it shouldn’t be long now. There have been some changes since you were here last. Would you like to follow me, sir.’

  Myrna opened the door
to a huge office filled with people sitting in front of computers.

  ‘This is the new Control Room,’ she said.

  ‘How many people work here?’ the old man muttered.

  ‘Two hundred here, but then we have our specialists. So, altogether, there are about two thousand people working for CCS around the world.’

  ‘You’re all costing me a fortune,’ said Morrie Artie.

  ‘It is expensive, sir, but your orders were that we were to find the real Selby at any cost. And, by the way, none of us has been paid for the past three months.’

  ‘Just find me the dog, and there will be plenty of money. Now, tell me what’s happening.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  The woman opened another door to a room lined with bookcases from floor to ceiling. Sitting on chairs, or at tables piled high with books, were women with thick glasses, clumpy shoes and hair tied up in tight buns.

  ‘Librarians,’ Myrna whispered.

  ‘What do we need them for?’

  ‘Because librarians are smart: they read books. While normal people are watching TV or playing video games, librarians read and read and read.’

  ‘I like TV!’ the Evil Genius boomed.

  ‘So do I, sir. But right now these librarians are studying all the stories in the Selby books. Everything we know about Selby is in those books. When the librarians find a clue about where the real Selby might be, we call in the experts.’

  ‘Give me an example.’

  ‘Remember the Selby story about the famous balloonist, Dame Cecily Quagmire, landing in Bogusville?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ the old man said. ‘That was in the book Selby Screams. That dame is as loopy as a carpet hoop. You won’t find the real Bogusville through her. I know, because we’ve talked. I’ve offered to pay her millions! She has no idea where she landed. It could have been on the moon, for all she knows.’

  ‘Well, maybe,’ Myrna said. ‘But we called in our balloonists and our meteorologists.’

  ‘Meteorologists? Why do we need weather people?’

  ‘They’re checking all the wind patterns for the year Dame Cecily travelled across Australia. They’ll narrow down where she could have landed.’

  ‘We need meteorologists for that?’

  ‘Yes, sir, and they’re also studying the Selby books for any mention of the weather. They check it against all the weather information from every town in Australia for the past ten years.’

  ‘Yes, sir. At the same time our transport experts are checking anything in the books to do with buses, trucks and planes. Our vulcanologists are looking for anything to do with volcanoes. Our botanists are checking anything to do with trees and flowers. We also have zoologists, birdologists, fish-ologists, earthquake-ologists and master chefs.’

  ‘Master chefs? We’ve got cooks on our books? Why do we need them?’

  ‘Selby loves to eat what he calls “peanut prawns”. These are prawns cooked in some sort of satay sauce. Selby says there’s a restaurant in his town that makes the very best peanut prawns. Our chefs have been working on the perfect recipe for peanut prawns. When they find it, they’ll look for a restaurant in a country town in Australia that uses the exact same recipe. Then we’ll know which town is the real Bogusville. Please follow me.’

  They walked down a long hallway. Myrna opened another door to reveal a room filled with people wearing dog suits.

  ‘These are members of the SSS — the Search for Selby Society,’ she said. ‘They all work for us now. They wear the dog suits because they don’t want anyone to know who they are. Among them, we think, are movie stars, prime ministers, presidents, heads of big companies and some children’s book writers.’

  ‘Children’s book writers? Why would they want to find Selby?’

  ‘Jealousy,’ Myrna said, closing the door again. ‘Now, wait till you see who we have at the end of the corridor.’

  As they approached, the noise got louder and louder.

  ‘What’s that racket?!’ the Evil Genius demanded.

  ‘Kids,’ Myrna said, opening the door.

  Inside were hundreds of kids sitting in front of the latest computers.

  ‘Kids?!’ the old man screamed. ‘I hate kids! Get them out of here!’

  ‘It may look like these kids are playing, but they’re actually working. They’re very special. They’re writing emails to Selby, and boy are they clever. They make up stories about their families and their pets.’

  ‘What’s the point of that?’

  ‘They beg Selby to tell them his real name. They promise not to tell anyone, no matter what happens.’

  ‘It’ll never work. He won’t tell. I once pretended that I was a little girl named Fleur and I said that my budgie died. I begged Selby to tell me his real name so I wouldn’t feel so sad.’

  ‘Yes, I read about that.’

  ‘He tricked me!’ the old man cried.

  ‘I know,’ the woman said. ‘But these kids are very very charming and —’

  ‘Don’t you think I was charming enough?!’

  ‘Well, sir, well … ah … let’s just see what they can find out, all right?’

  ‘All right. What else is happening?’

  ‘We’ve got our fully automated, spy-satellite-mounted, cloud-piercing camera sensors watching all the dogs in Australia,’ Myrna said, opening another door. ‘These people are former spies. They’ve programmed the computers to pick up dogs doing anything un-doglike.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Selby has done lots of un-doglike things right out in the open where a spy satellite could have seen him. He’s driven a firetruck, defused a bomb, pushed a robot into a swimming pool —’

  ‘Yes, yes, I get the idea.’

  ‘If he does anything like that again, we’ll spring him.’

  ‘It had better be soon,’ Morrie Artie said. ‘What’s in that room over there?, the one that says ARAGMAN on the door. Don’t tell me we have tailors working here?’

  ‘No, that’s our Anagram Division. An anagram is a word you get when you scramble the letters of another word.’

  ‘I know what an anagram is!’

  ‘If you switch the letters of “anagram” around you get ARAGMAN,’ she said. ‘These people are the world’s best code breakers, so they’re experts with anagrams. Remember the story “Secret Agent Selby” in the book Selby Santa?’

  ‘Was that the one when Selby tried to find the mystery writer?’

  ‘Yes, he used anagrams to solve the mystery.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘We think that Selby himself — or whatever his real name is — could be using anagrams of real names in the stories.’

  ‘And the Trifles’ real name might be an anagram of Trifle?’

  ‘Yes, it could be Lifter or Filter. We’ve got agents looking for people with those last names right now. Or Mrs Trifle could be First Mel.’

  ‘Let me see,’ the old man said. ‘So, her real name might be Melanie and they nicknamed her “Mel” when she was little.’

  ‘Very clever, sir. She might have had sisters and brothers named Melanie, Melody, Melissa, Melinda, Melisande, or Melvin, Melville or even Melchior. Anyway, all of them starting with “Mel”. Of course they’d all be nicknamed “Mel” so there would be First Mel, Second Mel, Third Mel, etcetera.’

  ‘Rubbish. What about the second R in Mrs Trifle?’

  ‘We have to look at every possibility, sir. Mrs Trifle’s first name is Clarabel, according to Selby. An anagram of Clarabel is Call Bear.’

  ‘Call Bear? That’s not a name!’

  ‘She lived in northern Canada when she was young. The people there could have nicknamed her that. We’ve got agents there right now asking about an Australian girl with the nickname “Call Bear”. If we find someone who knew her then, we’ll have another piece of the puzzle.’

  ‘How about Dr Trifle?’ the old man asked.

  ‘Red Flirt,’ the woman answered. ‘It’s an anagram of Dr Trifle. Maybe he had r
ed hair when he was younger and he was a flirt. Who knows?’

  ‘I know,’ Morrie Artie said. ‘It’s stupid. How about Aunt Jetty?’

  ‘The Aunt part is easy. It’s an anagram of A Nut. And from what Selby says about her in the books, she is a nut. Of course that doesn’t help us much.’

  ‘What are the anagrams of Bogusville?’ the Evil Genius asked.

  ‘So far we have: Evil Bus Log, Us Vile Glob and So Give Bull. It’s all a bit mysterious.’

  ‘One thing’s for sure,’ the old man said. ‘This Selby is not just the only talking dog in the world — he’s the cleverest, most secretive creature in the whole animal kingdom.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Think of the name he’s given himself — Selby,’ Morrie Artie said. ‘Rearrange the letters and it spells Be Sly.’

  ‘That’s wonderful, sir! We hadn’t thought of that one. You truly are a genius! Selby — Be Sly. That’s brilliant!’

  Myrna’s phone rang and she answered it.

  ‘We have something,’ she said to Morrie Artie.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘One of our automatic spy-satellite-mounted, cloud-piercing sensors has just caught a dog doing some un-doglike things in a country town in Australia.’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘He was running in circles and then leaping into the air.’

  ‘Lots of dogs run in circles and then leap into the air.’

  ‘He ran around on his hind legs.’

  ‘He could be a circus dog. Was he talking? That’s what I want to know — was he talking?!’

  ‘Well, no, he wasn’t talking.’

  ‘Then forget about him! Don’t waste your time!’

  ‘Sir — he was singing!’

  ‘Singing? Are you sure?’

  Suddenly bells were ringing and sirens sirening. Everyone was running through the corridors.