Selby Screams (2 page)

“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!”

“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.”

On the day of the garden party, Selby climbed into a bush in the backyard to listen to Jetty’s talk.

“This is the moment I’ve been waiting for,” he thought, “the moment when — for the first time in her life — Aunt Jetty
doesn’t
get what she wants. Oh boy! I can’t wait!”

“Ladies and gentlemen of the Friends of Furry and Fishy Animals,” Aunt Jetty began. “Let’s be frank. I want money for an expedition to collect animals but you think I’m not able to brave the hardships of the African bush. That’s a big load of rubbish!”

There was a murmur from the audience followed by a lot of whispering.

“I want to tell you,” Jetty boomed, slamming her walking-stick on the table so hard that the table broke in two, “that I’m as fit as I was when I was twenty — and when I was twenty I could wrestle a five metre croc and come away smiling.”

Suddenly Selby heard a distant sound that was something like
whump-whizzang!
followed by a long whistling noise.

“My goodness,” he thought. “That sounds curiously like the sound of an airborne snail.”

The snail bounced on the ground and Mrs Trifle jumped out of her chair and hid it before Aunt Jetty could see it. Just then there was another
whump-whizzang!
followed by a whole bunch of
whumps!
and dozens of
whizzangs!
and Mrs Trifle raced around the yard frantically gathering up falling snails and hiding them in her handbag.

“Excuse me, dear,” she whispered to Dr Trifle, “but what did you do with the other Snail Slingers you made? The ones you were going to give to the neighbours to test out.”

“I gave them to all the neighbours to test out,” Dr Trifle said, ducking another flying snail. “Ooooops! I can see now that that may have been a bit of a mistake.”

All at once the air was filled with
whump-whizzangs!
and the sound of whizzing snails raining down on the Friends of Furry and Fishy Animals like gooey hailstones.

“What
is
going on here?” Aunt Jetty said, looking up and seeing that the sky was black with snails."What are those —?”

Suddenly something in Aunt Jetty snapped.

“Head hunters!” she screamed, grabbing a man who tried to run past her and knocking him to the ground with her walking-stick. “I’m surrounded by head hunters!”

“She’s flipped her wig!” Selby thought as Aunt Jetty waded into the crowd, picking people
up at random and throwing them around like so many rag dolls. “She’s done her lolly! And, furthermore, she’s ruined her chances of getting money out of this mob! This is great!”

In a few minutes the snail-rain had slowed to a trickle and the ladies and gentlemen of the FFFA who hadn’t followed the Trifles into the house lay groaning on the ground.

“What happened?” Jetty asked as she staggered around in a circle, slowly coming to her senses. “Have I beaten back the attack?”

“Don’t hit me!” cried the president of the Friends of Furry and Fishy Animals through two black eyes. “You proved your point! Here!” he said, quickly scribbling out a cheque. “Take the money and go off to Africa. Don’t wait till morning,
go now!”

“I’m not sure that you’d call that
charming
them,” Selby thought as he scurried out from under the bush and into the garage. “Dr Trifle was certainly right when he said she had other methods of persuasion.”

“Selby’s been chosen to do that TV commercial!” Mrs Trifle said, reading the letter that had just arrived.

“I wonder why they chose Selby out of all those pedigree dogs they saw?” Dr Trifle asked.

“Maybe because I was the smartest, handsomest dog of them all,” Selby thought as he grabbed a Dry-Mouth Dog Biscuit from his bowl and remembered how impressed they were when he stood on his hind legs, barked, jumped through a hoop and did all the other silly things they asked him to do.

“They say they chose him because he looks
so average,” Mrs Trifle answered. “Sort of a dog-next-door kind of mongrel.”

“'Dog-next-door?’ Charming,” Selby thought as he gagged on the dog biscuit. “I guess I’ll have to show them a thing or two. When I finish with that ad it’s going to be so great that they’ll sell squillions of dollars of whatever it is they’re advertising. Hmmmmmm, I wonder what the ad is for.”

The next day Mrs Trifle drove to the studio in the city with Selby. Inside the huge room was a set that looked just like a kitchen. There were bright lights, TV cameras and people dashing everywhere.

“Thank goodness you’re here, we’re ready to go,” the director said to Mrs Trifle, patting Selby on the head as if he was bouncing a basketball. “And aren’t you a perfect little doggie. You’re just the sort of homely mutt we need. I only hope he likes Dry-Mouth Dog Biscuits because that’s what the ad is for.”