Selby Spacedog (5 page)

Suddenly the room went deathly quiet.

‘A what?’ someone shouted. ‘Could you please repeat that?’

‘A gold nugget the size of a pumpkin,’ Madame Mascara said.

‘Are you sure?’ someone asked.

‘The crystal ball is always right,’ Madame Mascara said, watching as people started hurrying for the door. ‘Wait! Come back! Aren’t you staying to have some goodies?’

‘I’m afraid you have started a stampede,’ Mrs Trifle said.

‘Yes, a
greed
stampede,’ Selby thought as he nudged a lamington off a tray and gobbled it whole. ‘They all want to find that nugget.’

By the next day the whole of Bogusville was in chaos.

‘This whole prediction thing is a disaster,’ Mrs Trifle told Dr Trifle. ‘The whole town has the fever — and it’s spreading.’

‘A fever? Spreading?’ Dr Trifle said, putting his hand on his forehead to see if he was sick too. ‘Suddenly I don’t feel well.’

‘Not that kind of fever.
Gold
fever,’ Mrs Trifle explained. ‘The streets are filled with people
with shovels and metal-detectors. And it’s not just Bogusvillians: they’re arriving by the busload from all around Australia. I’ve seen them digging up the parks and reserves. We don’t have enough police to stop them. Bogusville is beginning to look like a battlefield!’

Dr Trifle thought for a moment and then thought for a second moment. Two and a half moments later he had the answer.

‘Get Madame M to change her prediction,’ he said.

‘She absolutely won’t,’ Mrs Trifle said. “‘Never. Not ever,” she told me. She’s very stubborn. Meanwhile, the town is being torn to pieces.’

‘Well, you’re the mayor,’ Dr Trifle said. ‘What are you going to do about it?’

‘I don’t know,’ Mrs Trifle sighed. ‘What
can
I do?’

That afternoon when the Trifles were out, Selby watched angrily as he saw people digging holes on the sides of Bunya-Bunya Crescent. But it was the sight of a man jumping the Trifles’ fence and digging for gold in their back yard that made him furious.

‘The nerve of him!’ Selby thought, barking ferociously and sending the man fleeing over the fence again. ‘Madame Mascara’s to blame for this! I’ll bet she’d change her prediction quick smart if they started digging up
her
yard! Of course it couldn’t happen because she’s got that big high people-proof fence all around Mascara Mansion.’

Selby sat by the swimming pool for a moment, thinking.

‘I’ve got it!’ he thought after only a moment and three quarters. ‘I’ve just found the cure for gold fever.’

That night, when the Trifles were asleep, Selby sneaked out the door and ran down Bunya-Bunya Crescent towards Mascara Mansion. All around him were the sights and sounds of people digging. Soon he’d arrived at the fence around the mansion.

‘This may be a people-proof fence,’ he thought as he squeezed through the bars, ‘but it’s not Selby-proof. Now for the big dig. I hate digging — especially doggy-digging — but it’s our only chance.’

For the next hour the dirt flew between Selby’s back legs as he did his doggy-digging down and down till he disappeared into the hole. Finally he hit a big stone, breaking a claw.

‘Ouch! That’s enough,’ he gasped. ‘I can’t dig anymore. I’m all dug out. But I guess I’ve done enough digging damage for one night.’

Selby leapt up out of the hole, slipped back through the fence, and limped home. He was barely asleep when suddenly it was morning.

‘Hurry!’ he heard Mrs Trifle call to her husband. ‘Madame Mascara just rang. Apparently she must have had a change of heart because she’s going to make another prediction.’

‘Oh, no, not again,’ Dr Trifle yawned. ‘This one could be worse. Oh well, I guess we’d better get over there and see what it is.’

Once again a crowd gathered at Mascara Mansion.

‘I have a new prediction to replace the last one,’ Madame Mascara said. ‘Instead of someone finding a nugget the size of a pumpkin, someone will find a
pumpkin
the size of a
nugget.
You know, just a little bitty pumpkin.’

A great groan went up from the audience.

‘A pumpkin the size of a tiny nugget?’ someone cried. ‘But that’s totally worthless — and boring!’

‘I’m sorry but I can’t help that,’ Madame Mascara said. ‘It’s what the crystal ball says and the crystal ball is always right.’

‘But it was wrong before when you said that someone would find a nugget the size of a pumpkin,’ Mrs Trifle pointed out.

‘No, it wasn’t,’ Madame Mascara said. ‘The crystal ball was just dirty, that’s all. Now I’ve cleaned it, I can see the prediction clearly.’

Moments later Madame Mascara was showing people out, through the front gate.

‘I’m still puzzled about why you changed your prediction,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘Of course I’m very happy you did but —’

‘I didn’t change anything,’ Madame Mascara interrupted.

‘Is it something to do with this huge hole someone dug in your yard?’ Mrs Trifle asked. ‘Did someone get in and start digging for gold?’

‘Hole? I don’t see any hole,’ Madame Mascara said, keeping her back to it and trying to ignore it. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

With this, Madame Mascara took one fateful step backwards and overbalanced, falling headlong into the hole.

‘That
hole,’ Selby thought as he fought back a giggle. ‘And it serves her right!’

‘Are you okay?’ Mrs Trifle asked, peering down at the woman.

‘I’d be better if I hadn’t hit my head on this rock,’ Madame Mascara said, swiping the rock that had broken Selby’s claw with her hand. ‘My goodness,’ she shrieked as she saw the glitter of yellow under the dirt. ‘It’s a gold nugget! A
nugget
the size of a
pumpkin!
I’m rich! What am I saying? I’m already rich. I’m richer!’ she cried. ‘I told you the crystal ball is always right! Aren’t I a lucky duck, though?’

‘You certainly are a lucky duck,’ Selby thought as he sighed and sucked his sore paw. ‘And I’m a very unlucky dog!’

TERROR IN THE TOWER

‘Come along, dear, we have an appointment with a ghost,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘And let’s bring Selby with us. He hasn’t been out all day.’

‘A ghost?’ Dr Trifle said. ‘You don’t believe in ghosts, do you?’

‘No, but some people do. I’ll explain everything on the way out to the Bell Tower.’

Selby sat in the back seat of the car, gazing into the darkness as the Trifles’ car made its way up the windy road to the top of Tower Hill. In the darkness the tower suddenly appeared standing alone like a lighthouse on a rocky point.

‘Ghosts, sheesh,’ Selby thought. ‘I don’t believe in them but they still scare my pants off — or at least they would if I wore pants.’

‘Myreen Spleen, the ghost hunter with the TV show, is to blame for this,’ Mrs Trifle said to Dr Trifle.

‘Oh, yes,’ Dr Trifle said. ‘She came to our house once, remember?’

‘Of course. Anyway, in the last episode of her program,
Australian Spirits, Then and Now,
she told the true story of the Dead Ringer and now Myreen and some other people want the Bell Tower opened to the public.’

‘The Dead Ringer? What’s it about?’

‘It all happened eighty-seven years ago,’ Mrs Trifle said, pulling up in front of the tower. ‘The mayor at the time was a Mr Gaspard. He decided to lock up the Bell Tower so that pranksters couldn’t get in at night and ring the bell.’

Dr and Mrs Trifle and Selby got out of the car. Then Mrs Trifle took a huge iron key
from out of her handbag and put it into the old lock.

‘It was in that year on March fourteenth,’ she continued, ‘at exactly ten pm that it happened.’

‘March fourteenth,’ Dr Trifle said, ‘but that’s today — and it’s almost ten o’clock right now.’

‘I know,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘That’s why we’re here.’

‘Get on with the story!’ Selby thought as his hair ruffled in the wind. ‘The suspense is killing me.’

‘At exactly ten o’clock that night a woman who lived nearby heard the bell ring once and then fall silent,’ Mrs Trifle continued.

‘So, someone had got into the Bell Tower?’ Dr Trifle said.

‘Mayor Gaspard went to have a look but returned saying that no one could be inside. After all the door was still locked and the bell rope had been taken away when the tower was locked. Of course the woman who’d heard the bell wanted to go in and see for herself but he wouldn’t let her have a key.’

‘This mayor fellow must have been very strange.’

‘Very, very strange. No one knew where he’d come from or what he’d done for a living before he came to Bogusville. Even though he was voted in as mayor, he was a man of mystery,’ Mrs Trifle said as she pushed open the old door.

‘Sheesh!’ Selby thought. ‘It’s so cold and dark in here. I’m not sure I like this.’

‘Then the mystery deepened,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘Mayor Gaspard disappeared. After a while a new mayor was elected and one of the first things that mayor did was to open this very door.’

‘What did he find?’ Dr Trifle asked.

‘He found,’ Mrs Trifle said dramatically, ‘Mayor Gaspard lying dead on the floor right here.’