Selby's Secret (6 page)

“Cousin Will! What a surprise!” Mrs Trifle said, opening the front door to her posh cousin Wilhemina. “Is it that day again? It seems like it was only last month that you were here. Where's your dog?”

It was the day of the Bogusville Canine Society's annual dog show and Cousin Wilhemina — who wouldn't normally be caught dead in a little bush town like Bogusville — had arrived to win all the top prizes as she always did.

“He's in the box,” Cousin Wilhemina said, marching into the lounge room with a big
wooden box that had the name FREDDINGTON painted on both sides in huge blue-and-gold letters. “No time to spare,” she said, pushing Selby off the carpet with her foot and folding down the sides of the box. “If we're going to win again this year we've got to get to work.”

Inside the box was every sort of brush and clipper and nail file, and bottles and bottles of coloured liquids. Cousin Wilhemina reached into a mass of hair curlers and hair driers and pulled out one small dog.

Selby watched as Cousin Wilhemina shampooed Freddie and then dyed his fur and set it in curlers.

“Excuse me, Cousin Will,” Dr Trifle said, looking up from his newspaper and wondering why anyone in their right mind would want to dye a dog, “but you've made Freddington blue.”

“Lavender,” Cousin Wilhemina said, correcting him. “Last year he was deep apricot. This year his show name is Freddington Lavender Lilyblush and he'll be lavender all over.”

“A lavender poodle,” Dr Trifle said thoughtfully. “What will they think of next?”

“These days you have to think of a gimmick if you want to win Best in Show, dear,” Cousin Wilhemina said, drying Freddie with an electric hair drier and then brushing his long lavender coat till it shone like a neon light. “Gone are the days when you could enter an ordinary dog without a lot of preparation and expect to win anything at all except, of course, Best in Breed. Winning Best in Breed in a town like Bogusville,” she said, making her lip curl slightly as she said it, “should be no problem. Most of the dogs will be at least half mongrel — no offence to your Selby. My beautiful Freddie will probably be the only pure anything in the whole show.”

“Mongrel, schmongrel,” Selby thought as he looked at Freddie's sad little eyes. “She doesn't treat him like a dog, she treats him like a stuffed toy. Poor little pup.”

“He's in the peak of condition,” Cousin Wilhemina said, clipping a little fur here and there, and then putting a garland of flowers around his neck. “He's a real champion, aren't you sweet-ums?”

“He looks like a barrister's wig with eyes,” Selby thought. “The dog show judge won't
know whether to give him a prize or pick him up and put him on his head.”

Later, at the dog show, Selby and the Trifles waited next to Cousin Wilhemina as a crowd of dog owners took turns parading their dogs in front of the judge. But all eyes were on Cousin Wilhemina, waiting for a glimpse at Freddington Lavender Lilyblush, who was hidden in his box, to surprise them at the last minute.

When no one was looking, Selby poked his head in the hole in the front of the box and had a good look at Freddie.

“You poor thing,” Selby thought. “You're not just a piece of fluff to be dragged around from one dog show to the next. You're a thinking, feeling dog like the rest of us. To Cousin Will you're nothing but a hairdo on a lead. But I have an idea!” Selby thought, jumping into the box and ripping the garland of flowers from Freddie's neck.

He grabbed a pair of clippers, flipped the little dog on his back and started shearing him as though he were shearing a sheep.

“Okay, Fred,” Selby said, leaving a patch of hair here and a patch of hair there so Freddie
wouldn't win a prize for the best Mexican Hairless by accident, “we're going to show Cousin Will that there's a real dog under that fur.”

Selby took some bottles of dye and coloured the tufts of fur red, green, brown and strawberry pink, as Freddie wagged his tail furiously. And to finish the job he reached outside the box and picked up some crushed paper cups and other pieces of litter, put them on a string and hung them around Freddie's neck.

“There you go, Freddie,” Selby muttered as he hopped out of the box just in time to hear the judge call Freddie's name. “A garland of garbage, the perfect touch. Now you're my kind of dog.”

“Come along, Freddington,” Cousin Wilhemina said, stepping out into the spotlight and expecting Freddie to follow two steps behind as he'd been trained to do, “we're on.”

There was a sudden hush from the crowd and even the dogs stopped barking for a minute as Freddie leaped out of the box and began prancing around the ring. But the hush turned into a roar of laughter and cheering.

“Good grief!” Cousin Wilhemina shrieked, not quite loud enough for anyone to hear above the noise. “Someone's plucked my pooch! I'll scalp the scoundrel!”

Then suddenly the judge's open mouth clamped shut and a smile crossed his lips. “Amazing!” he cried, looking at Freddie and thinking how his teenage son and daughter looked when they went to the Smash and Grab Video Parlour on Friday nights. “A punk dog! Brilliant! Whoever would have thought of it! I'm going to award Freddington not only Best
in Breed and Best in Show but Best New Look Dog of the Show!”

With this, there was a cheer of approval and Cousin Wilhemina began to smile in spite of herself.

“I knew he'd win,” she said to Dr and Mrs Trifle. “Freddie's a champion and no one can stop a champion. His next show name will be Fred Frenzy.”

Selby just looked at the smiling Freddie.

“She's right,” he thought, “you just can't keep a good dog down.”

“Oh, wow!” Selby said, reading the entertainment page of the
Bogusville Banner
and seeing that the movie
Raid on Planet Kapon
had finally come to the Bogusville Bijou. “I've got to see it! I'll wait till Dr and Mrs Trifle are asleep and sneak out to the late show.”

Selby waited outside the theatre till the movie was about to begin and then crept in in the dark and found a seat in the back row where no one would notice him. In a minute the film started with a roll of drums and some
ping ping ping zip
noises and then a crash of cymbals. Across the screen in a great burst of swirling galaxies and exploding stars came the title of the movie:

“Fantabulous!” Selby said, hanging his paws over the empty seat in front of him. “I've seen all the other movies in the series and this one is supposed to be the best of all of them!”

Then a lot of words came up on the screen, getting bigger as they went, and a deep voice read them out at the same time:

“Crikey!” Selby said as another star exploded on the screen. “I thought Lord Dar Coarse was
killed when he fell screaming into the sun at the end of the last movie.”

“The time has come to crush Prince Zak and Princess Su,” Lord Dar Coarse said to his evil robot Yor Wun 2. “I don't want any accidents this time. Do you hear? No accidents! Let's get going.”

Lord Dar Coarse and his fleet of hundreds of star ships sped through time and space till they reached Planet Kapon. Then, hovering in the darkness above the tiny planet, Lord Dar Coarse pressed a button that said FORCE FIELD and suddenly all the lights in the houses on Planet Kapon went off, including the nightlight in the bubble house where Prince Zak and Princess Su lay sleeping.

Lord Dar Coarse's star ship drifted silently down to the surface of the planet while the other ships stayed behind.

“Wake up!” Selby said, almost loud enough to be heard above the music. “They're coming to get the Web!”

Lord Dar Coarse and Yor Wun 2 got out of their ship and stood for a moment in the darkness outside the prince and princess's house. The
villains took out their light sabres and were ready to burst in through the door when suddenly the prince and princess appeared on the top of the bubble above them.

“The force of right! The freedom of might!” Prince Zak yelled (as he always did), and he threw the Star Web — which looked to Selby like the net that Phil Philpot put over his peach tree to keep the birds from eating his peaches, only the Star Web glittered with blue light — over Lord Dar Coarse and Yor Wun 2.

“Great stuff!” Selby said, climbing right up onto the back of the seat to get a better view. “This is so exciting! This is wonderful!”

Just when the prince and princess were escaping from the planet with the Star Web, the movie suddenly stopped and the theatre went completely black except for the manager's torch.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the manager said, “I regret to say that the power has gone off all over Bogusville. You may wait for a while and see if it comes on again and we can finish the movie, or come to the box office and I'll give you your money back. I'm sorry for the inconvenience.”

“What a disappointment,” Selby thought as he shot past the ticket office without stopping to get back the money which he hadn't paid anyway. “I'd better go home. It could be hours till the power comes back on.”

Selby was on his way through the middle of Bogusville when he noticed two dark figures standing in the road. They both held torches with long red cones on their ends.

“I don't want any accidents this time,” one of the men said in a low voice. “Let's get going.”

“Crikey!” Selby said, stopping dead in his tracks. “That's what Lord Dar Coarse said to Yor Wun 2! Oh, no! Look at the light sabres! It's them! They've shut off the power with their force field! I'd better tell the police.”

Selby tore back to the police station to find Constable Long and Sergeant Short, but the building was empty.

“They've captured the cops already!” Selby said. “I'll have to take matters into my own paws.”

Selby raced to Phil Philpot's house and pulled the net off the peach tree.

“I don't have the Star Web so this will have
to do,” he said as he ran back to the spot where the two men stood in the road.

Then, holding the net in his mouth, Selby crept up a tree and walked quietly out on a limb that hung over the men.

Suddenly Selby yelled out in plain English: “The forces of right! The freedom of might!” only it sounded more like: “The gorses of gright! The greedom of gite!” with his mouth full of net — and with this he dropped the net down over the two men and jumped after it.

“I've got you now, Lord Dar Coarse,” Selby said, winding the net around the two struggling men. “And as for your evil robot, you can kiss him goodbye. He'll be nothing but nuts and bolts when I'm finished.”

“Hey! Who is that?” the men yelled. “What's going on?”

Just then the lights of Bogusville went back on, revealing Constable Long and Sergeant short tangled in the net with their traffic torches still glowing. Selby looked at the policemen and backed slowly away thinking of a thousand places he'd rather be at the moment.

“Hey!” yelled Sergeant Short, looking right at Selby. “Isn't that Mayor Trifle's dog?”

“Why yes it is,” Constable Long said, pulling the net off them. “He must have been right here when this happened. He probably saw the person who did it.”

“Yeah,” said Sergeant Short. “If only dogs could talk, I think someone would have some serious explaining to do.”

“Gulp,” Selby thought as he dashed back to the Bijou to see the rest of
Raid on Planet Kapon.
“If the lights had come on two seconds sooner,
I'd
be the one doing the serious explaining.”