by Duncan Ball
Malcolm Mumbles’ horse darted away for a second and then galloped back to the camera.
“We know that Whittlebone Jones wrote a lot of poetry,” Malcolm Mumbles said with a little bit of panic in his voice, “but all of it is lost except one poem. And that’s the one that tells of the tragic accident that ended his roaming. It goes like this:
‘I rode onto a silvery plain,
The sun was setting o’er the cane,
I rode through grass and rode through gorse,
And then, alas, fell off my horse.'”
“Not a great poem,” Mrs Trifle said.
“Maybe that’s why he’s not-so-famous,” Dr Trifle said, “instead of just plain famous.”
“Well, he deserves to be more famous than Clancy of the Undertow,” Mrs Trifle said. “Even if there’s only one of his poems left.”
“We know very little about the last years of Whittlebone Jones,” Malcolm Mumbles said over his shoulder as the horse turned around again. “We only know that he lived out his final years in this house,” he added, holding up a photograph of an old house. “We don’t know where the house is, which is a pity because the lost manuscripts of Whittlebone Jones are probably hidden there somewhere.”
“With any luck they’ll stay lost,” Selby thought as the horse threw Malcolm Mumbles into the riverbed. “But hold the show! Galloping galahs! That house is Bunya-Bunya Breezes! I’d recognise that funny-shaped chimney anywhere!” Selby thought, remembering the photo of the house that Mrs Trifle had on her desk in the folder marked New Recreation Centre. “That’s the empty house down the street. It’s the one the council is going to turn into a recreation centre.”
An hour later when the Trifles went out for a walk, Selby phoned Malcolm Mumbles.
“I saw your program today, Mal,” Selby said, “and I just wanted to tell you that I know where Whittlebone Jones’ house is. It’s an empty house right at the end of my street. What’s the reward?”
“Who said anything about a reward?” Malcolm Mumbles asked nastily.
“Well … I did,” Selby said, trying not to be nasty back. “If I tell you where the house is and you find the lost manuscripts, you’ll be a rich man. It’s only fair that I should get a reward.”
“The manuscripts are not worth anything,” Malcolm said. “I only want them for the sentimental value.”
“Well if that’s the case I’ll find them myself,” Selby said, knowing that he couldn’t because his paws weren’t suited to taking apart floors and walls to look for lost manuscripts, “and keep all the sentimental value for myself. Goodbye.”
“Hold on!” Malcolm yelled. “Just a minute! Okay, okay, I’ll see about a reward. Just give me your name and address and we’ll send you … we’ll see what we can send you.”
“Just send the reward to Mr S. Trifle,” Selby said, “at Bunya-Bunya Crescent in Bogusville. I’m at number —”
“So Whittlebone Jones’ house is at the end of Bunya-Bunya Crescent in Bogusville!” Malcolm Mumbles screamed.
“I didn’t say that,” Selby said.
“Yes you did! You said it was at the end of your street and you said you live in Bunya-Bunya Crescent,” Malcolm Mumbles said. “You also said the house was empty! Even Blind Freddy could find it from those clues! So long, you mug, I’m going to find the lost manuscripts of Whittlebone Jones!”
“He tricked me,” Selby said, wondering if Blind Freddy was a little-known dead poet or a famous one. “But I know what I’ll do. As soon as the sun is up I’ll nip down to Bunya-Bunya Breezes and start looking. He has to come all the way from the city. I’ll beat him to it.”
Early next morning Selby approached Bunya-Bunya Breezes and heard the sounds of ripping and banging. Inside was a mob of people pulling the old house apart looking for the lost manuscripts.
“Crikey!” Selby thought. “They’re wrecking the new recreation centre.” And before he could stop himself he’d yelled out, “Stop it at once! Stop this madness!”
Suddenly the ripping and banging stopped and Malcolm Mumbles poked his head out a window.
“Who said that?” he asked, seeing only a dog with a purple face. “Okay, back to work everybody.”
“Mrs Trifle will be furious. I’ve got to stop them,” Selby thought, “even if it means talking and (gulp) giving away my secret!”
But just then there was a great cracking noise and the roof began to fall in.
“Everybody out!” Malcolm Mumbles yelled and poetry lovers dived out windows and jumped through holes in the walls till the last boards had fallen and Bunya-Bunya Breezes lay in ruins.
“We looked everywhere,” Malcolm said with tears in his eyes. “They weren’t in the walls or the ceilings or in the floors or even in the dirt under the house. The lost manuscripts are still lost.”
“And so am I,” Selby said, slinking off home. “It’s all my fault. They destroyed the new recreation centre because of me. I don’t deserve to live with such wonderful people as Dr and Mrs Trifle. I’m just not worthy of them. I’ll have to tell them what happened. It doesn’t matter that I’ll be their servant for life. I don’t even deserve to be their slave.”
And Selby was feeling so guilty as he lay there on the carpet looking up at the Trifles that he was about to say, “All right, enough’s enough. I, Selby, your unworthy dog, am able to talk as well as the next man,” when Mrs Trifle picked up the photograph of Bunya-Bunya Breezes and looked at it.
“It’s a pity,” she said. “It was the last house around here with one of those funny-shaped chimneys, and now it’s gone. A hundred years ago all the houses in the bush had them.”
“Crumbs,” Selby thought. “I thought it had to be Whittlebone Jones’ house because of the chimney and now I find out that there were houses like that all over the country. Things are getting worse by the minute.”
“It had to go anyway,” Dr Trifle said, “to make way for the new recreation centre that’s going to be built. We should be thankful that it didn’t cost anything to have it torn down.”
“Yes,” Mrs Trifle said, not seeing Selby’s ears prick up, “it was good of Malcolm Mumbles to help us out. I don’t know why he did it but I think I’ll ask the council if we can name the new recreation centre The Malcolm Mumbles Sports and Leisure Centre.”
“Yes,” said Dr Trifle. “What a good idea.”
“Life’s just not fair,” Selby thought as he trotted off for his evening’s walk. “That recreation centre ought to be named after me. Besides, Selby’s Sports and Leisure Centre even sounds better.”
Selby Soars to New Heights
“Galloping galaxies!” cried Dr Trifle’s old friend and amateur astronomer, Percy Peach, as he peered through the doctor’s brand new binocular bilateral super close-up tracking telescope which poked up through a huge hole in the Trifles’ garage roof. “Either there’s dust on your telescope or a tiny piece of Haydee’s Comet just broke away when it rounded Mars! Have a look!”
“It’s hopeless trying to show me,” said Dr Trifle, nearly asleep in his chair and wondering how astronomers managed to stay up all night to study the stars. “I never should have built that silly telescope. All I ever see is eyelashes: gigantic blinking eyelashes. The sky is full of them.”
“It’s right near Sirius, the Dog Star. I’ll calculate where it’s going” Percy who hated calculators and biros, said as he whipped out a pad of paper, a bottle of ink and a quill pen.
Percy began scribbling lines and lines of letters and columns and columns of numbers at great speed and then throwing the papers on the floor where Selby lay trying to sleep.
“What a pity. It seems our new comet is going to zoom off harmlessly into space,” Percy said to the nearly-sleeping Dr Trifle. “I had hoped it would come crashing into the atmosphere and make lots of pretty streaks and light up the sky like Cracker Night, the way comets do sometimes. Could you please check my calculations while I climb up on the roof to make sure it wasn’t just on the telescope?”
“Poor Dr Trifle needs his sleep,” Selby said, waking up and stretching and seeing that Dr Trifle was finally asleep in his chair and that Percy Peach had gone. “That Percy kept him awake too long. It’s not good for him. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Oh, good! Now’s my chance to look through Dr Trifle’s new telescope.”
Selby ran to the telescope and peeped up through it, not seeing eyelashes — because he didn’t have any — but seeing instead a gigantic head that looked like some sort of monster from the Revolt of the Universe movies.
“Aaaaarrrrrgggggh!” screamed Selby at the sight of Percy.
“Aaaaarrrrrgggggh!” screamed Percy back as he saw Selby’s tiny eyes peering up at him.
And before Selby realised that it was only Percy checking the telescope for dust, he jumped backwards, knocking over the inkwell — all of which would have been okay if he hadn’t got a tiny drop of ink on one toenail.
“You frightened the life out of me!” Percy screamed at Dr Trifle who was now waking up and wondering what all the screaming was about. “I saw your eyes in the telescope and thought you were some sort of monster.”
“Am I?” Dr Trifle asked, still wondering what was happening.
“Of course you’re not. Don’t be silly,” Percy said, gathering together all the papers in one big clump and thrusting them into Dr Trifle’s hands. “There’s no dust on your telescope. This can only mean one thing.”
“What?” Dr Trifle said, rubbing his eyes and not really listening to anything his old friend was saying.
“That a tiny piece of Haydee’s Comet has broken away and become a comet itself,” Percy said. “Don’t you ever listen to anything I say? Never mind. Just check my calculations and see if I’m right that the new comet is going to miss the earth altogether.”
Dr Trifle looked over the lines and lines of letters and columns and columns of numbers.
“Ahah! I think you’ve gone wrong here. You missed a number on your second last page,” Dr Trifle said, pointing to the ragged number 1 that looked more like a dog’s inky toenail print than a real number 1. “In fact if we recalculate you’ll see this little comet is just about to zoop straight down to earth!” Dr Trifle said, finishing the calculation on his pocket calculator. “Not only to earth but directly to Bogusville! It should light up the sky like Cracker Night!”
“Heavenly bodies!” Percy Peach screamed as he studied the number 1 he’d missed and noticed how much it looked like a dog’s-toenail-dipped-in-ink mark. “We’re in the perfect position to see it. We’ll get the best view of anyone on earth! They’ll have to name it after us! It’ll be called the Peach–Trifle Comet! There’s no time to lose! You look through one of these eyepieces and I’ll look through the other. Before the night is out, the comet will be here and we’ll be famous!”
“Cripes!” Selby thought as he crept out of the garage to his favourite hiding place: the garden shed. “Now poor Dr Trifle’s going to stay up all night looking for a comet that isn’t even coming towards earth. And it’s all my fault for stepping in that ink. Oh, woe woe woe. I wish he’d just forget all about it and go to bed. If only I could think of something. If only a brilliant idea would pop into my brain. Hmmmmmmmmmm.”
Selby climbed through the hole in the garden shed.
“I’ve got it!” he cried as a brilliant idea popped into his brain. “I’ve got it!”
Selby lifted box after box off the shelves in front of him till he found one labelled, “Leftover Sparklers from Cracker Night".
“I think I’ve just found the Peach–Trifle Comet!” Selby said, grabbing a sparkler from the box.
Selby climbed quietly up onto the garage and peeked down through a crack in the roof to see the two men, each peering up through a different nocular of the binocular bilateral super close-up tracking telescope.
“All I have to do is light this sparkler and hold it in my teeth and then make a comet-like leap over the end of the telescope,” Selby thought as he lit the sparkler and made a perfect comet-like leap over the telescope.
“That’s it!” Percy screamed. “Did you see it?”
“I’m sorry,” Dr Trifle said sleepily. “All I saw was eyelashes.”
“Well I saw it so now they’ll have to name it after me!” Percy said. “What a sight! But you know,” he added, scratching his head the way astronomers do when they’re thinking, “there was something odd about the Peach Comet.”
“What was that?” Dr Trifle asked.
“It made a comet-like streak across the sky in the usual way but I think I also saw something else. If I’m not mistaken I saw the faint image of a dog’s face.”
“Sirius?” Dr Trifle asked.
“Of course I’m serious,” said Percy.
“No, I mean Sirius, the Dog Star. That must have been what you saw,” Dr Trifle said to the puzzled Percy as he headed off to bed to get some sleep at last.
“The Dog Star,” Selby thought as he curled up to get some sleep too. “That’s me all right.”
The Star of Lahtidoh
The night the world famous opera singer, Dame Lily Larinks, came to town dripping with the most expensive jewellery, there was a reception at the Town Hall and everyone who was anyone (and in Bogusville that was everyone) was there. Some came to see the famous singer sing a few songs and talk about her life in opera, but most Bogusvillians weren’t opera fans. In fact they were a little suspicious of singers who didn’t play along on the guitar as they sang — which Dame Lily didn’t. No, they came to see the blinding sparkle of the Star of Lahtidoh, the biggest diamond in the world, which hung on a thin gold chain around the great woman’s neck.
It was the hottest evening of the year and Selby would have happily stayed at home to watch Inspector Quigley’s Casebook, his favourite TV detective show, but he too was dying for a glimpse of the glittering gem.
“Is it true that there’s a curse on the Star?” Mrs Trifle asked Dame Lily as she dipped another cup of orange-lime cordial from a punchbowl so packed with ice-cubes that a few tumbled to the floor.
“There’s a lot of talk about a curse,” Dame Lily said in a singsong voice, “because of what’s happened to the owners of the gem. You see, it was found by an explorer in Africa. He tripped on it and broke his toe. When a doctor came to help him he unfortunately gave the explorer the wrong medicine and he died. But it was lucky for the doctor because he kept the Star in payment for his services and became a very rich man. Sadly, he was run over accidentally by his own limousine in London some years later. The chauffeur felt terrible about it but, happily, he inherited the gem and became very rich for a time.”
“And what happened to him?” Mrs Trifle asked.
“He and his family drowned when their yacht sank off the coast of Italy.”
“How terrible.”
“Yes, the only survivor was a simple young deckhand who rowed the lifeboat into port the next day and told of the terrible storm,” Dame Lily said. “Apparently the only thing he was able to rescue was the Star of Lahtidoh.”
“And did you buy the Star from him?” Mrs Trifle asked.
“Good heavens no,” Dame Lily said. “I married him. He was my first husband. So you see, I don’t believe in the curse. I just think that the previous owners had a run of dreadfully bad luck.”
“Sounds like more than just bad luck,” thought Selby, catching an ice-cube in his mouth as it fell from the punchbowl. “But what a beautiful diamond! The sparkles are all different colours like hundreds and thousands.”
“What I will say for the Star,” Dame Lily said, “is that I believe it has magical powers.”
“Magical powers?” Mrs Trifle asked. “Do you really?”
“Yes, I do. It certainly has a mind of its own. Twice I’ve misplaced it and both times it told me, through my feelings, where it was.”
“A mind of its own?” Selby thought as another ice-cube fell to the floor and he caught it on the first bounce. “Some people will believe anything.”
“Is it insu
red?” Dr Trifle asked as he rubbed his sweating forehead with a handful of ice. “In case it’s lost — or stolen?”
“I’m afraid it’s not,” Dame Lily said. “The Star is worth squillions. No one could ever insure it. It’s worth more than a whole insurance company. I have guards instead. They keep watch on it every second of the day.”
“That’s funny,” Mrs Trifle said, “I don’t see any guards.”
“Hmmmmmmm, how curious,” Dame Lily said, looking around the hall. “I wonder where they’ve gone. Well I don’t think we have to worry about jewel thieves in a little town like this, do we? Ha ha ha.”
Selby looked around through a forest of legs as he sucked another ice-cube, but only saw people who lived in Bogusville.
“‘Show me a peaceful town,’” Selby thought, quoting the words of Inspector Quigley from the episode called A Peaceful Town, “'and I will show you a place where a crime is just waiting to happen.'”
Just then Selby saw a couple of suspicious men in suits making their way towards the famous opera singer.
“Out of the way!” one of them said as he pushed forward.
Selby stopped sucking and started staring. “Crumbs!” he thought, seeing the bulge in the man’s coat that could only have been a pistol. “This is it — a crime just waiting to happen! They’re international jewel thieves and they’ve captured the guards and tied them up in a back room somewhere so they can steal the Star of Lahtidoh! I’ve got to stop them!”
The men came closer and Selby — remembering how Inspector Quigley outwitted a roomful of spies in The Roomful of Spies — ran for the light switch, casting the room into darkness.
“Don’t move!” one of the men yelled and he fired his pistol in the air which made everyone move very fast in every direction.
“They’re after the Star!” Selby cried out in plain English as he bumped his way across the crowded room accidentally knocking all the people down who hadn’t already fallen down. “Dame Lily! Hide the diamond, quick!”
Selby dashed about trying to find Dame Lily. Finally a shaft of moonlight caught the Star of Lahtidoh which still hung from the woman’s neck. Remembering the way the archvillain trained a dog to steal jewellery in the Inspector Quigley episode called The Doggie Done It Diamond Caper, Selby leapt up and snatched the gem in his teeth, flinging it high in the air.
