by Duncan Ball
The days passed but Selby couldn’t get Escape Into Doom out of his head.
‘Okay, so Blake was chained to the floor and there were all these guys with guns. It would have been impossible to get away. Of course, that’s what I thought before he escaped from all the crocodiles in Fear Factor Zero. I loved that book.’
Selby quickly found the book and opened it to the page about the escape.
The crocodile’s jaws came closer and closer to Blake’s legs, clicking like the sound of castanets on a hot day in Spain. Ebony Boyne sat safely behind the barrier, smiling as she filed her fingernails.
‘Sorry we couldn’t have another
breakfast together, Blake,’ she said. ‘I enjoyed your company.’
‘Likewise,’ Blake said. ‘But now some friends of mine would like to have you to lunch.’
There was a high-pitched squeal as Blake pressed the button on his Reptile Audio Psychic Stimulator. The crocs suddenly turned away from him, crashing through the barrier and grabbing the terrified woman in their jaws.
Blake slipped his hands free and dusted himself off to the screams of the double agent. He strolled calmly away.
‘See ya later, alligator,’ he said.
‘That was soooo cool!’ Selby thought. ‘But that was different because he knew ahead of time that Ebony and her mates were out to get him, so he was ready for them. He worked out that they all had fake names. Their first names had the same, exact letters as their last names, but scrambled around: Ebony Boyne, Andrew Warden, Daisy Sayid, Romeo Moore and Stony Tyson. That Blake guy is a genius! Hang on …’
Selby wrote LIONEL O’NEILL on a piece of paper.
‘Hey, Lionel and O’Neill have the same letters in them, too!’ he thought. ‘It can’t be the author’s real name! It’s a made-up name! I’m as smart as Blake Romano! Hmmm, I wonder if the author left any clues about his real name.’
Selby played around with the letters again.
‘No good,’ he thought. ‘I can’t make them spell another name. What if I try the same thing with the letters of Blake Romano’s name?’
Selby wrote the letters of Blake Romano’s name on scraps of paper and scrambled them around.
‘Let’s see now,’ Selby thought. ‘Bloke oar man? No. Loan am broke? No. Learn ma book? That’s good but it’s not a name either. A bleak moron? That’s what I feel like right now,’ Selby sighed, pushing the letters around again. ‘Wait! Here’s one: Earl Bookman! That could be the author’s real name!’
Once again, Selby searched the internet. Soon he found a short article from an old copy of the Poshfield Post. It read:
Mavis and Beauregard Bookman announce the retirement of their son, Captain Earl Bookman, after twenty years of special service overseas. He will be returning to live in Poshfield.
‘I reckon that’s him,’ Selby thought. ‘He was a top-secret special agent himself. That’s how he knew about all that spy stuff. He came back to live in Poshfield and then he wrote all the Blake Romano books. I’ll get his address and write him a letter asking him how the book ends.’
Selby checked the phone book but there was no Earl Bookman. He rang the Poshfield post office and asked where Earl Bookman lived.
‘Sorry, but we can’t give out that information,’ someone told him.
‘Good,’ Selby thought. ‘They know but they won’t tell. That means he does live in Poshfield. Let’s see if the super-smart brain of Selby “Blake Romano”Trifle can find him.’
Selby remembered a scene in The Serpent’s Claw where Blake Romano set out to find the evil spymaster, Igor Mazurki. All he knew was that the man lived in the mountain town of Nonnesberg.
Blake wrote the address on the package: to Mr Igor Mazurki, Nonnesberg, and put it in the postbox outside the Nonnesberg post office. He parked his Nuvo-Reesh 6 Cam Sportsmaster in the laneway and waited. It wasn’t long before the postal van started on its rounds with Blake following. Blake watched as the driver left the package in front of a deserted factory building.
‘Watch out, Igor,’ Blake said to himself. ‘I know where you live.’
‘Hey, what if I did that?’ Selby thought. ‘I could send a package and address it just to Earl Bookman, Poshfield. If he really does live in Poshfield, the post office will deliver it. I’ll follow the van and see where they take it. There’s only one problem: I don’t have a Nuvo-Reesh 6 Cam Sportsmaster and I can’t follow a van on foot because I’d never keep up.’
Selby thought for a minute.
‘Simple dimple — I’ll mail myself! I’ll put myself in a package and mail me to Earl Bookman!’
And so it was that a postman found a mysterious package with lots of holes in it on the steps of the Poshfield post office. It was addressed simply to ‘Earl Bookman, Poshfield’.
Soon Selby was bouncing along in a postal van and before long he’d been left in front of a house at the edge of the town. He was out of the package in a flash and found himself at the gates of a huge house with a high wall around it. At the gate, he saw an intercom.
‘I knew it,’ Selby said. ‘Secret agents always have intercoms. I’ll talk to him through that and ask him how the book ends. Oops, there’s a security camera.’
Selby pushed the button on the intercom and then ducked out of sight.
After a while, a voice asked,‘Who’s there?’
‘You don’t know me,’ Selby called out, ‘but I love your Blake Romano books. I have a question. You don’t have to let me in or anything.’
‘How did you find me?’
‘I worked it out,’ Selby said. ‘The clue about your real name was in Fear Factor Zero and then there was something else that Blake did in The Serpent’s Claw.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Never mind about that. Just tell me what happens at the end of Escape Into Doom. The last page was missing from my book. I have to know if Blake dies and that. Oh, and does he get back together with Sheila? She was really nice. And, if he doesn’t die, does he keep on being a secret agent? And do Fridas Monsolet and all those guys get killed? Oh, and the little girl, does she get her teddy back after the other one exploded? There are lots of loose ends, Mr Bookman.’
‘Step in front of the camera so I can see you.’
‘I-I … well, I … you don’t want to see me.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’m not looking my best. I’m having a bad-hair day. It’s okay, I’m not a spy or anything. Just tell me if Blake gets away in the end.’
‘You get away!’ the voice said. ‘And don’t come back!’
‘But Mr Bookman —’
‘Leave me alone!’ the man shouted.
(Click.)
‘Gosh,’ Selby thought. ‘What a grumpy-guts. I thought authors were nice people. What does he want? I said I liked his books.’
Selby was about to start on his long walk back to Bogusville when he remembered the scene in Scream of Angels where Blake Romano had to get through the tightest security in the world at Loch Sporran Castle to find the computer disk that could destroy the world.
Blake waited by the castle wall for the cover of darkness. Seconds ticked by, followed by minutes and then hours. The sun disappeared behind Loch Sporran Castle. Blake set his watch.
‘Zero hour,’ he murmured. ‘Now let’s see what tricks that knobbly-kneed laird has up his sleeve.’
Blake spat on the ground.
‘I’m going in,’ he said softly.
Selby felt something strange happening inside him. Maybe it was anger. Maybe it was daring. Maybe it was something else. Or maybe it was that feeling you get when you read about a character and that character slowly seeps into you like spilled milk into a sponge. Whatever it was, Selby felt the spirit of Blake Romano inside him. He became Blake Romano.
Selby waited as minutes turned into hours and darkness fell. He turned and spat on the ground.
‘I’m going in,’ he said softly. ‘Oops, maybe I’m not. The gate is locked.’
But, li
ke Blake in Night of Darkness, Selby grabbed a tree branch and catapulted himself over the wall. And, like Blake in Beyond Identity, he searched the garden till he found the half-buried flowerpot with the key to the front door in it.
‘The old half-buried flowerpot trick,’ Selby sneered. ‘The oldest trick in the world.’
Seconds later he was standing in a hallway.
‘The study is straight ahead. The book will be in there,’ he thought. ‘I’ll grab it, read the last page, and then I’m out of here.’
From upstairs came the slight sound of a light clicking off, followed by a man’s snores.
‘Good,’ Selby thought, ‘he’s fast asleep. I’ll just make my way down the hallway and —’
Selby suddenly stopped as he remembered a scene in Code of Betrayal.
Blake scanned the corridor. The only sound was the slow ticking of a grandfather clock. He dropped to his knees and shook the carpet, sending up a cloud of dust.
‘Just as I thought,’ he murmured, ‘trip-wire laser beams.’
Selby grabbed the hall carpet and shook it.
‘Sure enough,’ Selby thought, as he watched the dust rise, ‘lasers! I’ve got to get through them before the dust settles.’
Selby leaped and danced down the hallway, making his way through the criss-crossed laser beams like a ballet dancer on opening night. In a minute he was past them, standing in front of a doorway.
‘I’m here,’ he thought. ‘The study.’
Something held Selby back. It was his memory of a scene in Shadow of Silence.
Blake saw the tiny pearl dome of the motion detector. Then, moving as slowly as the minute hand of a clock, he worked his way forward through the doorway.
‘There it is,’ Selby thought, spotting the detector in the doorway. ‘He’s got one, too. I should have known.’
Selby inched forward even slower than the minute hand of a clock. One quick movement would set off the alarms.
Finally he was in the study.
‘I made it!’ he screamed in his brain. ‘And look! All of his books! Fear Factor Zero, The Serpent’s Claw, Scream of Angels, Code of Betrayal, Shadow of Silence, The Conspiracy Files, Harvest of Waves, Beyond Identity, Night of Darkness, Dare Twice to Die, Flight of the Turtle, Race Against Midnight, Hidden Agenda and yes Escape Into Doom!’
Selby listened again to the snoring and then quickly grabbed the book and turned to the second-last page, where it said:
Then, with the speed of lightning, Blake
And then, on the last page:
pulled the Laser-Guided Sling of Achilles from his pocket, letting it fly on its terrible course, killing everyone.
‘Goodbye, Monsolet,’ he sneered. ‘Your kind is finished forever.’
Blake stepped out into the sunlight. There was Sheila, standing waiting. Across the street was the little girl, holding a new teddy.
Blake smiled. It was all worth it and he knew it.
THE END
‘He got away!’ Selby thought. ‘He didn’t get killed!’
‘Stay right where you are!’ a voice said.
Selby looked up to see an old man holding a pistol. He could still hear the slight sound of snoring from upstairs.
‘Gulp,’ Selby thought. ‘He caught me with the old recorded-snoring trick! I should have remembered that from Harvest of Waves.’
‘Where are you?’ the man demanded. ‘Come out and show yourself.’
‘I’m right in front of you, you nong,’ Selby thought. (He didn’t say it; he only thought it.)
‘I know you’re here somewhere,’ the man said, looking around. ‘Come out or I’ll shoot your dog! I’ll count to three! One …’
‘He doesn’t know that it’s just me in here!’ Selby thought.
‘… two …’
‘He can’t believe that a dog could have done what Blake did!’
‘… and … three!’
‘Oh no! He’s going to shoot me!’ Selby whimpered in his brain. ‘I have to talk! I have to tell him it’s me who broke in!’
Selby was about to say, ‘I’m sorry, Mr Bookman but I broke in here all by myself. You see, I’m a talking dog and I —’ when suddenly the old man’s hand reached out and patted him.
‘Hi, little guy,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, I’d never shoot a dog.’
Selby remembered the scene in The Conspiracy Files where Blake couldn’t kill the watchdog.
‘I’ve got to hand it to your owner,’ the author went on. ‘He must be a very clever guy to get past my security and then get away again. Unless …’ Bookman said, ‘unless you’re the secret agent. Hey, what a great idea that would be! A talking dog who’s as smart as a secret agent! Well, run along, little guy. Your owner will be waiting for you.’
Selby turned and ran for home.
When you get to the end of this book, you’ll see that one of the Christmas presents Mrs Trifle gave Dr Trifle was a book.
‘A new book by Lionel O’Neill!’ he exclaimed. ‘Oh, thank you, dear.’
‘Yes, apparently he’s started writing again,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘This is a whole new series about Blake Romano and his secret-agent dog.’
‘I can’t wait to read it. And I’ve got the perfect bookmark,’ Dr Trifle said, pulling another book off the shelf and taking out a piece of paper.
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s a page that fell out of one of the other Blake Romano books. I’ve been using it as a bookmark.’
‘Oh no!’ Selby groaned. ‘The missing page was here all along!’
Dr Trifle opened up his new book.
‘And look at the dedication. It says, “This book is for a certain very clever dog. (I think you know who you are.)” I wonder what he means by that.’
‘I wonder,’ Selby thought as he smiled a tiny secret-agent smile.
SELBY SLITHERS
‘Don’t tell me what it is,’ Mrs Trifle said as she looked at Dr Trifle’s new invention. ‘I know, it’s a robot wombat. You probably call it a Ro-Bat.’
‘It’s not a robot,’ Dr Trifle said, ‘because it doesn’t move. Do you give up?’
Selby studied the invention. ‘It looks like a real wombat to me,’ he thought. ‘A big wombat with its mouth wide open.’
Dr Trifle crumpled a piece of paper and put it in the wombat’s mouth.
‘There, you see? It’s a rubbish bin shaped like a wombat. The idea is to make throwing things away fun. I call it a Wom-Bin.’
‘Very clever,’ Mrs Trifle said, ‘but, if you ask me, it looks too realistic. I don’t think I’d want to put anything in its mouth.’
‘Oh, of course you would. Anyway, I’m going to make a dozen more just like this one. Postie Paterson wants them for Bogusville Zoo.’
‘You’d better hurry up,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘The zoo’s re-opening next week, in time for the Christmas school holidays.’
‘I can’t wait to see the zoo now that it’s been all fixed up!’ Selby thought. ‘It’s going to be fantastic!’
A week later, Selby, the Trifles, and everyone else in Bogusville were at the zoo for the Grand Re-opening. Postie Paterson led people around, talking about the animals. Dr Trifle’s Wom-Bins were everywhere.
‘We’re very lucky. Most towns our size don’t even have a zoo,’ Postie said. ‘Now, on your right you’ll see some of our new animals — a family of African Porcupines.’
‘I can’t see! I can’t see!’ a boy screamed. ‘I want to see a pork pies! I never seen one!’
‘Me neither!’ another voice yelled. ‘Show me! Show me! Show me! It’s not fair! I can’t see!’
‘Oh no,’ Selby sighed. ‘My day is spoiled already. It’s those awful brats, Willy and Billy! Why did Aunt Jetty have to bring them?’
‘Up you go,’ Postie said, lifting Willy onto a bench so he could see over the wall. ‘Look down and you’ll see the porcupines.’
‘Hey, me too!’ Billy said, pushing a little girl off the bench and jumping up next to his brot
her. ‘Hey, can I pat one? Can I? Can I? Can I? I gotta pat a pork pie!’
‘That would be a big mistake,’ Postie said. ‘They’re covered in very sharp quills that would stick into your hand. We’d have to take you to a doctor to get them out. It would be very painful. Now, follow me everyone, and I’ll show you our new Three-Banded Armadillo. This little fellow was born wearing his very own suit of armour.’
‘I love this place!’ Selby thought. ‘I could spend my whole life watching animals.’
For the next hour, people followed Postie Paterson while Willy and Billy ran around screaming and bashing and kicking everything, including Dr Trifle’s Wom-Bins.
‘I’ll just stay close to the Trifles,’ Selby thought. ‘Maybe Willy and Billy won’t notice me.’
‘Now we come to the Nocturnal House,’ Postie said. ‘This is where we keep the animals that hunt at night. We keep it dark in the daytime so the animals will think it’s night-time. At night we turn on the lights and they go to sleep.’
Selby followed the crowd into the darkened room.
‘Dark places give me the creeps,’ he thought, as he stood still waiting for his eyes to get used to the dark. ‘I know it’s silly but it’s true.’
While Postie talked about the possums, the quolls, the bats and other night animals, Selby pressed his face to the glass front of a case in the corner.
‘I can’t see anything,’ he thought. ‘All I can see is a big thick coil of black hose. Postie must be using this case for storage.’
Suddenly the big thick coil of black hose moved. It seemed to be moving slowly in all directions, part of it going one way and part going another. That was when Selby noticed two cold eyes staring into his.
‘Oh no!’ Selby thought. ‘That’s no big thick coil of black hose — it’s a gi-normous snake! And he’s watching me! Oh yuck! I hate snakes! I hate little snakes, I hate medium-sized snakes, and I hate big snakes! This is a monster snake! Sheeeesh! And double sheeeesh! Get me out of here!’
