Selby Spacedog (6 page)

‘Oh, no!’ Selby thought, as a gust of wind blew the door shut. ‘I’m standing where a dead person was! Open the door! Let me out of here! Quick! My legs are turning to jelly!’

‘Uh-oh,’ Dr Trifle said, nervously, ‘we’re not locked in, are we?’

‘No, I have the key in my hand, darling,’ Mrs Trifle said as she turned on her torch. ‘Don’t you worry.’

‘Thank goodness,’ Dr Trifle sighed. ‘So who had locked the mayor in the tower?’

‘No one knew,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘The police decided that he’d gone up the stairs to the bell and then, because there was no bell rope, he reached out to push the clapper. That’s when he must have overbalanced and fallen to his death.’

‘What’s this clapper thing? Do you mean that the bell used to clap?’

‘No, silly, the dangly bit in a bell is called a
clapper.
‘

‘A clapper?’ Dr Trifle said. ‘They should call it a ringer or a dinger or even a ring-dinger. But now wait a minute. Who rang the bell on March fourteenth? It couldn’t have been the mayor. Goodness, what a mystery!’

‘And there’s more,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘Three years later, Mayor Gaspard was seen alive in Brisbane.’

‘The same Mayor Gaspard? So the dead man wasn’t the mayor, after all.’

‘That’s right. The police went looking for the mayor but only found a confession. He had escaped again — this time on a ship. In his confession he told how he’d been in prison
before he came to Bogusville to try to lead an honest life. But he had an identical twin brother and the twin brother found him and threatened to tell everyone his secret if the mayor didn’t pay him a lot of money.’

‘So the mayor had locked his brother in the tower to shut him up?’ Dr Trifle said.

‘To teach him a lesson, he said in his note. But that night when the bell rang and he went to investigate he found his brother lying dead on the floor. Soon afterwards, he ran away to Brisbane.’

‘I get it!’ Dr Trifle exclaimed. ‘The Dead Ringer. The mayor’s brother looked just like the mayor which made him a dead ringer for his brother.’

‘And he was also a dead ringer because he died ringing the bell,’ Mrs Trifle added.

‘So now the ghost of the mayor’s brother stalks the tower,’ Dr Trifle said in a quivery voice. ‘Woooooooooooooo. Are you here, ghosty wosty? Woooooooooooooo.’

‘Oh, I wish he wouldn’t do that,’ Selby thought. ‘It’s creepy enough in this place without ghost noises.’

‘There’s a group who call themselves the Friends of the Gaspard Ghost,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘They believe in the ghost. They’re the ones who want the tower opened. The problem is these rickety stairs. What do you think?’

‘I think it would be much too dangerous to let people walk on these stairs,’ Dr Trifle said.

‘I do, too,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘And they’re very expensive to fix.’

‘Well, I haven’t seen hide nor hair of any ghost,’ Dr Trifle said. ‘Not that ghosts have hide and hair — so let’s go home.’

Mrs Trifle turned the key in the lock, opening the door again. ‘Come on, Selby,’ she said.

‘Phew!’ Selby thought. ‘It’s about time. I can’t wait to get out of here — if only I can get my legs un-jellied.’

And that was when it happened. In that terrible instant, as Selby stood there with wobbly legs and the Trifles waited outside the door for him, there came a flash of lightning followed by deafening thunder and a gust of wind that slammed the door shut.

‘Yikes!’ Selby thought as his heart began to
race. ‘I hope they can get the door open again!’

‘Selby’s still in there,’ he heard Dr Trifle say. ‘Where’s the key?’

‘Oh, bother,’ Mrs Trifle said, ‘the door knocked it out of my hand, when it slammed shut. It must be inside.’

‘You mean we’ve locked Selby in with the key inside?’

‘It’s okay,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘There’s another one in the safe in my office. He’ll be okay on his own for a few minutes. He can’t go anywhere.’

‘Stay calm, stay calm,’ Selby thought as he heard the Trifles’ car drive away. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of. There are no such things as ghosts. The key is right here on the floor somewhere. All I have to do is feel around till I find it and then open the door. Hang on! What am I saying? I can’t open the door. If I do that, they’ll know I’m not an ordinary non-talking dog! I’ll just have to wait. Gulp. I hate standing where a dead person was.’

Suddenly a flash of lightning showed that Selby was standing next to the bottom step of the stairs.

‘Maybe I’ll just go up a bit,’ Selby said, feeling his way up a few steps. ‘But these steps are so narrow and uncomfortable to stand on. I’d better go up to the first landing.’

Selby made his way up to the first landing and lay down.

‘Everything’s okay,’ he thought. ‘There are no ghosts and I’m okay.’

It was just after this last thought that the wind died down for just long enough for him to hear footsteps on the floor below.

‘Gulp. Footsteps,’ he thought. ‘It’s too soon to be the Trifles. Who can it be?’

Selby was about to put his head through the railing and wait for another lightning flash so he could see below when he heard the clunk of more footsteps on the stairs.

‘I must be imagining things,’ he thought, as he inched across the landing to the stairs beyond. ‘There are only two keys: one’s on the floor downstairs and the other one is in Mrs Trifle’s safe. So nobody can be in the tower. Did I say “no-body"? Ghosts have no
body!’

Selby fled up the stairs, taking them two at a
time and not stopping till he reached the next landing.

But again the footsteps followed.

‘It can’t be the ghost! There aren’t any such things!’ Selby thought as his brain raced and his feet fled up another flight of rotten steps.

The footsteps were louder now and coming closer and closer.

‘When are the Trifles going to get here?!’ Selby screamed in his brain. ‘Why didn’t I just feel around for the key and get out? What does it matter if they found out my secret?’

Selby shot up another flight of stairs and then another but the footsteps clomped along behind him.

With one final run, Selby dashed up the last steps to the top of the tower and looked out through the open windows to the ground a long way below.

‘I could jump but I’d be a goner!’ Selby thought. ‘I’m trapped! There’s nowhere to go! And look — the Trifles’ car is coming up the hill! If only I could hide for just a minute! But where?’

Selby turned and looked out over the railing at the huge brass bell that hung over the stairwell.

‘It’s my only chance,’ he thought. ‘I’ll leap out onto the bell! Gulp. That’s what the Dead Ringer tried to do when he fell. But I have to do it! It’s my only chance!’

With the footsteps now only metres away, Selby climbed up onto the railing and leapt out into the darkness, grabbing the clapper of the bell in his paws. But before he knew it, the clapper swung to the other side, striking the bell with a loud
clong.
And before he knew it again, the clapper swung back and
clonged
the other side of the bell. Suddenly there were the sounds of feet running down the stairs, and piercing screams.

‘The ghost is here!’ a voice yelled. ‘He’s ringing the bell!’

‘The ghost lives!’ another voice shouted.

‘Oh, no!’ Selby thought. ‘It’s not the ghost, after all! It’s some of those pesky ghost hunters!’

Selby swung back and jumped for the railing, just barely clearing it and landing on the top step. In a second he was tearing down the stairs, passing ghost hunters everywhere. At the bottom he shot through the open front door and into the arms of Mrs Trifle.

‘Selby!’ she said. ‘How did you get out?’

‘Mayor Trifle!’ a ghost hunter cried as she ran through the door. ‘The ghost is in there! Did you hear him ring the bell?’

‘I’m afraid I didn’t, Myreen,’ Mrs Trifle said, feeling a little confused. ‘What with all this wind … By the way, how did you get into the tower?’

‘We came to listen for the bell — it is March the fourteenth, you know. We found the key lying on the ground just outside the door, so we went in. Then, sure enough, the ghost rang the bell.’

‘I see. The key must have landed
outside
the tower,’ Mrs Trifle said, ‘not inside the way I thought it did. So do you want to go in again?’

‘No, we’re happy now,’ Myreen said. ‘You can keep the tower closed for all we care. We’ve proved that there’s a ghost. That’s all we wanted.’

‘But wait,’ Dr Trifle said. ‘The ghost rang the bell at the wrong time. It’s nearly eleven o’clock — not ten.’

‘You’ve forgotten one thing, doctor,’ Myreen explained. ‘Eighty-seven years ago there was no daylight saving’s time. They didn’t set their
watches ahead at the beginning of summer the way we do now.’

‘She’s right,’ Selby said, as he watched Myreen and the Friends of the Gaspard Ghost pile into their cars and drive away. ‘But she’s wrong about the ghost. Anyway, it serves them right for scaring me like that.’

And that would have been that if — just on the dot of eleven o’clock when Mrs Trifle had closed the door and the Trifles were driving off down the hill — Selby hadn’t looked back at the Bell Tower and heard one faint
clong
of the bell.

‘Gulp and double gulp,’ he thought. ‘If there isn’t a ghost, who just rang that bell?

SELBY’S SOLO

‘This is going to be an exciting day!’ Mrs Trifle announced. ‘I’m going to fly solo in the
Whirly-Bird.
‘

‘You’re flying what in the what?’ Dr Trifle asked.

‘The
Whirly-Bird.
My instructor’s helicopter,’ Mrs Trifle explained. ‘She says I’m ready to go solo. To fly it all by myself. It’ll be so much fun — but so scary!’

‘Well, it’s an exciting day for me too. While you’re up in the air I’ll be on the roof trying out my new invention, the WOMBAT.’

‘Haven’t wombats already been invented?’ asked Mrs Trifle.

‘No, not one of
those
wombats. WOMBAT stands for Wind-O-Mometer, Barometer And
Thermometer,’ Dr Trifle explained. ‘It’s to tell us all about the weather. Only I haven’t added the last two bits yet so I guess it’s just a WOM right now.’

‘A WOM?’

‘A Wind-O-Mometer. For measuring wind speed,’ Dr Trifle said, leading Mrs Trifle into his workroom.

‘It doesn’t look like a weather anything to me. It looks just like one of those old square clothes lines,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘And there are even clothes on it.’

‘That’s where I got the idea. Have you ever noticed that when you put outerwear — like shirts and pants and that — on one side of a clothes line and underwear on the other it goes round and round in the wind?’

‘Not really.’

‘Well, it does; and that’s how I’m going to measure wind speed. I’ll put the meter part down here in the house so we can look at it any time we like and find out how fast the wind is blowing.’

‘How very nice,’ Mrs Trifle said, wondering what people would think when they saw the
Trifles’ laundry on the roof. ‘But I’d better be going. Are you going to cone along and see me fly solo?’

‘I’d like to, but I’ve got to work on the WOM before someone else discovers the same thing and beats me to it. In the invention business you have to be the first — it’s the early bird that catches the worm, we say.’