Selby Supersnoop Read Free

Selby tucked his legs up tight like a broad-jumper trying to jump an extra centimetre, and glided over the rope and onto the floor beyond.
    Just then, Willy came scrambling through the hole — right onto the rope.
    ‘Yike!’ Willy yelled as the booby trap caught his leg and flung him to the ceiling. ‘It’s got me!’
    The sight of the tiny torturer swinging from a rope was too much for Selby. He let out a long, un-dog-like laugh.
    ‘It’s not funny,’ Willy whimpered.
    ‘If you could see how silly you look,’ Selby said in plain English, ‘you’d laugh too.’
    ‘You talked! You talked!’
    ‘Of course I talked,’ Selby sighed. ‘You know perfectly well I can talk. But it won’t do you a bit of good because nobody believes a word you say.’
    ‘I’m telling!’
    ‘Tell all you want.’
    Just then, Dr and Mrs Trifle opened the door to the garage and found Willy dangling from the rope.
    ‘I do believe you’ve been caught in your own trap, Willy,’ Mrs Trifle said, untying the rope and lowering him down.
    ‘That dog talked to me!’ Willy screamed.
    ‘Come, come now, Willy,’ Dr Trifle said. ‘You’re old enough to know that dogs can’t talk.’
    ‘He can and he did,’ Willy said, running for a shelf and picking up his video camera. ‘And it’s on my video! It was going all the time! Put it in the TV! You’ll see!’
    ‘Oh, no,’ Selby thought. ‘The kid tricked me. He wasn’t trying to catch me with the booby trap. He was trying to catch me on his video camera — and he did! I’ve been outwitted by a half-wit nitwit!’
    ‘I’m sure you’re wrong,’ Mrs Trifle said to Willy.
    ‘You look!’ Willy cried. ‘Look at the video!’
    ‘All right,’ Dr Trifle said, taking the tape out of Willy’s hand. ‘If it’ll make you happy.’
    Selby followed the Trifles into the lounge room.
    Dr Trifle wound the video tape back a bit and then pushed the PLAY button.
    ‘Oh, no!’ Selby thought. ‘This is it. I’m gone. They’ll have to believe Willy now. I can’t stand it! I can’t let that little brat tattle on me. I’d rather tell them myself.’
    Selby stepped up next to the Trifles and cleared his throat. He was about to say, ‘Excuse me, but I’m afraid that Willy is right — I can talk,’ when the video began playing.
    The first thing Selby heard was his own voice saying, ‘If you could see how silly you look, you’d laugh too.’
    ‘That’s him talking!’ Willy screamed, pointing at the TV. ‘That’s Selby! He talks! See?’
    ‘I don’t see anything,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘I can hear a strange voice but I can’t see anything. Are you sure that voice isn’t from a TV show?’
    ‘No, no, it’s him! It’s that dummy dog!’
    Selby looked over at the TV, which was all white and snowy. Dr Trifle fast-forwarded the tape and then fast-backwarded it, but it was no use — there was no picture.
    ‘That’s very odd,’ Mrs Trifle said, suddenly looking over at the window which Dr Trifle had used to test his miracle window cleaner. ‘And look, this is even odder: that window cleaner has made the window go all white. You can’t see through it anymore.’
    Selby looked at the window and then at the lens on Willy’s video camera. It, too, had gone white.
    ‘Oops,’ Dr Trifle said. ‘I think that window cleaner isn’t such a miracle, after all. And I think I’ve ruined Willy’s camera.’
    By now Mrs Trifle had fast-backwarded the tape to the beginning — the part before Dr Trifle’s lens cleaning, when Selby was hanging upside down by his leg.
    ‘Willy!’ she cried. ‘You horrible child! No wonder Selby doesn’t like to play with you! Look what you did to him! I’m going to give you a good, hard spanking for being so cruel to Selby!’
    ‘No, don’t spank me!’ Willy cried as the first blows began to fall on his bottom. ‘My goldfish died and you have to be nice to me! Mum said you have to! Oooooooowwwwww!’
    ‘Well, I don’t know,’ Selby thought as