Selby Scrambled Read Online Free

heavenly music I heard — the wonderful sounds of Willy and Billy bawling their eyes out. Oh joy! Oh double joy!’
    Paw note: Why, oh why, did I ever let Willy know my secret?
(See
‘Wild West Willy Rides Again’ in the book
Selby’s Secret.)
    S

SELBY ON GLASS
    It was the wee hours of the morning in the big city. The sun was still a pink glow below the horizon. Everyone was asleep, everyone except Dr Trifle, Mrs Trifle and Selby. It was an ordinary morning but for one thing — Selby was walking on glass.
    Not broken glass in the street.
    Not a piece of glass lying on the footpath.
    No, Selby was walking up the outside of the newly built skyscraper, the Crystal Tower, his paws clinging magically to the glass sides. Dr and Mrs Trifle were holding a safety net below.
    ‘This is
sooooo
scary,’ Selby thought. ‘But it’s great, too!’
    Selby lifted one paw at a time, placing each one carefully against the glass before lifting the next.
    ‘These things are amazing!’ he said, looking at his special gloves and socks. ‘I’m not slipping a bit.’
    ‘Selby,’ Dr Trifle called from the footpath below. ‘Come down, boy, before someone sees you.’
    Selby looked up at the building towering above.
    ‘Don’t make me come down yet,’ he thought. ‘Just let me go a tiny bit higher.’
    ‘Selby, come here,’ Dr Trifle called again.
    ‘Psssst! Selby!’ Mrs Trifle said, clapping her hands. ‘Here, boy!’
    ‘I’ll pretend I can’t hear them,’ Selby thought. ‘Oh, this is so much fun!’
    Selby scrambled up and down the glass, moving this way and that, while Dr and Mrs Trifle called and called to him.
    After a while Selby thought, ‘I guess I’d better do as they say.’
    But just as he thought this, he noticed something.
    What he noticed were cars racing down the street and people running from all directions. Soon there were five police cars, three firetrucks, an ambulance, and two TV news crews stopped out the front.
    ‘Gulp,’ Selby gulped. ‘They’re going to find out about Dr Trifle’s secret invention and it’s all my fault! I should have gone down when they told me to. Oh, woe woe woe …’
    We’d better start this story the day before in the Trifles’ house in Bogusville.
    It was then that Dr Trifle came out of his workroom, smiling from ear to ear. He was holding something behind his back.
    ‘Flies have amazing feet when you think about it,’ he announced.
    ‘I don’t think about flies’ feet very often,’ Mrs Trifle said, looking up from her newspaper.
    ‘You mean you’ve never wondered how they can walk up walls?’
    ‘Not really. They must have sticky gooey stuff on their feet.’
    ‘No, no. Sticky gooey stuff would just collect dirt and lose its stickiness. Then they’d slidedown and fall on the floor — only they wouldn’t really because they can fly.’
    ‘I guess that’s why they call them
flies,’
Mrs Trifle said. ‘Do they have suction cups on their feet?’
    ‘Suction cups are too much work,’ Dr Trifle said. ‘The flies would have to keep pulling them loose and then pushing them back on. They’d be exhausted in no time. No, they have teeny weeny itty bitty hairs on their feet.’
    ‘How do little hairy feet let them walk up walls?’
    ‘I have no idea,’ Dr Trifle said, ‘but it works.’
    ‘My sister, Jetty, has hairy feet,’ Mrs Trifle said, ‘but she can’t walk up walls.’
    ‘Just as well,’ Dr Trifle said. ‘She tracked mud around the floor last time she was here. It’s a good thing she wasn’t walking on the walls as well.’
    ‘There’s a very strange woman they call the Human Fly,’ Mrs Trifle said. ‘She climbs up cliffs, skyscrapers, lighthouses. You name it, she climbs it. She doesn’t get permission or anything. She just sneaks up things and lets them arrest herwhen she gets to the top. Now I remember. Her name’s Clemenza Lightfoot.’
    At the mention of the Human Fly’s name, Selby’s ears shot up.
    ‘Clemenza