Author’s Notes:

How’s it hanging everybody! Three cheers for the next chapter of A Doctor’s Memoirs :hawk cheers: This is a record track for me guys, usually my updates fizzle out and the story starts collecting dust ‘cause of the lack of observed interest. :wipes away tears of joy: the positive reviews and the number of story hits tell me ADM is liked enough for people to take a peek at it. XD! In any case I’m gonna hush up right now and we can get on with the story. Last chapter wasn’t much insight on Basil and friends’ end I’m afraid. But that’s all gonna change for this round!

Enjoy everybody:big hugs all around:

Aye me, reading this brings back such fond memories. I remember how Basil and I searched through Ratigan’s private chambers Mouseland Yard a few days after the Flaversham’s and Miss Dodie’s departure from Baker Street. It was located beneath the wine cellar of a seedy sailor’s restaurant on the Cheapside waterfronts, a few feet below the professor’s headquarters. I found that the bedroom reflected Ratigan’s pompous, frivolous tastes perfectly, as did Basil. Immediately my friend began tearing through the desk and bookcase, searching for something with a fair amount of determination. When I asked him what he was looking for, he simply replied that he would explain later and keep this matter private before stuffing a letter and a few sheets of paper from a drawer into the pocket of his Inverse cloak. No sooner had he closed it several officers from Mouseland Yard arrived, along with the chief inspector. With a bit of observing my friend was easily able to deduce what had occurred within the room during the last hours Ratigan had inhabited it.

We helped them pack up many of Ratigan’s personal belongings, to be categorized and sorted at police headquarters to aid in capturing the rest of the professor’s vast criminal circles. I cannot possibly describe how much information the inspectors received from the collection, and for months afterwards it seemed there was no end the steady numbers of shocking arrests made as Ratigan’s comrades were put on a boat. But alas, I’ve gotten so far ahead of myself and allowed nostalgia to get the better of me!

Looking back on what happened now, Basil must have indeed wanted a partner to accompany him on his cases. Though he’s never admitted it to me, I think I was the first mouse Basil encountered who, like himself, had no family ties or obligations to uphold that could pose as a distraction from his work. I’m sure that he would have argued incessantly with any other investigator and they would have driven each other mad. Nevertheless, whatever his reasoning, I am forever content that fate led me to his doorstep.

London, 1897

Basil’s heart leapt: Fidget! He’d recognize those ghastly, beady yellow eyes anywhere! “Quickly, Dawson! We’ve not a moment to loose!” He cried, throwing open the front door and racing outside.

“I-I’m right behind you Basil!”

Watching the two gentle-mice vanish into the night beyond the front stoop, Lillian sunk deeper into the shredded green armchair as an icy cold dread settled over her heart. He must have seen her, she was sitting right in plain sight of the window! Dear God, if he recognized her and told the professor…what on Earth had he been doing there in the first place? Had he followed her? Had Ratigan somehow found out what she had eavesdropped and sent his men after her? And what of Thomas? The young lady-mouse clapped her paws over her mouth as she struggled to get a grip on her racing imagination, hardly noticing Mrs. Judson rush out of the kitchen.

Stop it! He couldn’t possibly, no one saw me leave! She told herself firmly, curling her paws into tight fists. She’d made the choice to take the risk of her betrayal being discovered the minute she’d set out from the boarding house. I will not regret doing the right thing! God in Heaven, please let Thomas have made himself scarce tonight…

“Great Heavens, what’s happening now?” Mrs. Judson exclaimed, hurrying over to the front door and pulling Olivia back inside the house by the paw.

“It was that bat! Fidget!” Olivia cried, pulling on Mrs. Judson’s grip. “The one who took Daddy!”

“Stay in here, child!” Mrs. Judson shook her head, having had more than enough experiences of letting Basil deal with the questionable characters that occasionally appeared to harass or spy on him. “We best let Mr. Basil deal with him.”

Skidding to a halt on the sidewalk outside his home, Basil looked around, his eyes swiftly observing the surrounding area around for any sign of movement. Fidget’s visit was hardly a surprise—he’d concluded long ago that Ratigan sent the crippled bat to spy on him when one of his greater schemes was underway, no doubt to see if his master’s plans were to be interfered with or not. Fidget’s little visit confirms the importance of the case, Basil thought with a small smirk as he pocketed his pipe and dropped his eyes to the ground. There, he found something intriguing: a trail of muddy right-footprints accompanied by splotches leading out of the bushes by his window and trailing down the sidewalk. Thank Heavens it had rained that evening!

Winded by the sudden excursion, Dawson trailed to a halt behind Basil, shivering at the drastic change of temperature between the detective’s den and the chilly, September night air. Pulling the lapels of his gray tweed jacket up around his cheeks, the old doctor looked up and down the street, finding it as desolate and empty as it was when he’d arrived with Miss Dodie and Olivia. “No sign of the blackguard anywhere!”

“Not quite, Dawson,” Basil replied, dropping to all fours to better look at the trail. “He left some rather unusual footprints! They obviously belong to the same fiend who abducted the girl’s father: Ratigan’s peg-legged lackey!” He sighed, cursing under his breath. The mud on Fidget’s feet had run out several feet from them, and the direction they went in was hardly a useful clue as to where Ratigan’s headquarters were.

Dawson followed the wet, blackened trail all the way to its fading point, noticing the peculiar foot-and-spot pattern Fidget’s limping track created. He lifted an eyebrow, noticing that one print didn’t match the rest. Bending over, the middle-aged mouse found that it wasn’t a footprint at all—it was a sopping wet, filthy garment of some kind. A hat perhaps?

“Eh, Basil?” he murmured, closing an eye as he tried to focus his vision on the thing. He startled as the detective snatched it out of his paws a second later and jumped to his feet. The doctor bristled slightly at the rudeness, but bit his tongue as Basil produced his magnifying glass and began examining his finding.

“Ah-ha! Excellent work, old man!” Basil said, laughing gleefully as he turned and ran back towards the door. Dawson shrugged, watching the detective go, finding it somewhat absurd that such an esteemed professional like Basil was acting like a child with a new toy on Christmas morning.

“Now, there’s nothing to be afraid of my dear,” Mrs. Judson said reassuringly, patting Olivia on the head and smiling warmly at her. There would have been much more noise out front of there was trouble. The old housekeeper’s ears perked however, upon hearing leaves rustling and the familiar sound of Basil’s running footsteps quickly approaching. Her tenant came within view of the door in a mater of seconds, and would have barreled right over Olivia if she hadn’t pulled the girl out of the way. Ooh, what I wouldn’t give to have that man remember his manners! She thought, glaring at Basil as the good doctor closed the door behind them.

“The scoundrel’s quite gone,” he told Olivia abidingly.

“But not for long, Miss Flamhammer!” Basil interjected excitedly, pulling off his smoking robe and tossing it uncaringly onto the window seat where Olivia had spotted Fidget hanging about outside.

“Flaversham!” the little girl-mouse corrected angrily as Basil opened the glass-paneled door of the grandfather clock located in the corner beside the window and produced a handsome dark brown jacket.

“Whatever. Now, we simply pursue our peg-legged friend until he leads us to Miss Dodie’s fiancé and the girl’s father,” the detective explained with a flourish of his paw, buckling the silver clasp of his overcoat’s belt.

“Then you’ll get my Daddy back?” Olivia’s face brightened, realizing that Mr. Basil was readying himself to leave the house and would actually begin looking for her father right that very minute! She ran up to him and leapt onto his back, hugging her arms and legs around his waist as tightly as she could.

Lillian had to stifle her giggle and cover the smile pulling at her mouth with her paw as she watched Basil straighten uneasily, his arms out and head craned to peer at the little girl uncomfortably. Clearly, the detective was unused to handling children. Not that she had much more experience than he—she was the only child to her parents and not surprisingly, had seen few mouselings during her time at The Rat Trap. Yet she found a strange, lighthearted amusement watching Basil awkwardly push Olivia down his legs much like a pair of pants and step away from her as if she were a leper.

“Yes, and quite soon if I’m not mistaken,” he replied, putting his nose in the air and adjusting his clothes. “Now hurry along, Dawson. We must be off to Toby’s.”

“Toby’s?” Dawson asked, following Basil further into the den as he grabbed a long brown Inverse cape from the wooden, Sheppard’s hook coat rack at the foot of the stairs and slung his arms through it.

“Oh, you must meet him, he’s just the chap for this!”

“Y-you want me to come?”

“I should think a stouthearted army-mouse like you would leap at the chance for adventure,” Basil said with a smirk, polishing his magnifying glass on his sleeve with a quick breath before pocketing it again and rushing over to another dresser and rummaging through the top drawer.

“Well I-I am rather curious,” he admitted sheepishly with a chuckle as Lillian hurried past him to retrieve her own coat hanging on the railing barring the entry platform and the rest of the den.

“I’m going with you, Mr. Basil!” she said, pulling her hands through the midnight blue sleeves of her and tugging her long hair out from beneath the collar.

Basil turned sharply. “No, Miss Dodie. It’s hardly proper for a young woman like yourself to involve herself in business like this and I would prefer that you remained here, where it is safe.”

She rolled her eyes unnervingly. She had a feeling he would say something to that effect. “Mr. Basil, it’s obvious that after spending half an hour with you that you yourself aren’t exactly concerned with proper behavior. And I’m sure you can see that I’m not so much beholden to society’s silly rules either, seeing as I’ve eloped, worked in a bar, and come to see an unmarried man alone in the middle of the night.”

Basil bristled at her calm defiance as she listed her offenses on her fingers. Usually whenever a female client commissioned his help he left her in Mrs. Judson’s care for however long the case took to solve. “Miss Dodie, pray try to understand that I cannot be distracted in any way while I work and that I cannot worry about your protection every step of the way.”

“I’m not a child, Detective, I’m fully capable of looking after myself.”

“Basil, I don’t mean to be rude but perhaps it would be best if she came with us. We might need her help to find her fiancé,” Dawson said sensibly. “And I hardly think it would cause trouble, seeing as I was the one who escorted her here.”

Basil bit the inside of his cheek, wishing that the doctor, bless his soul, could somehow understand his reasons behind wanting Miss Dodie to remain at his home with the child and Mrs. Judson. She was hardly a common lady looking for his help—allowing her to come along was something of a double-edged sword. While she undoubtedly had important information relating to the case, she could easily be a clever kind of bait for a trap by Ratigan. He wouldn’t put using a young lady to end his means above that reprehensible creature. He was about to open his mouth to respond when the kitchen door was flung open with a slam, and the three adult-mice looked up in time to see Olivia race into the den. She was already dressed in her coat and scarf, clearly as every bit determined to be a part of the investigation as Lillian was.

“Wait for me! I’m coming too!” she cried, seizing her hat as she ran past Basil’s red velvet easy-chair. In her rush she hadn’t noticed the detective’s violin sitting on top of her beret and it swayed on the cushion before it tipped over and began a swift decent to the floor.

Lillian could barely move away in time as Basil dove onto the floor and caught his precious instrument by the base in his paws. He grunted as the air was forced from his lungs and his ribs pressed by his own weight against the rumpled carpet. Of course the little one would want to come too—damn it all, it was just his luck!

“What? Certainly not! This is no business for children!” he said firmly, crawling back onto his knees and lovingly placing his violin safely back on the chair.

“Are we going to take a cop?” Olivia asked as she began filling her pockets with the cheese crumpets Mrs. Judson had set out with the tea, oblivious to what Basil had just said as he got to his feet.

Basil sighed exasperatedly, rubbing his temples in an attempt to soothe the headache that was steadily building in his skull. Everything was conspiring against him that evening, even Dawson if this kept up! With a strained smile and forced patience, he took her paw and guided her around to look at him. “I don’t think you understand. It will be quite dangerous,” he explained, his pinched fingers emphasizing his words before he sat down in his chair. He stiffened, gasping as a definite crush and the sound of splintering wood filled his ears. Olivia gasped, watching Basil mutter curses and heave himself up to yank his violin out from under his rear end. His weight had split the thing clean in two, the only bit holding the two pieces together being the steel strings.

“Why you! Look what—” he began, his voice harsh and indescribably cross as he waved the broken instrument about, the strings tweaking and twanging as the base bounced and swung about on them. Basil could feel his temper reeling—how he loathed dealing with women and children! One species was always too complicated, the other too simple-minded, and both were unbearably impossible to reason with! Remembering himself, Basil sucked in a deep breath and got to his feet, gritting his teeth as he clenched his fists and forced another smile on his face. “Young lady, you are most definitely not accompanying us. And that is FINAL!” he shouted, stamping his foot with finality as Olivia cringed at his sudden outburst.

Lillian glared at the detective and put her paws on the little girl’s shoulder. “It’s hardly her fault you sat on your violin, Mr. Basil! You’ve no right to raise your voice at her.”

“Miss Dodie, you are already treading on extremely thin ice. Do not try my patience at the moment!”

She couldn’t help the smile that appeared on her face. “You’re hardly intimidating when you’re irritated. Please!” she said, holding up a hand as his eyes widened and eyes narrowed darkly at her. “Mr. Basil, I will watch Olivia. You won’t even notice we’re there.”

“Volunteering to babysit the child hardly helps the situation,” he retorted stubbornly, folding his arms petulantly.

“If chasing after Fidget is what we’re going to be doing, I can promise you that eventually we’ll be paying a visit to that club I’ve been working at. He’s a regular customer. So is every other one of Ratigan’s men. And with all due respect, detective, I can talk to people who won’t be so anxious to speak with you. You’re going to need my help.”

Basil took in a deep breath, willing himself to control his annoyance. While her point was strong, the apprehensive details surrounding her presence was just as much and he searched her face carefully as he debating voicing his opinions of her. She met his gaze without hesitation—either she was a skilled liar or being truthful. And obviously Dawson’s allegiance on the matter in question lay with her and the girl. It was in his narrowed eyes and encouraging hand gestures towards them. He sighed, disliking admitting defeat as much as he disliked children, women’s tricks, and oh, damn everything to hell!

“Very well, Miss Dodie. As long as you keep an eye on Miss Flackermitts and aren’t a hindrance during the investigation.”

“Flaversham!”

“Whatever.”

Holy crapola! Another chapter so soon! It’s such a record for me…it makes me so grateful for Sundays. I literally spent the whole day belting this out. I hope everybody liked it! Basil and Lillian bickering was definitely amusing and fun to write. Hope to see everybody again really soon! And I promise they’ll be some more artwork linked out soon.