Stripped
Disclaimer: The only people own are Ben and Chester Meroff. Don't use them without asking.
Author's Note: Ben came into my mind one day while I was daydreaming and pestered me until I wrote a story. So here it is. Not my best work, but I decided to post it anyway. I have no idea where Chester came from.
When Ben arrived at Baker Street, it was all ready nightfall. The stars glittered in the blue-black sky like diamonds. The sound of the violin reached her ears from her place across the street. She stood there for a few minutes, listening to its melancholy sound.
Tears sprang up in her blue eyes again as she thought about her dad. She wiped them away quickly and scurried across the street, keeping an eye peeled for any hansoms. She got across the street safely and knocked on the door. A plump, kindly lady mouse with glasses answered the door.
"Yes dear, what do you need?" She asked, straightening her bonnet. Ben showed her the paper she had and pointed to Basil's name.
"Oh, you're here for Mister Basil. He's out at the moment but you can come in and make yourself comfortable," The mouse reached out for Ben's hand to lead her into the house, but she withdrew. The lady looked a little taken back, but instead motioned for Ben to sit in the living room.
"I'll get you some tea and crumpets, you look famished," She told Ben, smiling warmly and scurrying off to fetch the aforementioned items. Ben didn't object, she was hungry, not having anything to eat for the past two days, plus she didn't want to seem rude or ungrateful.
While the lady mouse was gone, she looked around the fire-lit living room. It was cluttered; papers were piled in corners and stuck onto the mantel of the fireplace with knives. There was a chemistry set in one corner, lined with chemicals. She walked over to the chemicals and inspected them more closely. She was always fascinated by chemistry and different kinds of chemicals like that, ever since she was young. She knew almost all the chemicals by sight and what there names were. Just on an whim, she shifted the bottles around, arranging them in alphabetical order.
"Don't touch that, Mister Basil hates other people messing with his things," the lady told her, setting the tea and crumpets on the paper lined table. Ben turned from the table and sat on the couch, taking a crumpet from the tray and adjusted her black post boy hat.
"Everything okay?" The lady asked. Ben nodded, nibbling on the crumpet. Smiling affectionately, the lady bustled off. Ben picked up a teacup; all ready filled with tea, and took a sip, feeling the hot liquid soothe her slightly. Her ear twitched and her tail stilled its twitching when she heard the door open and she quickly put the tea and half-eaten crumpet down, a force of habit whenever she heard someone coming.
"Mister Basil, Doctor Dawson, you're home. A young man's here to see you, he's in the living room," She heard the lady mouse say. Ben grinned slightly. Her disguise fooled the lady just like it fooled everyone else.
"Thank you Ms. Judson," She heard a male voice say and heard approaching footsteps. A tall, tan mouse, accompanied by a shorter, fat one walked into the living room. The tan one reached into a grandfather clock that stood in a corner of the room and pulled a red robe out of it.
"Hold this for me Dawson," He told the shorter mouse, handing him the robe. He pulled off the Inverness and threw it into the clock and took his robe back and put it on. He then went over to a chair in front of the fireplace and flopped down in it and looked at Ben, his fingers steepled and his green eyes half closed, studying her. Ben shifted uncomfortably under his gaze; she didn't like it when people looked at her like that.
"You've come to seek my assistance because you've had something dear stolen from you," He said after a while.
"How did you deduce that?" Dawson asked, not seeing any visible marks saying that that's what happened on the young mouse.
"It's quite simple," Basil said, rising from the chair and going over to her. "You see this mark in the fur around his neck?" He gestured to a thin, barely visible line in Ben's fur. "That tells me that whatever was stolen was hanging around his neck for quit some time and when one has something dear, they hang it around their neck to keep it close to their heart. Am I right?" Basil directed his attention to Ben, who nodded in agreement. She heard he was smart, but she didn't know he was THAT smart.
"Do you know who the person was that stole from you personally?" Basil asked her, sitting back down in his chair. Ben shook her head.
"Did you get a good look at the man who committed the crime?"
"How did you figure out that it was a male?" Dawson asked, interrupting his interrogation.
"There are hand marks in his neck fur that are too big to be female," Basil answered quickly before turning his attention back to Ben, waiting for his answer. Ben picked up a piece of charcoal and paper form the table and began to draw.
"This is no time for drawing," Basil told her, annoyance tinging his voice. Ben gestured for him to wait and finished her drawing. She handed him a realistic portrait of the black mouse form earlier with a little note saying "Ben's assailant" next to it, just to make sure she got her point across.
"Chester Meroff. This man is notorious for stealing something valuable from people he's connected to, to lure them to him so he can slay them," Basil said examining the portrait with narrowed eyes. "Are you positive you don't know this man?"
Ben nodded, adding more force into it this time. Basil rose again from his chair and went over to the mantel, getting the clay pipe that sat there.
"Then why does he want you dead?" He asked, putting tobacco in his pipe and lighting it. Ben shrugged, confusion furrowing her brow.
"Do you ever speak?" Basil asked her. She shook her head and closed her eyes, a subtle hint that she didn't want to be interrogated about it. Basil got the hint and made a "Hm" noise through his nose and paced around, trailing smoke from his pipe.
A sudden thought struck her as she watch him pace. Why did Chester save her life if he wanted her dead?
Hmmmmmmm, the plot gets slightly thicker. . . I hope this cleared up some confusion from the other chapter. As with this one, I'll explain myself as the story progresses.