The almighty crash brought both Holmes and Watson running into their main room.  Fortunately, there was no sound of footsteps on the stairs, so presumably Mrs Hudson was out, for she could not have failed to hear, and object to, the noise.

The cause of the crash was obvious, the standard lamp had fallen over, but the reason for this occurrence wasn’t immediately apparent.

“It’s a good job the lamp wasn’t lit,” Watson said, as he righted it.  “We’ll need to clear the spilt oil up though.”

He went to collect a cloth, and returned to find Holmes sitting in his armchair, apparently unmoved by the upset.  Watson grumbled and mopped up the oil.

“There are no signs of footprints,” Watson said.

“I wouldn’t expect there to be any,” Holmes replied.  “I assume you are blaming our mustelid friend.”  Watson grunted in assent.  “He would most certainly have leapt as the lamp began to descend and would not have, if you like, gone down with the ship.”

At that moment, Mouselet’s head popped out of her mouse hole.  “Sorry,” she said, “babies!”  She promptly disappeared again.

“What?” Watson said.  “Whose?”

There was no response, Holmes having found something of interest in the classified section of the evening paper.

Watson picked up his book and resumed reading the tale of adventure on the high seas.  After a while, Holmes noted Watson was reading with his eyes shut and resumed his cross-referencing of various personal messages he had cut from the recent newspapers.

Watson woke to find the Ferret swaggering around in the costume he referred to as his super-hero cloak.

“He’s going to be unbearable,” Mouselet said.

“Perhaps you’d like to enlighten us,” Holmes said.

“One of the mice from 219B had just had babies, and for some reason a number of them had got lost and come through to our side.  Of course they can’t see as yet, which was why it happened.  Anyway, I caught a few, but some of them, nine in total, were heading towards the end of the mantelpiece.  I called out to the Ferret, who was sitting on top of the lamp, looking out of the window, and he reached over and stopped them.  Only, in the process, he knocked the lamp over.  We gathered all the babies up, and they’ve been returned safely to 219.”

“I thought something like that must have happened,” Holmes said.

Watson raised his eyebrows in disbelief, but didn’t bother saying anything.

The Ferret, meanwhile, continued to look very pleased with himself.  “Yes,” he said, “you might say a stretch in time saved nine!”