MOUSE: P.I. For Hire – The House Of The Empty Mouse Walkthrough

The nastiest moment in MOUSE: P.I. For Hire – The House of the Empty Mouse is the typewriter room. You flip a switch expecting a clean unlock, and instead the floor collapses out from under you, fresh enemies pour in, and the level you thought you had cleared rearranges itself. That collapse is the whole mission in one beat: Steve’s mansion is not a straight push from door to door, it is a loop you walk twice — once before the switch, once after.

The short version

• Clear each room fully before moving on — enemies (crooked cops, cultists, cheesleggers) gate exploration, and half-cleared rooms hide both secrets and the next route.
• There are three named collectibles: a Comic Book, a Schematic, and a Figurine resembling Jack. The Portable Freezer is a weapon, not a collectible — do not chase it as a pickup.
• Find the three Golden Mon-Keigh statues and place them on the study-room pedestals. That opens a secret wall to a downstairs weapons room.
• Flip the upper-floor switch and expect the typewriter-room floor to collapse. Clearing the enemies that spawn puts out the fireplace, opening a vent you crawl through to the Comic Book and the underground route.
• The goal is the front balcony and a platforming climb to the hidden Perch With a View room, where the picture of Jack, Steve, and Stilton hides Steve’s evidence.

The route through Steve’s mansion

The mission revolves around a handful of spaces that keep reconnecting: the main mansion rooms, the study (where the statues go), the basement and water areas, and the exterior balcony leading to Perch With a View. Stop thinking of them as separate zones and treat them as one loop — you will pass through most of them twice, once before the switch and once after the collapse.

Step 1: Clear rooms fully before chasing the next doorway

The early mistake is playing too aggressively and assuming every open door is forward progress. Enemy groups here are tied to exploration gates, so half-clearing a room and sprinting past corners makes you miss both secrets and the clue to the next route. When you enter a major room, finish the fight — the crooked cops, cultists, and cheesleggers — then sweep the walls, side doors, and interactables before you leave.

Keep the upper floor and its hallways in mind. The wooden-plank section up there is where the statue hunt begins, and the upper floor is also where you will eventually find the switch that resets the level.

Step 2: Find the Portable Freezer in the basement

The basement holds the level’s most useful tool. Head into the water area, follow the path northeast, and use the wall-jump to reach the far side. Drop down to the water and pick up the missing lever handle. Place it in its mechanism to unlock the barrel door — inside is the Portable Freezer, a weapon that fires a beam of ice and freezes enemies in place. There is also a Schematic sitting on the boxes in this room; grab it while you are here.

Do not file the Portable Freezer under “collectibles.” It is a weapon, and freezing the heavier enemies makes the back half of the mission far less messy.

Step 3: Take the basement vent detour for the safe

From the basement, head south to find a vent route that drops into a secret area. Inside is a tail-pickable safe along with some money and ammunition, and a hole in the floor that drops you back out so the detour does not wreck your pace. It is optional, but it pays you back in resources before the mansion’s bigger combat pivots — and it teaches the level’s logic: if something looks decorative, especially a vent or an odd wall, it is probably usable.

Step 4: Collect the three Golden Mon-Keigh statues

The study room has three empty pedestals, and filling them is the level’s central puzzle. Track down all three Golden Mon-Keigh statues:

• First statue: on the upper floor, past the wooden planks — at the end of the hallway, to your left.
• Second statue: in the bed area near the fireplace room, alongside Steve’s Purple Spades item you can interact with.
• Third statue: dive into the swimming pool just west of the mansion, swim the underwater tunnel, and clear the crocodiles guarding it.

Place all three on their pedestals in the study. A secret wall reveals itself to the right, opening a downstairs path to a hidden weapons room — and the Figurine resembling Jack is the reward for finishing the statue set. Carry each statue to its pedestal as soon as you safely can; this is the classic mansion task that only becomes annoying when the floor plan changes and you forget which rooms you already cleared.

Step 5: Flip the switch and survive the typewriter-room collapse

When you reach the upper-floor switch and head south, do not assume you are about to open one clean path. This is the mission’s structural pivot: after activation, the floor collapses in the typewriter room, enemies spawn, and older parts of the mansion suddenly matter again.

Do not panic and run deeper. Clear the enemies that appear — defeating them is what puts the fireplace out. Once the fire dies, a vent opens where the flames were. Crawl through it to reach the Comic Book and an underground path that carries the route forward. If the collapse knocks you off course, return to a landmark you recognize — the study or the staircase loop — then branch out again.

Step 6: Reach the balcony and climb to Perch With a View

Once you have crawled the post-collapse vent and worked through the underground route, the mission steers you out of the interior maze toward the front of the house. Steve’s mansion is huge, and the objective is to reach the front balcony, then platform up to the hidden room that is Perch With a View.

Inside that room is a wartime picture of Jack, Steve, and Stilton back in the Old World, sitting on a drawing board. Interact with it: the tape is stuck to the back — the evidence Steve asked you to recover. Do not sprint there and leave loot behind; do one last sweep of the rooms near the balcony before you commit to the climb.

Every collectible in The House of the Empty Mouse

This level has three named collectibles. Here is exactly where each one lives:

• Schematic – on the boxes in the Portable Freezer room, behind the barrel door you unlock with the basement lever.
• Comic Book – through the vent that opens after the fireplace goes out, following the typewriter-room switch and collapse.
• Figurine resembling Jack – in the secret room that opens once all three Golden Mon-Keigh statues are on their study pedestals.

The mission also references Steve’s diary and the Steve’s Purple Spades item in the bed area, both worth grabbing while you hunt the statues. And again: the Portable Freezer is a weapon from the basement barrel-door puzzle, not a checklist collectible — a lot of confusion on this level comes from treating it as one.

Common ways this walkthrough goes wrong

• Counting the Portable Freezer as a collectible. It is a weapon — your collectibles are the Comic Book, the Schematic, and the Figurine.
• Flipping the upper-floor switch and assuming the next path is ahead, when the collapse means it is behind and below you.
• Leaving the Golden Mon-Keigh statues for “later” and backtracking through a reshaped mansion to place them.
• Skipping the basement water area and never getting the lever — which means no Portable Freezer and no Schematic.
• Not diving the pool west of the mansion. The third statue is past the crocodiles, and without it the study puzzle never completes.

Practical takeaway

The House of the Empty Mouse is at its best when you stop forcing it into a straight line. Clear enemies fully, pull the lever in the basement water area to claim the Portable Freezer and Schematic, gather the three Golden Mon-Keigh statues for the study pedestals and the Figurine, flip the upper-floor switch and ride out the typewriter-room collapse, then crawl the extinguished fireplace’s vent to the Comic Book before climbing the balcony to Perch With a View. If you want the combat side of the campaign next, the Jack Squat walkthrough covers the mission most players hit right after this one.