In short order, I had made the necessary arrangements to take up a position as a teaching fellow at St. Assisi's, although due to the long delay between when Dr. Boargelat's letter was posted and when I received it, I would have to wait nearly three months for the next semester to begin before I could take up my newfound duties as an educator. The prudent course of action would have been to delay my departure to the city until nearer to when my contract began and ensure that I had adequate lodgings lined up, but I found myself so filled with excitement that I could not bear any further wait. I would take the time available to me as a holiday, I decided, and live out of a hotel as I got to know Zootopia. My parents were somewhat disappointed to learn of my pending departure, having grown used to my presence back on the farm and despairing of what could happen in the city. Although I love and cherish my parents deeply, I confess that I have always found it easier to do so from a distance. This thought of mine, while lacking the proper filial piety, was only reinforced at the Bunny Burrows train station when my parents and an assortment of my siblings and their kits came to see me off.

As a former campaigner, I had packed simply, leaving with only the same footlocker I had brought with me, although additional clothes and fresh produce had been added to render it quite a bit fuller than it had been at the time of my arrival. When my train at last arrived and the mammals aboard it had departed, my father stayed my paw before I could board. "Wait a moment, my dear," he said.

He pressed a cardboard box into my paws, small but quite heavy. It was, I saw by its label, fifty bullets of the .476 caliber, suited to my personal firearm, although I could not guess where he had found a store in Bunny Burrows from which to buy the box. "I trust you have packed your service revolver?" he asked.

"I hardly think that I should need it," I replied, although it was true that I had packed the weapon.

Indeed, I had included it in my meager belongings more as a memento than out of any expectation of use; until my father had given me the box of bullets I had not had any ammunition for it since before leaving the service, and had neglected its care for the same length of time. "The city is dangerous, Judith," he said, "Will you not ease our worry?"

I attempted to keep my displeasure from showing, although I do not believe that I was entirely successful. It was true that my parents had refrained from pointing out, as they rightly could have, that their fears for what could have happened to me as an army officer had been borne out. Still, it struck me as the height of ridiculousness to assume that I would find myself in need of a weapon working as a doctor at one of the largest and most prestigious hospitals in the city. "What say you of this, then?" I asked my mother, holding out the box of bullets.

"You would not be remiss to be prepared," she said quietly, worry plainly written across her face.

"Your father's concerns are perhaps overzealous," she said, with a glance in his direction (I would later learn she had convinced my father against pressing a shotgun onto me), "But what is the harm?"

I placed the box of ammunition into one of the outer pockets of my service jacket and pulled my parents into a hug. "Very well," I said, "But I must board now if I am to make it to Zootopia along with the train."


The first two weeks in the city were some of the most pleasant and yet emptiest that I have ever spent. As I had expected from his first letter and the subsequent communication that I enjoyed with his office, my old instructor Claude Boargelat was not in the city and I had neither kith nor kin with which to spend the time. Instead, I explored the city, especially its restaurants and music halls, as best I could considering my still-fragile health. It was only when I was balancing my pocketbook that I realized that I had spent my money far more freely than I ought to. Even adding the payment that I would earn as an instructor to that which I drew from my pension did not yield nearly enough to cover my expenses at their current rate, and I would, of course, receive no payment from St. Assisi's until I began to fulfill my obligations by teaching. The inescapable conclusion that I came to was that, should I not manage to live a more frugal existence, I would in short order find myself turned out on the street.

I thereafter resolved immediately to begin cutting my expenses by finding a more permanent lodging than the hotel in which I had been staying; I had indulged by choosing a room at the Palms, which while quite luxurious and conveniently located atop one of the Underground's stops, consumed on its own nearly three-quarters of my income with my upcoming pay factored into the equation.

On the very day that I had come to this conclusion I had just purchased the morning edition of the Times to begin my perusal of the classifieds when someone tapped me on the shoulder, and turning round I recognized young Ramford, who had begun her training as a nurse in the same year that I had earned my medical degree. The sight of the sheep's friendly face in what was otherwise the great wilderness of Zootopia was a pleasant thing indeed to a lonely mammal. In old days Ramford had never been a particular crony of mine, but now I hailed her with enthusiasm, and she, in her turn, appeared to be delighted to see me. In the exuberance of my joy, I asked her to lunch with me at the Hartebeest, and we started off together in a hansom.

"Whatever have you been doing with yourself, Hopps?" she asked in undisguised wonder, as we rattled through the crowded Zootopian streets. "You are as thin as a reed, and look nearly as fragile."

I gave her a short sketch of my adventures, and had hardly concluded it by the time that we reached our destination.

"Poor devil!" she said, commiseratingly, after she had listened to my misfortunes, "What are you up to now?"

"Looking for lodgings," I answered. "Trying to solve the problem as to whether it is possible to get comfortable rooms at a reasonable price."

"That's a strange thing," remarked my companion; "you are the second mammal to-day that has used that expression to me."

"And who was the first?" I asked.

"A fellow who is working at the chemical laboratory up at the hospital. He was bemoaning himself this morning because he could not get someone to go halves with him in some nice rooms which he had found, and which he did not think he could get alone."

"By Jove!" I cried, "if he really wants someone to share the rooms and the expense, I am the very mammal for him. I should prefer having a partner to being alone."

My parents would doubtlessly be horrified to hear that I was considering a strange mammal as my fellow-lodger, and a male besides, but I did not share all of their ideas of propriety; military service had seen to that. Additionally, despite my initial reluctance to take the bullets my father had proffered, I had spent my first night in Zootopia breaking down, oiling, and reassembling my revolver, and its familiar weight rested in a pocket of my jacket. Six rounds from an Elkfield was likely sufficient deterrent should the mammal of which Ramford spoke take any untoward ideas into his head. It was the truth, however, that I very much desired to not rattle around a set of rooms alone; the luxury of the size of my room at the Palms had increasingly struck me more as mere emptiness that I would have been glad to fill with companionship.

Young Ramford looked rather strangely at me over her wine-glass. "You don't know Nicholas Wilde yet," she said, "Perhaps you would not care for him as a constant companion."

"Why, what is there against him?"

"Oh, I didn't say there was anything against him. He is a little queer in his ideas—an enthusiast in some branches of science. As far as I know he is a decent fellow enough."

"A medical student, I suppose?" said I.

"No—I have no idea what he intends to go in for. I believe he is well up in anatomy, and he is a first-class chemist; but, as far as I know, he has never taken out any systematic medical classes. His studies are very desultory and eccentric, but he has amassed a lot of out-of-the way knowledge which would astonish his professors."

"Did you never ask him what he was going in for?" I asked.

"No; he is not a mammal that it is easy to draw out, though he can be communicative enough when the fancy seizes him."

"I should like to meet him," I said, "If I am to lodge with anyone, I should prefer a mammal of studious and quiet habits. I am not strong enough yet to stand much noise or excitement. I had enough of both in the service to last me for the remainder of my natural existence. How could I meet this friend of yours?"

"He is sure to be at the laboratory," returned my companion, "He either avoids the place for weeks, or else he works there from morning to night. If you like, we shall drive round together after luncheon."

"Certainly," I answered, and the conversation drifted away into other channels.

As we made our way to Zootopia General Hospital—for it was there that Ramford worked—after leaving the Hartebeest, Ramford gave me a few more particulars about the mammal whom I proposed to take as a fellow-lodger.

"You mustn't blame me if you don't get on with him," she said, "I know nothing more of him than I have learned from meeting him occasionally in the laboratory. You proposed this arrangement, so you must not hold me responsible."

"If we don't get on it will be easy to part company," I answered.

"It seems to me, Ramford," I added, looking hard at my companion, "That you have some reason for washing your paws of the matter. Is this fellow's temper so formidable, or what is it? Don't be mealy-mouthed about it."

"It is not easy to express the inexpressible," she answered with a laugh, "But there are a few points for which I shall attempt to prepare you. First, he is a predator. A fox, in fact."

It was true that foxes had been the natural enemy of rabbits, so long ago in the past as to be well out of mind for all but the most diligent of archaeologists, but that hardly mattered to me in the present. As rabbits, and other prey, had passed from our primitive origins and built society, so too had foxes and other predators been brought along and integrated as best their nature would allow. "Is that all?," I asked, "You forget that I have served in the army, an organization well-populated with predators, although no foxes that I can recall. If wolves and coyotes can be taught, through military discipline, to behave in a civilized manner, I have no doubts that a fox could be taught the same by whatever professors have attempted to teach him in the sciences."

"That is the other point," Ramford admitted, "He is if anything too scientific in his manner concerning his work, and yet all else may be as a joke to him."

I shrugged it off. "I have seen many doctors pushed to eccentricities by the demands of their profession. Surely, as a nurse, you have seen the same."

Yes, but it may be pushed to excess. When it comes to beating the subjects in the dissecting-rooms with a stick, it is certainly taking rather a bizarre shape."

"Beating the subjects!"

"Yes, to verify how far bruises may be produced after death. I saw him at it with my own eyes."

"And yet you say he is not a medical student?"

"No. If there is any purpose to his studies, I have not divined it."

As she spoke, we turned down a narrow lane and passed through a small side-door, which opened into a wing of the great hospital. It was vaguely familiar to me, for Zootopia General was the very same hospital in which I had previously attended a set of lectures as part of my training. Besides that, hospitals are in my experience very alike in layout; the white-washed walls and dun-colored floors could have belonged to practically any other hospital. Ramford lead me to the end of the corridor and stopped before a stout door. "Here we are," she said as she swung the door open, "You must form your own impressions about him."


Author's Note: First off, a huge thanks to my roommate, the incredible SR, who has provided cover images for my first story, Black and White, Red and Blue, as well as this one. She doesn't have an account I can link to, but if she changes her mind, I'll update this comment to make sure she gets the credit. I think she did a great job!

This chapter draws pretty heavily from the very beginning of A Study in Scarlet, but we are going to be getting into the actual mystery (and meeting Nick) pretty soon. One of the criticisms that my last story got was that it took a while to get going; this one should move somewhat faster, but I need to lay down the foundation and set the scene first, as the Victorian era was pretty different.

Indeed, one of Arthur Conan Doyle's contemporaries was Rudyard Kipling, who in addition to writing children's stories like The Jungle Book also wrote The White Man's Burden. If you've never read it, it's exactly as racist as you'd guess; the titular burden is the idea that the European and American powers have the responsibility to colonize and civilize the people of Africa, Asia, America, and India for their own good. It's an attitude that also shows up in the original Sherlock Holmes stories; in The Sign of Four, for example, Watson is pretty unabashedly racist and a firm supporter of the British Empire. However, I think that it's also important to recognize that we shouldn't write off all the people of the 19th century as being racist. Even at the time that The White Man's Burden was published, there were those (like Mark Twain) who saw it for what it was: a racist justification for colonialism and the associated plundering of resources.

I've extrapolated a bit, so I suppose that you could call it the prey's burden in this story, the view that civilization and cooperation is something innate to prey that has to be taught to predators in order for them to function in society. It's one of the ways that I'm merging character elements across the Sherlock and Zootopia canons; Dr. Hopps is more prejudiced than Officer Hopps ever was, but in a somewhat different way that's still pretty patronizing. It came up a little in the first chapter (note the way in which Dr. Hopps refers to her orderly's actions), came up more in this chapter, and will continue to be a running thread throughout the story. What this means for the relationship of Dr. Hopps and consulting detective Wilde is something that will take a while to reach fruition, but there's a lot of story left.