The hospital's chemical laboratory had a lofty ceiling quite at odds with the configuration of the rest of the room, which was scarcely twice the width of the corridor we had come in from. Tables were set on either side of a central aisle, littered with a dizzying assortment of beakers, flasks, and little Bunsen lamps glowing with blue flames. The room had but a single occupant, bent over one table and seemingly entirely absorbed by his work. His ears flicked in the direction of our footsteps, and he spun round, springing to his feet with a cry of pleasure. "I've found it! I've found it," he shouted to my companion, running towards us with a little ceramic bowl in his paw, "An entirely fool-proof test for arsenic."
"Dr. Hopps, Mr. Nicholas Wilde," said Ramford introducing us.
I perceived on her face a sort of wry amusement at Wilde's behavior, which seemed entirely too self-pleased to match the little bowl with its silver-black smudge upon it.
"How are you?" he asked cordially, and it was though he was slipping on a mask, so rapidly did his prior delight give way to a genial aloofness.
He shook my paw with a strength that I would not have guessed at, considering his lithe build, but I supposed that no matter what else he was, he was a predator. "I expect you shall find Zootopia rather more exciting than farming in the countryside," he said, "And rather less so than military service in the middle east."
"How on earth did you know from whence I came?" I asked in astonishment.
"Never mind," said he, chuckling to himself. "The question now is about arsenic. No doubt you see the significance of this discovery of mine?"
"It is interesting, chemically, no doubt," I answered, "but practically—"
"Why, it is the most practical chemico-legal discovery for years. Don't you see that it gives us an infallible test for arsenic poisoning? Come over here now!"
He seized me by the coat-sleeve in his eagerness, causing me to stumble a bit as I attempted to retain my balance with my cane, and drew me over to the table at which he had been working. "Let us have some white arsenic," he said, deftly scooping a minute amount of a fine powder from a brown glass bottle labeled with a skull over the text "Arsenic Trioxide."
"Now, I add this small quantity of arsenic to a liter of water. You perceive that the resulting mixture has the appearance of pure water, with no tell-tale odor or discoloration to indicate the vile surprise that it holds. The proportion of arsenic to water cannot be more than one in a million. I have no doubt, however, that we shall be able to obtain the characteristic reaction."
As he spoke, he fiddled with two additional small brown bottles and an assembly of glass flasks ending in a small tube. Using a syringe, he deftly drew off a quantity of his arsenic-tainted water and added it to one of the flasks along with a quantity of liquid from one bottle and a silvery powder from the other. "By the addition of oil of vitriol and zinc, it is possible to liberate the arsenic into its gaseous form as arsine, along with a quantity of hydrogen gas, which can be ignited as so."
He held one of the Bunsen lamps up to the tube coming off of the flask in which his various additions were bubbling away. Immediately, the gas coming off the mixture caught fire and he held another ceramic bowl into the resulting flame with a set of tongs. Gradually, a silver-black smudge formed, quite similar to the one that he had first showed us.
"Ha! ha!" he cried, clapping his paws, and looking as delighted as a kit with a new toy. "What do you think of that?"
"It seems to me a most delicate test," I remarked.
"Delicate is not the half of it!" he said, "With this test, the old poudre de succession is rendered entirely obsolete. Once word of this method reaches the ears of impatient heirs the world over, I have no doubt that they will resort to other methods or else give up their designs on murder entirely."
"Indeed," I murmured.
"Many experts, including those of your esteemed profession, find it all but impossible to distinguish between arsenic poisoning and cholera or other such diseases, particularly when suspicions of poisoning arise only after the body has begun its putrefaction. Now, we have Nicholas Wilde's test, which a clever kit could conduct, and there will no longer be any difficulty."
His eyes fairly glittered as he spoke, and he put his paw over his heart and bowed deeply with an elaborate flourish, as though he were at a podium before a cheering crowd and not in front of a mere two mammals.
"You are to be congratulated," I remarked, considerably surprised at his enthusiasm.
"Why, had this method been discovered earlier, I can think of no less than half a dozen mammals in the past year who would have faced the executioner's justice. Should I go back a decade, I could name a score of cases in which it would have been decisive."
"You seem to be a walking encyclopedia of crime," said Ramford with a laugh. "You might start a paper on those lines. Call it the 'Police News of the Past.'"
"Very interesting reading it might be made, too," remarked Nicholas Wilde, taking his flask of poisoned water and pouring it down a drain.
"I have to be careful," he continued, turning to me with a smile, "For I am not the only one who uses this lab, and some of the others are not so careful."
"We came here on business," said Ramford, sitting down on a high three-legged stool, and pushing another one in my direction with her foot. "My friend here wants to take diggings, and as you were complaining that you could get no one to go halves with you, I thought that I had better bring you together."
Nicholas Wilde seemed delighted at the idea of sharing his rooms with me. "I have my eye on a suite in Barker Street," he said, "The landlady, alas, seems quite set against renting it out to a single fox, but I imagine that her objections would be entirely eliminated should I share the lodgings with a mammal such as yourself."
"Such backwards thinking should have no place in the modern era," I said, finding myself outraged on his behalf, "You may be a fox, but clearly you are quite the bright fellow, and articulate as well besides to explain the results of your work so concisely."
"Well, that is high praise indeed," Wilde said, a small smile playing across his muzzle, "And of such a kind that I rarely hear expressed in so humble a manner."
"But I suppose it only fair, before I rope you into splitting a flat with me, that I give fair warning of my own habits. You don't object to strong tobacco, do you?" he asked.
"I am not a smoker myself, but my father and some of my brothers smoke 'Sheep's'," I answered, "I should find it a reminder of home."
"That's good enough. I generally have chemicals about, and occasionally do experiments. Would that annoy you?"
"By no means."
"Let me see—what are my other shortcomings. I may have the occasional caller, but never in the common area should that displease you. What have you to confess now? It's just as well for two mammals to know the worst of one another before they begin to live together."
I laughed at this cross-examination. "I should very much like to live quietly, for I have had quite a bit of excitement in my life already, and I have not quite resumed anything resembling a normal sleep schedule, so I will likely sleep the mornings away with some regularity. I have another set of vices when I'm well, but those are the principal ones at present."
"Would you consider violin-playing to be a disruption of living quietly?" he asked, with some apparent anxiety.
"It depends on the player," I answered, "A well-played violin is a treat for the gods—a badly-played one—"
"Oh, that's all right," he cried, with a merry laugh. "I think we may consider the thing as settled—that is, if the rooms are agreeable to you."
"When shall we see them?"
"Call for me here at noon to-morrow, and we'll go together and settle everything," he answered.
"All right—noon exactly," said I, shaking his paw.
Ramford and I left Wilde working among his chemicals, and we walked out of the hospital, loitering near the main street entrance. I attempted to summon a hansom to take me back to my hotel; although I was serious about my desire to reduce my expenses, the walk back to it was more than I felt that I could bear at the moment. At last, one approached and came to a stop at our feet.
"By the way," I asked suddenly, stopping before I got in and turning upon Ramford, "How the deuce did he know that I had come from the countryside and the middle east before that?"
My companion smiled an enigmatic smile. "That's just his little peculiarity," he said, "A good many mammals have wanted to know how he finds things out."
"Oh! a mystery is it?" I cried, rubbing my paws, "This is very piquant. I am much obliged to you for bringing us together; it seems as though providence itself has put first you in my path and then him after."
"You must study him, then," Ramford said, as she bade me good-bye.
"You'll find him a knotty problem, though, should you take to examine him deeply," she added, with an insouciant wink.
"There is no need to be vulgar," I answered, although I took no offense at her implication.
Some few ribald comments at the expense of two mammals of opposite genders proposing to live together was to be expected, and so long as it never arose above that I would not mind her little jokes. While I did not find Wilde to be of any interest in the particular way in which Ramford had suggested, I was considerably interested in my new acquaintance, and I found my thoughts consumed by him on the entire ride back to my hotel.
We met the next day, as we had arranged, and inspected the rooms that comprised 221B Barker Street. They consisted of a couple of comfortable bed-rooms and a single large airy sitting-room, cheerfully furnished, and illuminated by two broad windows. I perceived that the landlady, an ancient armadillo, seemed to warm up to me quite a bit more than she did to Wilde, and was quite eager to strike the bargain upon finding out that I was a doctor. That very evening I moved my things round from the hotel, which again consisted solely of my faithful footlocker, and on the following morning Nicholas Wilde followed me with several boxes and portmanteaus. While it took me no more than an hour to unpack my belongings and set up my bed-room to my liking, it took Wilde a day or two of industrious unpacking and fussy rearrangement until he was satisfied that the arrangements were to his taste. That done, we gradually settled into our new surroundings.
Wilde was certainly not difficult to live with. He was quiet in his ways, and his habits were regular. Although I had initially suspected that as a fox he would hold to a nocturnal schedule, it was rare for him to be up after ten at night, and he had invariably breakfasted and gone out before I rose in the morning. Sometimes he spent his day at the chemical laboratory, sometimes in the dissecting-rooms, and occasionally in long walks, which appeared to take him into the lowest portions of Zootopia, among the kind of company that I could only guess at.
As the weeks went by, my interest in him and my curiosity as to his aims in life, gradually deepened and increased. His very appearance was such as to strike the attention of the most casual observer. In height he was perhaps four feet tall, but so lean that he seemed considerably taller, at least from my perspective. His eyes were glittering green and while hooded and lazy at most times, appeared almost to see through objects, so intense was his gaze when he put his focus on something. His features were sharp and angular, softened only somewhat by the longer fur near the nape of his neck. His paws were invariably blotted with ink and stained with chemicals, yet he was possessed of extraordinary delicacy of touch, as I frequently had occasion to observe when I watched him manipulating his fragile philosophical instruments. The dichotomy between the gentleness of a civilized mammal and his inborn predatory cunning was tipped very much in the favor of the former, and I had no occasion to complain about his behavior. I had not, however, learned the nature of his business, and I took it as a challenge to find it out on my own.
The reader may set me down as a hopeless busybody, when I confess how much this mammal stimulated my curiosity, and might also accuse me of the sort of interest at which Ramford had teased, considering the lengths that I went to in my attempts to coax out of Wilde some greater discourse on the nature of his business. Before pronouncing judgment, however, be it remembered how little there was to engage my attention. Although it was true that I was developing lesson plans for the class I was preparing to teach, such an activity could scarcely occupy all of my time. My health, too, remained fragile; I do not think that the city air helped along my recovery at all, and on the days in which the quicksilver in the weather glass dropped, the ache in my leg forbade me from venturing too far. I had no friends who would call upon me and break the monotony of my daily existence. Under these circumstances, I eagerly hailed the little mystery which hung around my companion, and spent much of my time in endeavoring to unravel it.
During the first week or so we had no callers, and I had begun to think that my companion was as friendless as I was myself. Presently, however, I found that he had not been lying when he told me that he took callers, for he appeared to have many acquaintances, and those in the most different classes of society and type of mammal. There was one stern-looking elephant who was introduced to me as Ms. Trunkaby, and who came three or four times in a single week. One morning a young porcupine called, fashionably dressed, and stayed for half an hour or more. The same afternoon brought a rather disreputable-looking weasel, who appeared to me to be much excited, and who was closely followed by a slip-shod elderly horse mare. On another occasion an old white-furred squirrel had an interview with my companion; and on another a platypus in the velveteen uniform of a railway porter. When any of these nondescript individuals put in an appearance, Nicholas Wilde used to beg for the use of the sitting-room, and I would retire to my bed-room. He always apologized to me for putting me to this inconvenience. "I have to use this room as a place of business," he said, "And these people are my clients."
I had an opportunity of asking him a point blank question, but my desire to unravel the mystery myself won over. I imagined at the time that he had some strong reason for not alluding to it, but he soon dispelled the idea when a rather remarkable set of circumstances brought him round to it.
It was upon the eleventh of October, a day that I have good reason to remember for the nature of the events that followed, that I returned late in the evening to the flat with an armful of books from St. Assisi's medical library, having endeavored to put to bed my lesson plans. When I swung the door open, I called out a greeting that died on my lips, for what my eyes met was the single most disreputable mammal that I have ever seen. An evil-looking little coyote with mangy fur the color of rotting straw and dressed in clothes little better than rags had a rough sack at his feet and one of Wilde's delicate philosophical instruments in his paw, halfway between the sack and the table that it had rested.
The books and my cane fell out of my paws with a clatter as I reached into the pocket of my coat and drew forth my revolver. I had not practiced with it in months, but I had ever been a crack shot and I could hardly miss at a distance of ten feet. "Hold, villain!" I cried, fixing the coyote in my sights, "You'll come with me to the constabulary or I swear you shall die here."
To my great surprise, the coyote burst into a gale of laughter. "Peace, Dr. Hopps," he said, raising his arms up, "I am grateful you give warning before you shoot, but I do not think our landlady would much appreciate the mess if you do, though she may be rather glad to be rid of me."
The voice was as familiar as the mammal's countenance was not. "Wilde?" I asked, allowing the barrel of my weapon to drop.
"The one and same," the coyote said, and as he spoke the very manner in which he carried himself shifted and I recognized the familiar features of my fellow-lodger hidden beneath layers of what must have been one of the most complete disguises ever assembled.
"Why the devil are you dressed so? I could very well have shot you as an intruder!"
"I have already expressed my gratitude that you did not," he replied with a chuckle, "And as for your first question, I have oftentimes found it preferable, in my line of work, to not be immediately recognized. In some parts of the city I am afraid that my reputation very greatly precedes me."
"And what line of work is that?" I challenged.
In that moment, I had finally had enough of attempting to tease the answer out of him or deduce it on my own. Wilde did not answer me immediately, instead carefully placing his fragile little assembly of wire and glass on his table; I perceived that he had been in the process of emptying the bag, not filling it. "You see, I have made a great study of crime, and of criminals and their methods," he said finally.
It seemed likely the sort of knowledge he would have acquired first-hand, as it were, considering his appearance, but I did not voice my thought. "There is a remarkable resemblance about misdeeds, and if you have all the details of a thousand at your finger ends, it would be rather more peculiar if you couldn't unravel the thousand and first than if you could. I'm a consulting detective, if you can understand what that is. Here in Zootopia we have lots of Government detectives and lots of private ones. When these fellows are at fault they come to me, and I manage to put them on the right scent. They lay all the evidence before me, and I am generally able, by the help of my knowledge of the history of crime and my ability to observe facts and deduce the connections between them, to set them straight."
"All your callers were detectives?" I asked with no small amount of skepticism.
"Not all, no. They are mostly sent on by private inquiry agencies. They are all mammals who are in trouble about something, and want a little enlightening. I listen to their story, they listen to my comments, and then I pocket my fee."
He laid it out so simply, but I retained my doubts that such a story could be true. "I see written plainly in your face your skepticism,"my companion remarked, "Perhaps a demonstration is in order. I did not answer your question when first we met, but I shall answer now how I discerned that you were a farmer turned solider, recently returned from the middle east."
"You were told," I said, though I could not possibly imagine the circumstances under which Ramford could have made the details of my life known to Wilde ahead of our meeting.
"I deduced it," he said, "And I shall illustrate how quite clearly."
I was quite skeptical of his claim, but perfectly willing to humor him. Wilde tented his fingers and paused a moment before he began. "Your service in the middle east was easily deduced from your shemagh."
"My shemagh?" I questioned, glancing at the garment where it hung on a hook near the door.
It was true that I had picked it up in the middle east during my service, paying a pittance for a truly magnificent headscarf. It was perhaps a tad too long, the ends going past the hem of my jacket unless I doubled it round my neck twice, but it was made of the finest pashmina with a striking black and white pattern that was almost, but not quite, houndstooth in appearance. Fall was in full swing in Zootopia, and I had taken to wearing it as a scarf to ward off the chill; I still had far too little substance to my frame and my winter coat had not yet begun to fill in, so I oftentimes found myself cold while out of doors.
"Indeed," he replied serenely, "Although vulgar replicas, in the form of a standard scarf, were quite in fashion among the working class three or four years ago, it was immediately apparent to my eye that yours is authentic in both style and substance, being made of pashmina, not a cotton print as was the fad. The only place such a splendid piece of work could have originated from is the middle east, for it shows the subtle imperfections that mark it as having been made by paw and not in a textile mill by machine."
While his deduction made a certain logical sense, I would not allow the point to slide. "That only tells you from whence the shemagh came, not the manner in which I acquired it."
Wilde seemed delighted by my objection. "Quite so, dear doctor. I see that little will go past you. The truth is that my deductions depend not on any single factor but on the synthesis of many, for a fact may in isolation point in quite opposite directions."
He tamped his pipe before continuing. "Consider, in your case, your jacket. It is unmistakably an officer's service jacket with the rank insignia and other decorations removed. Surplus, perhaps, but for the military precision with which you carry yourself, which once trained in is almost never unlearned. Your jacket and your bearing, therefore, mark you as a veteran, and the shemagh, along with the darker spots on your jacket where the patches prevented the cloth from sun-bleaching like the rest of the garment, tell me that you served in the middle east. This judgment is, I think, only strengthened by your watch chain, which is plain steel and shows every indication of use, yet has neither spots of rust nor marks where you scoured it away, telling me your service was not in a damp clime. Further, it is plainly obvious that you have recently been ill, which suggests strongly a disease picked up abroad when the other factors are taken into account."
"And that I came from the country and was a farmer?" I challenged.
"Leaving aside that you are a bunny, and bunnies are more frequently farmers than not, let us return to your watch chain. It is inexpensive, yet functional, suggesting the sort of frugality common to farmers and either a lack of funds or a disinclination to waste them, marking you as not belonging to the landed gentry for whom it is a trivial matter to become a doctor. Your trousers, as well, were well cared for, but were clearly cut for a buck, not a doe, and many years out of fashion. They showed no small amount of wear at the knees, suggesting farm work; I therefore deduced that following your injury in the service you returned to a farm—which by necessity must be in the countryside—and augmented your wardrobe with garments handed down by older siblings."
"Incredible!" I cried, astounded at how minutely he had been able to read my appearance.
"It was simplicity itself," Wilde replied, but I could see the satisfaction he took at having impressed me, "But I beg you excuse me a moment so that I may restore my appearance."
He disappeared into his bed-room, and returned half an hour later in his typical tweed suit looking entirely like a fox.
"Was it a case that you were on, then?" I asked eagerly upon his return.
"One that I have solved quite to my satisfaction," he said with a nod, taking a seat, "I can tell you the details, should you wish, but it appears that another case is making its way to my door."
He gestured with his pipe out the window, where I saw, in the dim glow of the streetlights, a wolf stepping purposefully out of a hansom cab and making his way towards our set of rooms. A moment later, there was a knock upon the door, and when Wilde answered it the very same wolf stood across the opening. He was larger even than Wilde, almost twice the fox's height, and dressed plainly in a dark suit. "Message for Nicholas Wilde," he said, handing an envelope over to my companion.
Wilde took it and went to close the door, but the wolf reached out and grabbed it, holding it in place with no apparent effort. "I'm to hold the cab and wait for a response," he said by way of explanation.
Wilde's ears flicked briefly back in apparent annoyance. "You can do so outside, then," he said, and stared the taller mammal down until the wolf nodded and removed his paw from the door.
Wilde shut the door and sank back into his chair, then quickly scanned the letter and gave it over to me. "See this, then," he said, "What do you make of it?"
The letter was written on the finest quality bond paper, and when I held it nearer to the gas lamp to read it—lacking my companion's superlative low light vision—I saw a subtle "L" watermark worked into it. In contrast to the quality of the paper, however, the writing was uneven and quite difficult to decipher.
My dear Mr. Nicholas Wilde, [it read]
There has been a bad business last night or sometime to-day at the Zootopia branch of the Lemmings Brothers Bank. Some two tonnes of gold have been stolen without the slightest clue as to the method or the culprit. Come at once if you are able, else I shall be by later with greater details.
-F.T.
"This is extraordinary!" I cried, "A bank robbed of two tonnes of gold!"
I could scarcely imagine how such a thing could be done without leaving the slightest trace, or even how so great a quantity could be transported away should it be successfully stolen. Wilde, meanwhile, simply yawned widely and settled himself back into his chair. "I have no interest in ordinary crimes," he remarked, "And this sounds, to use your word, extraordinary only in its scale."
"Surely that makes it of some interest?" I asked, incredulous that my companion could be so blase about what was surely the crime of the decade at least.
"None whatsoever," he replied, taking a draw from his pipe, "Did you not notice what the letter itself and its method of delivery said, regardless of its contents?"
"Only that it was written by a mammal in a great hurry," I said.
Wilde nodded. "That is a fair beginning," he said, "But far from the end. There is no doubt that the paper came from Lemming Brothers Bank, correct?"
I recalled the watermark and nodded my agreement. "Such a fine piece of paper would not be left by the tellers, where any passers by could use it for scrap. No, it must have come from the desk of one of the officers of the bank," he said.
"Not unusual, I would suppose, if the robbery is so grand as the letter claims."
Wilde inclined his head in response. "But it is not written by the paw of a bank officer. No, there is no mistaking the initials or distinctive strokes of Inspector Francine Trunkaby, who I believe you have met on one or two occasions."
I recalled a dour elephant to whom I had been briefly introduced, but at the time my fellow-lodger had given no indication that she was an officer of the law. "And should not an inspector be present after a bank robbery?" I asked.
Wilde shook his head disapprovingly. "Consider how events fit together! Trunkaby is as dull and unimaginative an officer as the police ever turned out and consequently quite predictable. Were this to proceed in the regular fashion, she would have visited herself, in the flesh. Instead, she is in the office of a bank officer—the president, unless I miss my mark very much—and in quite a hurry, as you may judge by the spacing of the letters and the smudges where the ink was neither blotted nor allowed to dry fully before it was put in the envelope. Obviously, she could not solve the crime on her own—unsurprising, really—and therefore schemes to draw me in with a letter. The letter is delivered by a wolf who can only be from the bank's own security force and holds for me a carriage, awaiting a reply or my presence. The bank is going to great lengths to ensure that this is all resolved before anyone can learn of the theft, inform the papers, and cause a run on the deposits. And that, therefore, means that this is an unworthy mystery with no recognition to be earned but that from Trunkaby herself, which I already have in its grudging full measure. No, I shall respond that I am otherwise indisposed on a most pressing matter."
As he spoke the last, he began to gather up pen and paper. "Are you not the least curious as to how the deed was done?" I asked.
"I shall find a better case on which to focus my talents," he said.
"I don't believe you can," I said, "Nor do I believe that you would pass on this case else you did not think you could solve it."
A curious gleam entered his eyes and he put down his pen. "Very well," he said, and instead grabbed his hat and coat from their customary position by the door.
He paused with his paw on the doorknob. "Are you not coming?" he asked.
I was surprised by his offer, but I had little else to do. "I suppose I must, if only to see for myself if you really can solve it."
A minute later we were both in the waiting hansom alongside the wolf, setting off for the bank.
Author's Notes: Before I get to my notes for this particular chapter, I have a question to pose. In the comments for my last story, PseudoFox and L. both expressed interest in reading a straight up drama, without any mystery, about two of the secondary characters (Heather Leaves and Bruce Newcastle). It made me curious: what kinds of story do you, as a reader, want to read? I'd be interested in knowing as I plan out my next few works.
Now, onto the notes for the chapter itself:
This chapter is a bit longer than usual, since my chapters tend to run between 2,000 and 3,000 words and this one clocks in at 5,359, but I was eager to get to the main characters meeting and on to the mystery itself, and I figured that you wouldn't mind not having to wait another week before getting to all of that.
The test that Nick describes is, to the best of my ability, an accurate description of the Marsh Test, invented in 1836 by the British chemist James Marsh. It's a clever bit of chemistry, using sulfuric acid (referred to in this chapter as oil of vitriol, an archaic name for it) and pure zinc to react with the test sample, producing arsine gas if the test sample contained arsenic. The arsenic can then be collected on a piece of ceramic, and compared to the result of a sample with a known arsenic concentration. It's true that white arsenic, referring to arsenic trioxide, really was commonplace as a method of poisoning, since it was difficult to definitively detect prior to the Marsh Test and white arsenic was readily available. The French term poudre de succession, meaning "inheritance powder" was a nickname for arsenic due to the implication that impatient heirs would use it. 1881 is a bit late for the test to be developed, but who says that the technology and science of the world of Zootopia have to perfectly match our own? At least in the movie, their technology appears beyond our own in at least some aspects; I don't think we could build a weather controlling wall that keeps one massive open area as a desert and another massive open area below zero. Considering the sheer variety of mammals, it might actually make sense for their medicine to be less well developed since illnesses and treatments would vary so widely.