Upon arriving back at the flat, I was disappointed to realize that Wilde was out, although I could not help but be bemused at the idiosyncratic method by which he had left his note. He had secured it to the mantle of the fireplace by stabbing through it with a jack-knife; as I pried the knife free and plucked the note off the mantle I winced to think of what our landlady would say when she saw the gouge Wilde had created. The note itself had been written in my fellow-lodger's unmistakable neat and spidery handwriting, and read simply:
If convenient, wait for me here. If inconvenient, wait all the same.
-NW
I shook my head in amazement at his unmitigated gall, but I had no pressing business to attend to, least of all that which would take me away from our suite of rooms. My lesson plans were progressing slowly but surely, and I had quite enough material in the flat to get on with them, should I be so inclined. However, I had not forgotten my resolution to change out of the dreadful dress Wilde had outfit me with, and decided to take a hot bath first. The cab ride back to the flat had been most unpleasant, as the October air of Zootopia outside the Rain-Forest District had had quickly turned the humidity-dampened fabric of the dress cold. I was, as I have mentioned, still quite susceptible to low temperatures, and I feared that I would take a fever if I did not warm myself.
The suite of rooms did not, of course, have hot water on tap, as it was far too inexpensive for such a luxury, but I had a bathtub in my bed-room that served me well enough. One advantage of my small size, relative to many other mammals, was that it took hardly any time to heat up enough water on the fireplace to fill the little bathtub, and I was soon enjoying the warmth that seemed to seep through to my very bones. I left my bath with great reluctance only when my stomach made it known to me that I had neglected to eat at all that morning. I changed into a tea gown, reveling at how liberating it felt, and sent for a late breakfast from Mrs. Armadillo. The landlady's keen eyes spotted the mark on the mantle where the note had been secured, but she gave no reaction other than to purse her lips into a grim line. It was perhaps her displeasure that motivated the old armadillo to provide lukewarm pease pudding and a rather stale stottie cake, but I fell to it with great gusto all the same.
As I ate, I read the morning edition of the Times with great interest. A proposal to create another district with an artificial climate was before the city council, and everyone from normal citizens to members of parliament had weighed in with letters to the editors, who were unabashed in making their own thoughts known. As a laymammal, the challenge of building an artificial desert seemed no more challenging than the construction of a simulacrum of a rain forest. However, every possible objection was being raised, from the cost that some lamented would be ruinous to the taxpayers, to the logistical difficulties of finding a suitable location, to the aesthetics. One worthy mammal had written in to bemoan that, unlike the Rain-Forest District, which with its lush greenery had become one of the crown jewels of the city, a desert district would be a blight upon the city, a barren eyesore. This opinion was, it seemed, quite a common one, though a fair number of mammals belonging to species adapted to the desert had written glowingly of the austere beauty which a desert alone could command. I had not lived in the city nearly long enough to take up the issue with the kind of passion either side of the debate had evinced, but I found myself sympathetic to those who wished the desert district to be built. While one wag had mockingly dubbed the proposed project Sahara Square due to his belief that no more than a single city block would be necessary to accommodate the few heat-adapted mammals who called the city home, and anything more was a waste of tax money, I knew a little of the discomfort that those mammals must experience on a daily basis. Considering the difficulty that I had experienced only that morning, I could imagine how unpleasant the city must feel to those adapted to a warm and arid climate.
My perusal of the newspaper was interrupted by the sound of a key in the lock, but my greeting died upon my lips when I saw the state that Wilde was in. The clothes, I was sure, could be forgiven as part of a disguise, for they were of poor quality and well-worn. I could not imagine, however, that his disguise would include the rips in his shirt or trousers or the bloody scratches visible underneath the cream colored fur where his chest had been exposed. Wilde's face, however, was what drew the largest part of my attention. His left eye was swollen nearly shut and the handkerchief he had clapped to his muzzle could not hide that his nose was freely streaming blood and staining his collar. "Wilde!" I cried, springing up from my chair at the table, "Are you quite all right?"
He waved off my concern even as he entered the flat and I moved to intercept him and take a closer look at his wounds. "I shall be rather less handsome for a time, but I do not believe I have any permanent injuries," he said, his voice somewhat nasal from his most obvious injury.
"You can be the judge of that once you hold a medical degree," I retorted.
I had dragged my chair with me and stood on it so that I could look the fox in the eye. "Have you had any dizziness? Confusion?" I asked as I tried to palpate his head to check for fractures.
"No more so than usual," he said, brushing my paws away, "I have already told you, I shall be fine. I had Finn, after all."
At this last, he gestured downwards casually, and I was startled to realize that Wilde had been accompanied by another fox. That I had overlooked him was quite understandable, I think, due both to my concerns for Wilde's injuries and the other fox's diminutive size. Indeed, the fox was even smaller than I was, dressed in somewhat grimy knickerbockers over an equally dirty shirt. The little fox's enormous eyes stared up at me from under the brim of a flat cap that seemed as though it could scarcely keep his ears against his skull. I had never before seen any mammal, not even my younger siblings when they could barely toddle, who seemed so perfectly formed to elicit sympathy. "Are you his son?" I asked the little fox gently, gesturing towards Wilde.
I supposed that Finn could have been apprenticed out, but it seemed peculiar to me that Wilde could have a kit and neither live with him nor mention him so much as a single time in the weeks we had spent together. Finn shook his head slowly, while Wilde gave an amused chuckle. "No son of mine," he said, and walked to the door of his bed-room, where I had left the dress and accouterments he had provided me for my morning activities.
I was left feeling somewhat foolish, standing on a chair while the tiny fox still stared up at me. I carefully climbed off the chair; I had learned to my misfortune several months ago that my injured leg could no longer support the sort of leaps I had once made unthinkingly. Wilde returned with the little beaded purse and from it pulled four coins which he presented to Finn. "A halfpenny a guard, as promised," he said cheerfully.
The little fox's demeanor suddenly entirely changed, his eyes narrowing to suspicious slits. "Weren't no ha'penny job, keeping your skull in one piece," he growled in a voice that was surprisingly deep and masculine.
I looked at Finn askance and realized that he was apparently fully grown and not a kit as I had imagined. "Oh, very well," Wilde said, digging back into the purse, "With a two shilling bonus for additional services."
Wilde had yet to pull the coins free before Finn spoke again. "You care about that head of yours?" Finn leered, and I swore there was the note of a threat in his gravelly voice.
"Let us call it a guinea insurance for my health," Wilde said, pulling out the appropriate coinage.
The little extortionist nodded in apparent satisfaction. "You take care, Nicky," he said, turning to leave.
Before Wilde could close the door behind him, Finn glanced over his shoulder and locked eyes with me. "There's talk," he said, in a way that gave me little doubt that he meant about me.
As Wilde shut the door and turned his attention towards me, I wondered, not for the first time, what kind of unsavory circles he moved in. "You had a productive morning, I hope?" he said, "Spare none of the details."
"Not until you tell me the business you were on, to come back like this," I said flatly.
"Nothing that would pose a danger to you," Wilde said, though if he meant it to be soothing the effect was quite lost due to his battered appearance.
When I stayed silent, Wilde gave a sigh and began to speak. "Last night, after you had gone a-bed, Trunkaby stopped by with the names I had requested."
I recalled that Wilde had asked for the names and addresses of the the security guards Mr. Lemming had fired. "While I spent the night preparing your dress—which I see you have already cast aside—I set Finn to track down the guards. Finn, you see, is the leader of Zootopia's most successful street urchins, who have proven their value to me on many an occasion by their ability to go almost anywhere unremarked."
It seemed a contradiction to me to speak of successful street urchins, but I assumed that Wilde meant the little bandits bilked more money than any of their competitors. "Are they all so old as he?" I asked.
Wilde laughed. "Hardly so," he said, "You may not guess it, from his nature, but he does have a soft spot for kits. Though it took them all night, shortly after we parted ways I received word that the security guards had been found."
"All four of them were wolves," Wilde continued, "Perhaps it was their pack mentality that kept them together after they were all let go; it was immediately obvious that they had no family relation, but they were this morning drinking their sorrows."
I did not need to glance at my pocket watch to know that it could not be more than half-past ten. "So early in the morning?" I asked, amazed by their impropriety.
"They were night guards, after all," Wilde said, "If you do not expect nocturnal mammals to drink during the day, they would never touch a drop."
I conceded his point with a nod, and rolled my paw to indicate that he should continue.
"I approached the group at their chosen bar, dressed as I am now. It did not take much to convince them that I was in similar position as they were, and I bought a few rounds to toast our new friendship. They were quite happy to drink on my coin, as most mammals tend to be; though the saying may be in vino veritas I have ever found that beer works just as well. Their testimony of events prior to their firing matched precisely those described by Constable Clawhauser and Mr. Lemming, but I learned some additional items of interest from their loosened tongues. Although the bank does not hold to a regular schedule for the shipments of gold, in an effort to foil theft, for the past two years no more than three months have gone by without a shipment. Each time, it progresses in the same order. The stevedores unload the crate under the eyes of the guards; one shift of guards minds the bank while the other oversees the transport of the gold. After the crate passes an inspection of its labels, seals, and weight against the cargo manifest, it is transported to the bank on a carriage and locked in the auxiliary vault until the following day, when it is broken apart, the lock box opened, and the gold distributed."
With that, Wilde leaned back into his chair with a little wince of pain, apparently satisfied that his story was told.
"And what of your injuries?" I asked.
"I have already told you everything of consequence that has happened," he replied.
"I will not speak a word of my errand unless you complete the story of yours," I said.
Wilde sat silent a moment, and I wondered if he was running a mental calculation of the value of my testimony against what I imagined to be his wounded pride. At last, he spoke."After the fourth round of drinks, one of the wolves decided to repay the favor, but could not find so much as a penny in his pockets. He accused me of theft and events escalated how you must be capable of imagining them to."
I was shocked at the brutality that the wolves had visited upon my companion over an imagined slight. "That's terrible!" I cried.
Wilde laughed. "You have not seen them, then. Finn got rather the better of them, as no one expects an attack to come from ankle height."
His cheerful description of what I could only imagine to be vicious fighting reminded me of the great differences between us. While I had served in the military, I had always viewed my role as a doctor as taking precedence over my role as a soldier, and the casual view of violence the predators took was alarming. Perhaps it could be blamed on the drink, but no bunny would ever resort to such ends, no matter how much they imbibed. Still, I was not one to renege on my word, and I took the other seat by the fireplace and told Wilde all I had learned.
Throughout my monologue, Wilde made no interruptions, listening with his eyes shut. When at last I finished, he nodded approvingly. "You did well, for an amateur," he said, "With some guidance, I have no doubt that you could exceed even the best of those the police have as investigators."
I glowed inwardly at his praise, but I had to ask the question his statement naturally brought up. "Did you never think of becoming a police officer yourself?"
Wilde chuckled. "I would be quite wasted, walking a beat. My talents are better served consulting, for then I can pick only the interesting cases."
His glib answer had the ring of truth to it, but I could not help but think that it was not quite an answer to the question I had asked. Any further discussion, however, was precluded by Wilde pulling out his violin. When we had first met, he had not lied when he led me to believe that he was a talented violinist. Indeed, on many an evening he had played, filling the flat with the sweet sound of a surprising variety of music, though he was always willing enough to play my favorites. On this day, however, I would be hard-pressed to describe what he played as music. Occasionally the chords were fantastic and cheerful. Sometimes they were sonorous and melancholy. Clearly they reflected the thoughts which possessed him, but whether the music aided those thoughts, or whether the playing was simply the result of a whim or fancy was more than I could determine.
He was clearly not in the mood for any further discussion, so I retreated to the desk in my bed-room, trying to focus on my lesson plans even as my mind wandered to the case. Wilde carried on his playing for nearly an hour before he stopped suddenly and without warning. With Wilde no longer playing, I heard the sounds of heavy footfalls approaching the door to our flat, and guessed that it could only be Inspector Trunkaby.
The mammal at the door was indeed Trunkaby, and she showed no sign of any of the near-desperation that had been evident when last I had seen her. Indeed, she seemed rather pleased with herself, even as she politely declined Wilde's offer of a cup of tea.
"At last, the vessel matches its contents, does it?" Trunkaby said, after taking in Wilde's injuries and ruined clothing.
Wilde gave no reaction to the elephant's jibe. "I expect you think you have solved the case, then?" he said coolly.
"Indeed, Mr. Wilde," Trunkaby said, "I was quite premature in coming to you for assistance. While you have had some success with your little guesses, there is no match for experience after all. See here!"
The inspector pulled out a small cage, in which a miserable rat perhaps four or five inches tall was futilely scrabbling at the bars. He was a sorry representative of his species, dressed in filthy clothes even worse than those that Wilde was wearing. "I caught this one red-pawed, trying to pawn a fraction of the gold."
From a pouch at her belt, she withdrew a small drawstring bag and carefully emptied it into her palm. The misshaped little nuggets were, to my eye, undeniably gold, but Wilde gave them only a cursory glance before turning his attention to Trunkaby's unfortunate prisoner, who was shrilly proclaiming his innocence. "Weaselton's Pawn and Sundry, I suppose?" Wilde asked.
"You do have some small talent," Trunkaby said, "But clearly it did not occur to you to canvas the city's more disreputable pawnshops for a sudden increase in mammals attempting to sell gold."
"Indeed it did not," Wilde replied humbly, though I thought I could see the shadow of a smile at the corner of his muzzle.
"Mr. Waldheim here had nearly ten troy ounces of gold, and no good explanation for how he came by it," Trunkaby continued.
"That leaves, let us see, a mere sixty-four thousand two hundred and ninety-one troy ounces to go before you have all two tonnes accounted for," Wilde said sardonically.
"It's no business of yours, how I came by it," the rat squeaked defiantly, "I didn't steal no two tonnes of gold, neither."
"I imagine your tune shall change after some time on the treadmills," Trunkaby said severely, addressing Waldheim's interjection, "There cannot be any better motivator to give up your associates, though I already know the means by which you committed the crime."
"I would be very much interested in hearing that," Wilde said, and there was no doubt in my mind that he was attempting to hide his amusement.
"I didn't do it!" the rat proclaimed, but Trunkaby ignored him completely.
"It is obvious, of course, that the only mammals who could gain entry through the broken window pane are particularly small ones, such as Mr. Waldheim here, who could easily hide from the guards when they made their search."
Trunkaby's logic, to that point, certainly seemed sound. "They could also defeat the gates outside the vault by the simple means of squeezing through the bars, which would be no great challenge to them. I do not yet know how they made entry to the vault, but it is obvious how they stole the gold."
"Is that so?" Wilde asked.
"It was the sort of detail which only an expert investigator would catch, but clearly one of the greatest importance. There was a knothole in the wood planks that made up the shipping crate. Again, a trifling matter for a rat to slip through. Once inside the crate, they defeated the lock box by pouring molten lead into the keyhole and then made their escape by the same means as their entry."
"Well, you clearly have no further needs for my talents," Wilde said cheerfully, "Please, let me see you out."
"There is one more thing, inspector," Wilde said casually, as he walked Trunkaby to the door, "After you have finished interviewing Mr. Waldheim, there is one point I would very much be interested in hearing the answer to."
"I will happily tell the great Nicholas Wilde that which he cannot deduce himself," Trunkaby said with obvious enjoyment as she loitered outside the flat.
"How did an army of rats lift a lid weighing near enough to twenty stones?"
Trunkaby's face fell in a look of almost comical realization. "You needn't answer now," Wilde said as he swung the door shut, "I can wait."
Author's Notes: I'm not going to have cell service, let alone Internet access, for the next few days so I'm posting this chapter a couple days early, which I figured was better than a couple days late. The next chapter will go up as usual.
Nick's note is a variation on one which Sherlock sent to Watson in the Adventure of the Creeping Man, which I think suits his character particularly well. Leaving a note pinned to the mantle of a fireplace with a knife is a reference to Sherlock's preferred method of storing his unread mail as described in the Musgrave Ritual. The original stories don't address what Mrs. Hudson thinks of this, but I doubt Sherlock is getting his security deposit back. Indoor plumbing with hot water is something that we pretty much take for granted now, but in 1881 you'd be pretty wealthy to have it, so Dr. Hopps's description of her bath is accurate to how someone from the middle class would have had to go about it. Continuing with some more little bits of world building, I imagine that this version of Zootopia isn't quite as diverse in its geography as the one in the movie, simply because of the limits of their technology. Building a desert equivalent of the Rain-Forest District I describe would certainly be possible for Victorian technology, but it'd probably be very difficult to keep it from leaking in the rain, which isn't really a problem for an artificial rain forest but definitely could be for a desert. Overall, I'm trying to convey that this is a city undergoing massive changes to fit the whole Victorian theme.
In the original Sherlock stories, Holmes is incredibly strong and a terrific fighter, but I figured it made more sense for consulting detective Nicholas Wilde to be kind of a pushover. I imagine that even in the original continuity of the movie, Nick isn't much of a fighter; it seems more likely that he'd rely on his mouth to get himself out of trouble. Which he probably got into because of his mouth. At any rate, this also allowed me to introduce an interpretation of Finnick that I thought made sense for the setting. I've blended in elements of Wiggins, leader of the Baker Street Irregulars from the original Sherlock canon, but retaining the fact that Finnick is an adult. It seemed like a good fit to me, and I enjoy the idea of the little guy fighting way above his weight class.
Anyone who's done a lot of running may believe this already, but treadmills really were used as a means of punishment. Considering that in the 19th century they were usually set up so they functioned like an endless staircase, it's easy to understand why prisoners considered them especially cruel. There were also those set up more or less the same as exercise wheels for pet rodents, which may make poor Mr. Waldheim's fate all the more appropriate.
I won't comment on the details of the case, as I don't want to spoil the fun, but there's still a fair amount of story left.