In contrast to the outside of the shop and the surrounding neighborhood, the interior of Weaselton's pawnshop was well-kept. The wooden planks of the floor looked freshly scrubbed without so much as a speck of dust in the corners, and the many glass cases that filled the room were all neatly polished, with not so much as a stray mark upon any of them. At a low counter near the back of the store, a weasel, who I assumed to be the proprietor, was wrapping a package for a jill stoat. Neither of them looked up from their transaction as my companion and I entered the pawnshop, and I split off from Wilde and began to peruse the display cases while waiting for him to begin whatever business had brought him.

I was looking over a display of silverware when the weasel I assumed to be Weaselton himself suddenly interrupted me. His clothes were all of the finest material, but the overall appearance he gave was not of a wealthy mammal; while I can claim no great knowledge of fashion, the individual pieces seemed to clash in style and his shirt was far too short for his lanky torso besides. When he spoke, he revealed a number of shining golden teeth, and I repressed a shudder at the memory it conjured of Waldheim and his ghastly method of obtaining gold. I was perhaps not entirely successful, for Weaselton's smile widened in a way that struck me as predatory as he began his attempt to get me to purchase his wares. If he thought that I was a timid little bunny who could be intimidated into purchasing something which I did not need, he would quickly find himself entirely wrong.

"Looking for silverware, madame?" he asked, his voice oily, "You've come to the right place. This here is my finest set. One hundred and twenty-five pieces, suitable for twenty-five. Enough for you, the mister, and all your kits, I expect."

I did not think that I liked Mr. Weaselton, nor his insinuation that, simply because I was a bunny, I must have an enormous brood. "I have no kits," I said shortly, looking over Weaselton's shoulder as I attempted to spot my companion to let him know that the weasel had concluded his business with the stoat.

My refutation did not seem to faze Weaselton at all; with a smooth gesture he unlocked the display case into which I had been looking and pulled out the tray which showed off each of the utensils that was part of the set. "Enough for the folks, then, when they come to visit, and plenty enough as spares, eh? Pure silver this is, an absolute bargain."

"Why do you suppose I can see the base metal, then?" Wilde said, having appeared at my side and lifting one of the forks to examine it critically, "It looks to me as though this set is rather well worn."

Weaselton shot Wilde a hateful glance before attempting to resume the sale, "Pure silver over a core of brass, that is, but finer all the same for it. I can be with you in a moment, Wilde, once my business with this fine young doe is concluded. Wait outside, why don't you?"

There was clearly no love lost between the weasel and the fox, and Weaselton's dubious charms had dropped away entirely when he spoke to my companion. Wilde simply chuckled, and clapped Weaselton on the shoulder as though he were greeting an old friend. "Dr. Hopps here is my personal physician, and is only present to ensure my continued good health."

Weaselton looked me up and down warily, seeming to reevaluate me in the light of Wilde's somewhat exaggerated claim. "A bunny?" he asked skeptically, "What could a bunny know of foxes other than to avoid them?"

"I would not discredit her so quickly," Wilde said, before I could comment on the odious weasel's dismissal of my abilities, "She was able to patch me up well enough."

Weaselton turned to Wilde, and seemed to for the first time recognize his injuries. Though the worst of them were hidden beneath Wilde's fresh clothes, his blackened eye and the swollen bruise along his muzzle were obvious enough to the untrained eye, even through Wilde's fur. "Poke your nose where it didn't belong, did you?" Weaselton asked with a cruel laugh, "Send him my way and I'll buy him a drink."

"I am afraid that I cannot," Wilde said, "Perhaps you could visit the four of them in Muirbank, though; I expect they would be rather glad for such charming company to break up the monotony of life imprisoned."

I did not know if Wilde was speaking the truth, but I hoped that he was, as it would be justice served if the wolves who had beaten him were imprisoned for their crime. Weaselton's ears flickered and I would swear that he blanched beneath his fur. "I'm an honest businessmammal, I am, and I ain't liking your words, Wilde," he said, and I heard that the vaguely posh accent he had taken with me had slipped away entirely, revealing something far more base in much the same way that his supposed silverware was but a veneer of silver over brass.

"Let us be honest together, then," Wilde said mildly, "I recently came off rather the worse with a group of wolves."

Weaselton gave a snort of disdain. "This shop is above board, Wilde; I have no dealings with criminals," he said, seeming to recover some of his composure and most of his affected accent, but his hackles were raised and his eyes darted back and forth between my companion and the exit.

I was very much skeptical of Weaselton's claims, but Wilde did not object, and simply continued, his tone staying gentle. "The wolves who saw fit to attempt to rearrange my features also damaged my watch in the scuffle," Wilde told Weaselton, and he pulled a watch from his pocket and put it on the counter, "I shall need a replacement, until I can arrange for it to be repaired, and your shop seemed the place to visit."

"It is a great pity to see something so pretty so damaged," I said when I saw the watch, and it was the truth.

Wilde's pocket watch had been pretty indeed; it was a hunter-case watch all of sterling silver, and the lid was delicately engraved with floral patterns that looked almost like real flowers made of metal, so fine was the detail. The lid was bent, however, and did not close fully, and the glass of the watch had shattered. The minute hand had fallen off and the hour hand was twisted at an angle. On the inside of the lid there was a portrait miniature of a vixen done in gouache, and I could not help but wonder who she was. His mother seemed to me the most likely option; I somehow found it difficult to imagine Wilde romantically entangled. His passion for his work, from what I had seen, was so all-encompassing that there seemed to be room for little else. Whoever the vixen was, the artist had taken great care in their depiction of her, for while some of my fellow officers had owned watches quite a bit finer than Wilde's, none of theirs had been painted nearly so well as his. Indeed, though the image was somewhat chipped and cracked from the damage to the lid, it was quite obviously the work of a master.

Wilde gently closed his watch as far as he could, then returned it to his pocket. "It is kind of you to say so, Dr. Hopps," he said, with a small smile, "But I shall heal up quick enough."

Weaselton ignored Wilde's little jest, and seemed at last to relax fully. "Over there," he said, nodding to a display case filled with nothing but watches.

Even as my companion and I moved to the case he had indicated, Weaselton did not take his eyes off of us, and I could feel his stare on the back of my neck as we looked at the weasel's inventory together. There were some fine watches indeed in the display case, but one in particular caught me eye, and I pointed it out to Wilde. "This one, I think," I said, pointing.

The watch that I had selected was, like Wilde's damaged watch, a silver hunter-case design, but whereas his had floral patterns, the watch lid was engraved with an image of the planets and their orbits around the sun, circling around which were the words "E pur si muove."

"The engraving is executed well enough," my companion observed, "Though it is a curious choice of subject matter. A reminder, Doctor, of the worthless knowledge you insist upon filling my head with?"

I shook my head, smiling. I recalled that, shortly after we had first moved in together, I had remarked upon an article in the newspaper about work done by astronomers to find moons around other planets. Wilde had professed total ignorance of the way in which the planets orbit the sun, and I did not know if it was his little joke or if he really did bother to learn only that which would be an aid in his work. In any case, it was not my intent to remind him of the incident, and I told him as much. "No reminder," I said, "Only that this watch is closest in style to yours and likely the least expensive."

Indeed, the watches which the proprietor had put out were mostly of gold; there was not so much as a single watch such as mine, a simple thing all of steel in the open-faced style without a lid. "Very well then," he said, and called Weaselton over to begin negotiating on the price.

As the two predators made their agreement, I found myself wondering at Wilde's ulterior motive. Certainly, it did not strike me as likely that he would go to visit Weaselton in particular if all he needed was a watch, for there had to be dozens of other shops that would have served just as well, and he had told me that Weaselton dealt in stolen goods. I was still puzzling the pieces in my mind when they struck an agreement, and Weaselton gave the watch over to Wilde after the fox paid him. After Wilde had securely attached the watch to his chain and placed it in his pocket, he leaned casually over the counter rather than turning to leave. "There is one more thing," he said, and Weaselton tensed.

"You would not have heard word of any safe cracker capable of defeating a Goredian, would you?"

"I told you I have no dealings with criminals," Weaselton said tightly, and I noticed with some alarm that he had slowly maneuvered both paws beneath the counter, "Keep asking questions and you shall answer to one of my friends. I have those on the force and one rather big friend who does not much care for you."

Wilde smiled brightly. "All I ask is that you keep your ears open," he said, "Thank you for the watch, Duke."

With that, he gave a nod to the weasel and serenely exited while I quickly followed after. Once we were outside, I turned to my companion and spoke. "I must confess, I am unsure what our little errand has accomplished, besides getting you a new watch."

"A particularly fine one at that," he said, "But we did not visit Weaselton because I wished to learn anything in particular."

"He is obviously a criminal," I protested, "Surely he must know something of value, or hear from those who do."

"It is not that I wish him to keep his ears open," Wilde said, "Rather, it is his mouth that I expect him to. He shall be quite eager, I expect, to pass along that which I have told him, and young Molly will be keen on his heels."

I frowned, trying to follow Wilde's thread of logic. He had implied to Weaselton that he was looking for someone capable of defeating a lock made by Goredian's company, which to the best of my knowledge was true enough. However, Wilde had now just told me that he expected Weaselton to pass along that he was looking for a safe cracker, and learn from the little urchin matchstick kit who he told. "A trap, then," I said slowly, as I puzzled it out, "You already know the means by which the lock was defeated."

Wilde nodded approvingly. "I would not go so far as to say that," he said modestly, "Only that I have narrowed it down to three possibilities, and Weaselton may be of some use in determining if one of them is correct. If my theory is wrong, at the very least I have done my part to irritate him to-day, and that on its own is a victory, would you not say?"

I laughed. I found myself having no sympathy for the weasel, who had dismissed my abilities simply because of my species and was so rude to my companion. I did not know what history the two mammals shared, and perhaps Wilde's was as unsavory as Weaselton's had seemed. Still, I found myself inclined to give Wilde the benefit of the doubt, as he had, repeatedly, proven himself to be a predator like no other. "You shall have to tell me why he dislikes you so," I said, "Though he certainly did little enough to ingratiate himself to me."

"Some other time, I am afraid. We have one more stop to make before finding Trunkaby at the police station," Wilde said, his tone completely business-like as we walked out of the narrow gloom of Mustelid Street and back onto the far wider and busier arterial road that it intersected.

Wilde hailed a cab, and we were off.

Author's Notes: From about the 1840s and onward, electroplating base metals with silver was a popular way of making silverware, since the result is far less expensive than pure (or even sterling) silver; electroplated coatings are very thin and not much silver is used. However, that also means that heavy use or improper care can easily wear away the thin layer of silver and expose the base metal underneath, as was the case with the silverware Weaselton aggressively tried to push on Dr. Hopps. Going from a bootleg DVD seller to a pawnshop owner is at least something of a step up in respectability, but Weaselton is clearly not on the level as he claims. Muirbank Prison is a takeoff of Millbank Prison; the real Millbank Prison was built on a marsh, and "muir" is the Scots word for "moorlands" and is pronounced somewhat similar to "meow" with an "r" at the end. Millbank Prison was used as a holding site for prisoners prior to transporting them to penal colonies (notably Australia), but when transportation stopped being used as a punishment in 1868, it became a regular prison until it closed in 1890. It did have a very well earned reputation, however, as one of the worst places that a prisoner could end up, as its location, design, and the treatment of the prisoners all conspired to make it a brutal punishment, where disease, malnutrition, and mistreatment were rampant. Victorian justice may seem pretty horrible to our modern sensibilities, where solitary confinement and hard labor were common punishments for crimes that today would result in far less severe consequences.

Wilde's pocket watch being a hunter-case design is a bit of irony, since the style was named due to being favored by fox-hunting nobles in England; it's the general term for a pocket watch that has a lid to protect the glass from damage. Wristwatches did not become common until the 20th century after WWI, when it became widely recognized that they were much more convenient in warfare and their practicality overcame their previous stigma as being feminine. Gouache is a type of painting very similar to watercolor, although it is opaque rather than transparent. Pocket watches became widely affordable in the 19th century, and particularly among the well-to-do were personalized with miniature paintings or photographs. The question Dr. Hopps poses as to who would be important enough to Wilde for him to carry a picture of her around is a good one; his mother is certainly a reasonable guess, but not necessarily the right one.

The Italian (Itailian?) phrase "E pur si muove" means "And yet it moves," and is attributed to Galileo; he supposedly said it after he was forced to recant his belief that the Earth orbited the sun. The intended meaning is that facts are true whether or not you believe them, which seems appropriate for a detective. Wilde's claim of ignorance as to how the solar system works is a reference to the very first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, where Sherlock does the same, claiming that he curates his memories to only consist of things useful to his detective work. In this story, I'd be more inclined to believe that Wilde's joking; considering the kind of prejudice Dr. Hopps has shown, she was likely being somewhat condescending when describing the article she references. It is true, however, that the 19th century saw the discovery of many moons; Deimos and Phobos were both discovered in 1877, just a few years before this story is set, and an article on how astronomers do their work is the sort of puff piece that you might have encountered on a slow news day, particularly considering the Victorian fascination with progress.