My second attempt at making sense of the material Wilde had claimed would allow him to solve the case went no better than the first. As the carriage made its way to Barker Street, I flipped through the books frenetically, looking for anything that would provide a clue—an underlined passage, a bookmark, anything that would tell me what was important—and came up empty pawed. The carriage came to a stop, but I was not ready to give up so easily, or at all; my conscience would not let me rest until I found my flatmate. Still, I could scarcely continue my work from the back of the cab, and I reluctantly placed everything back into the box and made my way up the stairs to our flat.
My stomach twisted into a knot again to see my belongings, and those of Wilde, strewn about. The door was still on the floor; our landlady certainly did not have the strength to move it, and I doubted that I would be able to set it right on my own either. Without a front door, the flat had a noticeable chill, the cool October air having invaded the sitting room. I placed the box on the table and went to stoke the fire to give myself a little warmth when I noticed something peculiar.
The clutch that Wilde had given me as part of my disguise only that morning was on the floor near the hearth, and next to it was the handkerchief, the silver calling card case, and the little beaded purse that had been inside of it. Also scattered about, however, were the coins that had been inside of the purse, which struck me as queer indeed. All told, the coins inside the purse had added up to nearly a dozen guineas, which I could not imagine a thief to purposefully leave behind. I frowned, trying to divine what it meant, and wished dearly that Wilde had been there, wondering what he would have done in my place. Doubtlessly, he would say something particularly clever, having deduced the identity of the thief to the most minute detail from something I had not even noticed, but I did not have his talent for spotting imperceptible patterns. I sighed, looking down at the coins, when a memory rose, entirely unbidden, of what the fox had said when first he demonstrated his methods to me. In the process of explaining how he had deduced that I was a farmer turned soldier, recently returned from the middle east, he had explained that he relied on the synthesis of many facts, not on any singular clue.
I had been particularly impressed at the time, but it occurred to me that it was not so different from what a doctor did in the course of diagnosing a patient. It was true that as a former sawbones it had most often been plainly obvious what infirmity my patients in the field suffered from; it did not take a particularly skilled doctor to diagnose a gunshot wound. However, to be able to triage patients and to be capable of performing life-saving surgery at a moment's notice with next to nothing in the way of preparation did demand what I supposed was a skill not too dissimilar from Wilde's.
I looked down at the coins again, and suddenly realized what they meant. The flat had been ransacked by a mammal looking for something, something relatively small since they had bothered to turn out the beaded purse as well as the clutch. That the coins had been left behind told me that they had been in a great hurry, for I could not imagine any thief to otherwise leave behind such an unexpected bonus. Moreover, the mammal who had broken down the door must have been very large indeed; I could hardly budge the door from the floor, but it looked as though only one or two blows had been necessary to knock it from its hinges. The moose who had abducted Wilde seemed an obvious culprit; perhaps he had simply lurked about, waiting for Wilde's return, after his search failed. The moose certainly would have had motive to kidnap Wilde if he had not found what he had been looking for, and he was undoubtedly big enough to defeat the door.
My heart all but burst from my chest in excitement as I realized something further. Could the moose have been the "big" friend that Weaselton had alluded to? The weasel had all but threatened Wilde, and not even two hours later the fox had been abducted. It did not seem likely to me that the events were unrelated, and I practically stumbled from the flat in my haste, barely able to maintain my balance even with the aid of my cane. When I reached the doorway, however, I paused. If my theory was correct, Wilde had been kidnapped because his abductor had been unable to find in the flat that which he had been searching for. I did not want to imagine the lengths that his abductor would go to in order to obtain what he wanted, and I forced from my mind the thoughts of what Wilde might be suffering as I delayed. It was an undeniable fact, however, that the fox had a peculiar sense of organization; he seemed loathe to order his belongings anything like what a normal mammal would consider sensible. On the other side of the hearth I saw that the coal-scuttle had been knocked over, and the resulting mess on the floor included a number of cigars amid the coals. If Wilde had endeavored to hide something within the flat, it did not seem likely that a desultory search would uncover it, and I was forced to consider the possibility that the villain responsible would return, particularly if he could force Wilde to tell him what he wanted.
Perhaps the paperboard box that I had set on the table contained what was sought after; every single book in our flat had been knocked to the floor and some showed ample evidence of rough handling with cracked spines and torn pages. Although the box's contents meant nothing to me, I could not risk leaving them behind where they could be stolen.
I had ever respected the sanctity of Wilde's bed-room, as it would have been quite inappropriate for me to disturb the fox in what he doubtlessly considered his den, but I told myself that I had good reason for doing so as I entered. I recalled that, on some of the occasions upon which I had seen him coming or going, he carried a fine satchel of fish leather with him, and I thought that it would be perfectly suited for my current needs if I could find it.
My first impression of Wilde's room came from a scent that made my nose twitch as I entered. Overpowering the odor of stale tobacco smoke was something musky and vaguely unpleasant with a peculiar floral undertone that I could only describe as smelling like a fox, which I suppose was to be entirely expected. When I had first viewed the set of rooms with Wilde, the only furniture in each bed-room had been a small bed with a nightstand that matched and a dresser that did not. Both rooms had been set up in an identical fashion, and I had idly observed to myself at the time that while the beds were quite perfectly sized for a bunny, they were entirely too small for a fox. Wilde had evidently resolved the issue of the furniture by the simple expedient of removing all of it and replacing it with his own, although with an eccentric style that should not have surprised me.
He did not have a bed at all; there was a pile of blankets and pillows in one corner of the room that must have served his needs. I could not tell how they had originally been arranged, since the pillows had all been cut open and covered the floor with a layer of goose down, but it seemed to me as though he had not devoted much space of the room to rest. A mismatched set of bookcases, one of which had been toppled, filled most of the floor space, and while the books he had kept in the sitting room were eclectic, the contents of the references in his room were somehow even more so. While the intruder had clearly gone through the material, there did not seem to be anything of any value whatsoever. Wilde had newspapers, both domestic and international, going back more than a decade, scientific papers across a range of studies from calculus to geology, books on art history, betting slips from races that had occurred years ago, and other items that looked more worthless yet. Wilde did not seem to own a dresser, and I could not guess why he had rid his room of the one that it had come with else to free up more space, but all of his clothing was apparently held in a trio of scratched and scuffed portmanteaus. Their contents, a bizarre assortment of garments from ones that looked fit for the meanest beggar to Wilde's typical tweed to ones that a lord could wear with pride, and even a few dresses besides, were spilled across the floor. In contrast to the battered bookcases and portmanteaus was a finely made desk of the Baroque style with a matching chair, both of which looked perfectly sized for the fox.
Wilde's desk was a rolltop model with an ostentatious amount of delicately carved whirls and gilded inlays, but the lock of the cover had been smashed with such force that there was a great dent in the wood of the writing surface. All the clever little compartments and drawers had been turned out, revealing everything from a cracked conch shell to an iridescent feather in addition to the expected letters and papers, as well as a thick black-bound volume with no title. I recalled that I had seen Wilde poring over the book immediately before we had departed on my errand to Goredian's shop, and I could not help but stop my search for the satchel to examine the book.
The reason for the book's lack of a title and somewhat shabby condition was obvious as soon as I opened it. The book was apparently some sort of personal journal of the fox; the entry on the first page had been dated, in his unmistakable script, Friday, 13 September, 1867. Wilde had never directly told me his age, but I would guess that he had been around eighteen when he made the entry. Although the ink had faded to a rusty brown over the intervening years, and the pages of the book were somewhat yellowed, the words were perfectly legible. Beneath the date were the words, "Necklace, silver pendant on silver chain." There was also a small sketch in pencil, the lines smeared almost too much to make out what appeared to be a rough floor plan of a lecture hall, and beneath that was a list of thirty-six names, all but one of which had been crossed out. Each name had a number next to it that corresponded to one entered on his sketch, and some of the names had cryptic notes in some kind of shorthand entered next to them. As I flipped through the rest of the pages in the book I surmised that it was Wilde's working book of every case he had ever solved. Some of the pages had clippings from newspapers or books pasted in, some had strange little diagrams or tables, and a few had a little "M" in red ink in the upper right corner of the page, but I scarcely paid the other cases any mind as I turned to the very last page that Wilde had written on, realizing what the book could mean.
I actually had to turn back several pages, as Wilde had already devoted five pages to the current case, but there was no mistaking it. The page was neatly dated Tuesday, 11 October, 1881, and had the words "Two tonnes gold," under the date. Wilde had also pasted in two lists of names that had obviously come from a typewriter, one of them labeled "Night Security Guards, Lemming Brothers Bank, Zootopia Branch" and the other "Board of Directors, Lemming Brothers Bank." Every single name on the former list had been crossed out, and I guessed from the surnames that they had been the wolves who had so viciously injured Wilde. On the latter list, however, of the twelve names listed, only seven had been crossed out. Of the remaining five, the first name caught my attention immediately, for it was none other than Hubert Lemming, the bank president and the very same mammal who had reported the theft to the police. I could not help but recall that Chief Inspector Bogo had said that Lemming had sent the lock box to Goredian to determine how it was defeated. Had the little lemming had Wilde kidnapped to ensure that the key could not also make it the bull, or else simply because he thought the fox was getting too close to a solution that implicated him? From the damage to all of the books in our residence, it could have been a page that the would-be thief had been looking for; a page certainly could have been folded up and hidden somewhere among the many books and other papers.
I looked up from the book, suddenly no longer sure of my course of action. I thought that there was good cause to suspect either Lemming or Weaselton in the matter of Wilde's kidnapping, but I did not think that I could afford to waste time. I was by no means a professional detective, and it was Wilde who would pay the price if my guess was wrong. My hesitation did him no favors either, and I looked around the room, despairing at my options, wishing desperately that I could be in two places at once. My eye caught the strap of the satchel, mostly hidden under a pile of classified advertisements from 1874, and I pulled the object of my search free even as I continued to mull the problem over. The satchel had been emptied, likely in the same manner as the clutch, and I made my decision. I would first stop at Weaselton's shop, but I would review Wilde's notes and compare them against the contents of the package on the cab ride. I could always have the cab turn around if necessary, but Weaselton seemed the more likely of the pair of mammals that had caught my interest to slip away if I tarried too long. I grabbed the journal off Wilde's desk and placed it in the satchel, then moved as quickly as I could to the sitting room and added the paperboard box. After a moment's hesitation, I replaced everything that had been in the clutch and added it the satchel; I did not think that Wilde would object too strenuously if I spent his money in the course of finding him. The satchel had swallowed everything quite neatly, the dull brown fish leather not even straining at the contents. It was a bit over-sized for me, but light enough to manage. With that preparation made, I pulled my pistol from the front pocket of my jacket and eyed it carefully.
When I had come across Wilde in our flat disguised as a disreputable coyote, I had drawn my service revolver on him, but the simple truth of the matter was that it had been a bluff. While I had carried the Elkfield with me ever since arriving in Zootopia, I had always done so with the pistol in one pocket and the bullets in another, as I had never thought I would actually have occasion to use it. Besides, it had seemed to me dangerously irresponsible to carry it loaded, a thought that had only been further driven home by my realization as to what I could have done to Wilde by accident. After Wilde's abduction, however, I could not help but think that, if only I had kept my pistol loaded, I could have perhaps stopped Wilde's abductor even though I could not chase him down.
I grimly loaded five bullets into the cylinder and snapped it shut, putting the pistol into my jacket pocket. My father would likely have been disappointed by my intended course of action, as he had given me the bullets for self-defense, not so that I could go running into danger. Still, both he and my mother knew that it was not in my nature to sit idly by and allow wrongs to go un-righted, and if Weaselton was not above ordering a kidnapping there was no telling what he would do upon being confronted. As I made my way down the stairs to Barker Street to hail a cab, I made myself a vow: Heaven itself could not help Weaselton if he was responsible.
Author's Notes: Before I get on to my notes for this chapter, I want to thank you, the reader. This week saw this story hit the milestone of 100 followers, which is just incredible! I really can't express what it means to me, as an author, to have your support. I want to thank everyone who has read this story, and especially everyone who has left a comment. I really appreciate knowing what people think about my story, whether it's positive or negative, and I want to extend a special thanks to the people who have repeatedly commented: AeroQC, Anistuffs, Archangel12575 (kirkmcgill), Cimar of Turalis WildeHopps, Das ErisedDesire, DeadDireWolf, DrBry, DrummerMax64, ebolson, Erinnyes, Fox in the hen house, fragolette, GSirius, kaligos, L. , Matri, niraD, Omnitrix 12, QsiM0t0, raynos, stevegallacci, and TortillaOverlord.
For this chapter itself, I do have a few comments. Dr. Hopps's realization of the similarities between solving crimes and diagnosing patients is a little nod to Dr. Joseph Bell, the real life inspiration for Sherlock Holmes in the original works by Arthur Conan Doyle. Dr. Bell, like Sherlock, had an incredible talent for reading people, which he used to emphasis the importance of careful observation in the formation of a diagnosis. As in chapter 1, Dr. Hopps refers to herself as a sawbones, which has historically been used as a slang term for a surgeon, a field of medicine that many other doctors looked down upon. However, as a 19th century military doctor, she would have earned a medical doctorate prior to training as a surgeon, and would have passed an exhaustive exam covering a wide range of medical specialties, so she's being somewhat modest.
A coal scuttle is basically a small bucket for holding coal, useful for fireplaces. It's a weird place to keep cigars, but Sherlock Holmes is described as doing so in the Musgrave Ritual. Although Sherlock is usually imagined with the iconic pipe, in the original stories he does smoke tobacco in pipes, cigars, and cigarettes.
1881 is a bit too early for synthetic fabrics; although early synthetics were developed in the late 19th century, it wasn't until 1905 that the first commercial products made out of synthetic fabric (rayon, under the trade name Viscose) were sold. Since everything therefore needs to be made out of a natural material, fish leather seemed appropriate for a good quality bag. It is a real material, and since the residents of Zootopia would likely consider cow leather as horrifying as we would consider human leather, there aren't many other options for reasonably priced animal skin materials.
In real life, foxes, and particularly male foxes, don't smell very good. I've had the chance once to get close to a fox, and while he was a beautiful animal his enclosure smelled awful (the comparison to a skunk's smell mixed with violets is pretty apt), and that was with regular cleaning. Granted, Wilde wouldn't be marking his room with urine, but even with a regular grooming schedule to keep his own odor down it'd be difficult to keep his room from picking up the scent simply from him touching stuff, as foxes have scent glands in their paws.
From Dr. Hopps's estimate of Wilde's age in 1867, Wilde is 32 in 1881, having been born in 1849. This actually makes him older than Sherlock Holmes; since the Last Bow, set in 1914, describes him as being 60, he must have been born in 1854. September 13, 1867 was indeed a Friday; I am keeping careful track of the chronology. Incidentally, as stated in chapter 3, and as shown in this chapter, the action of this story started on the night of October 11, 1881, which was a Tuesday. As of this chapter, the date is Wednesday, October 12.
Wilde's journal of cases was in fact mentioned in chapter 6, although Dr. Hopps obviously did not know what it was at that time, and Wilde requested the two lists of names back in chapter 4.
Dr. Hopps's service revolver, first mentioned in chapter 2, is an Elkfield, a pun on the Enfield Mk I, a six-chamber revolver which she must have gotten shortly before her discharge. 1881 is too long ago for an officer to have been issued a Webley, although that pistol did rapidly supersede the Enfield after it was introduced, as the Enfield had some design flaws. Specifically, they were notoriously difficult to reload and somewhat prone to jamming, especially as they aged and the parts wore. As the Enfield Mk I did not have any mechanism to prevent the firing pin from engaging if the gun was struck, only loading five rounds to keep the chamber under the hammer empty is a good safety precaution, particularly if you're going to carry it in a pocket.
As the various references to previous chapters in this set of notes show, all of the various threads are coming together now and the end isn't too far off. Thanks again for reading this far!