Although the intruder to our flat had taken no great pains to avoid damaging our property—for many items, such as Wilde's books and chemical apparatuses, it appeared quite the opposite—the awful orange dress that my flatmate had prepared for me as a disguise was entirely intact. I changed into it as quickly as possible, as I was pinning my hopes on Goredian promptly taking action to analyse the lock box and determine the method employed by the thieves to open it. Wilde's notes had not, so far as I could ascertain, spoken at all of how molten lead might have taken effect; perhaps it had been so incredibly obvious to the fox that he simply hadn't thought it necessary to write down. Or perhaps, I mused as I did up what seemed like an endless array of fussy little buttons, he had been able to come to no conclusion on his own. He had, after all, cautioned me of the perils of rushing to judgment without all the necessary facts, and it was my great desire that Goredian would be able to provide more of those for me.
In relatively short order I was back at the street level, once again in the constrictive day dress with its ridiculous feathered hat. I had switched my cane for the umbrella, as before, but retained Wilde's fish leather satchel and all of its contents; there was still material that I had not given more than a cursory look, and I meant not to waste the opportunity the ride to the Rain-Forest District would provide. As I walked to where the horse pulling the hansom and Molly awaited, I was rewarded with a look of surprise from the both of them. Molly, of course, could not vocalize any sort of critique of my dress, but I believed from her wide-eyed look that the other urchins would learn of it from her paw signals as soon as they were reunited. The horse, for his part, recovered quickly and tipped his cap respectfully. "Ready to go then, ma'am?" he asked.
I nodded, and gratefully took the hoof he offered to boost me up into the cab. "The Goredian Lock and Safe Company," I reminded him, "As fast as you can."
Once Molly had scampered up into the hansom herself and taken the seat opposite me, the horse shut the door and gave us fair warning. "Hold on," he said, "The devil himself couldn't get you there faster."
I would be hard-pressed to disagree with his boast, as it seemed he was pulling the cab even faster than he had on the previous occasions. I had pulled out the paperboard box and was going through the remaining contents with great difficulty. The words of the annual shareholder's meeting minutes from Lemming Brothers Bank danced and shook with the ride, but I did my best to scan the pages for any sort of meaning that would give me a clue as to who might be responsible for the theft of the gold. Wilde had thought these important enough to get from whatever source he employed, and I was sure that there had to be something I could divine from the minutes. Wilde had obtained the minutes from the past ten years, and I started with the oldest minutes, from 1871. Although I could not call the minutes engaging, they were at least far more readable than the dense technical articles in the copy of the Annals of the New Yak Academy of Sciences. What quickly became clear to me was that, ten years ago, Hubert Lemming had not been the president of the Zootopia branch of the bank. He had served as a junior vice president, but even the detached style of the minutes made it clear that he had been a rising star in the bank, attaining his current position in 1876. The ends to which he directed the bank's investments seemed to come up winners, and large ones at that; the lemming had brokered a deal which saw the bank taking a two hundred and thirty per cent return on their investment. The other branches of the bank were all run by mammals I guessed to be Hubert Lemming's family members from their shared surname, but they did not seem to have anything like Hubert Lemming's degree of financial shrewdness. Victor Lemming, as head of the Furis branch, for example, had presided over yearly losses from 1875 until 1879. Although the minutes were written blandly enough, I supposed that he had been given the choice of resigning or being fired, considering that it had been his poor decision to over-leverage the bank's shares in a failing mine that caused the worst of the losses.
Following Victor's replacement by Adam Lemming, who I assumed to be yet another of the Lemming brothers, the highest-ranking members of the Furis branch had been split among the others. Hubert Lemming's current senior vice president and a number of his junior executives had all come from the Furis branch, and he had in turn lost a number of the mammals who had been his executives to repopulate that branch. I eagerly flipped through the more recent minutes, sure that Victor Lemming seemed like the perfect candidate to have masterminded the theft. It did not seem unreasonable to assume that he would have cause to nurse a grudge against his far more successful family member; considering the run on the bank and the ensuing riot I had seen with my own eyes, it would have been a masterful bit of revenge. When I reached the minutes for 1880, however, I slumped down in my seat, bitterly disappointed. The board of directors had spoken a few words in remembrance of Victor Lemming, who had perished of cholera. A mammal who had been dead nearly a year could not, after all, mastermind anything, and I looked back into the box, desperate for anything else I might have overlooked. There were a few staged photographs of the massive Lemming family, the associated names written on the back. I could not help but note that, in every photograph in which Hubert Lemming appeared, his wolf servant Mr. Garou did as well, even if it was only as a disembodied paw holding his boss, the rest of the massive wolf out of the frame. By the dates, the photographs went back at least to 1866; clearly the arrangement between the lemming and the wolf was a long-standing one indeed.
As I thought on the relationship between the odd pair, wondering if the wolf would have either the means or motive to betray his employer, I noticed the air in the hansom suddenly becoming much warmer and more humid, the windows rapidly fogging up. That could only mean that we had arrived in the Rain-Forest District, and I looked up at the urchin across from me, wondering how she would tolerate the heat. She, at least, had seemed to enjoy the carriage ride; she had spent most of it with her nose pressed up against one of the windows, watching the scenery blur past. Indeed, when the horse had taken a corner at such speed that the wheel on one side of the hansom left the ground, she had clapped with delight and made a peculiar chuffing wheeze that must have been as close to a laugh as her scarred throat could produce.
"Can you stand the air?" I asked, even as I pawed miserably at my own collar, which was once more becoming stifling.
Molly had been wiping at one of the windows with a grimy handkerchief in a futile attempt to keep her view clear, but at my words she turned to me and nodded, seeming unperturbed. Perhaps it was a welcome respite for her compared to where I assumed she spent most of her time. I did not know if she sold matches at other intersections or worked other jobs, but she seemed perfectly willing to accompany me. I thought on her motives for a bit before I realized, from the increasing smoothness of the ride, that the carriage was slowing down, and wondered if the horse's strength had at last flagged.
When the carriage came to a complete stop, I could not see anything outside the hansom, as the windows were all still fogged from the humidity of the Rain-Forest District. I opened the window in the door and leaned out, peering forwards. The reason for the halt was immediately obvious; the entire wide thoroughfare that wound its way down the canyon in which the Rain-Forest District had been built was completely impassable due to a throng of mammals. It seemed too well-ordered to be a riot of the sort I had seen begin at the bank, but I could not see where their attention was directed. "Can you not get around?" I called forward to the horse.
He had let go of the hansom and stood by its door, shaking his head. "Not a chance," he said, "There are side streets, to be sure, but not ones I could take this hansom down."
I looked at the mass of mammals despairingly. I had not come so far to be defeated so easily. "How much further to Goredian's?" I asked.
I recalled that it had been about three-quarters of the way down the canyon, but there was quite a bit of difference between traveling in a cab and traveling by foot. "Another mile, mile-and-a-half at most," he said.
The little ferret across from me tilted her head briefly in thought, and then nodded her agreement with the horse. I impatiently pulled a pawful of coins from the purse and thrust them into the horse's hooves without bothering to count them, though from the look he gave I suspected that I had rather overpaid, even considering the bonus promised. "We shall walk the rest, then. Come along, Molly."
The ferret jumped from the hansom and landed lightly on her feet, waiting with apparent impatience as I made my way out far more gingerly. I pushed through the throngs of mammals with far greater difficulty than did my young companion; Molly quickly and nimbly darted her way through the legs of mammals far larger than she, vanishing from view far faster than I would have thought possible. It was the sort of agility I had once possessed, but in my present state it was a struggle to force my way through, though I could at least see what all the fuss was about. Someone, evidently with a flair for the dramatic, had positioned a large, flat cart so that the Ratenbach Falls, on the far side of the canyon, framed it spectacularly. The cart was piled up with a great pyramid of glass bottles, at least twelve feet high, which ranged in size from being nearly so large as I was at the base to ones at the top so minuscule that I doubt the contents would have filled my mother's thimble. All of them, though, were filled with something a sickly red color and had a label plastered across the front advertising them as "Prof. R.K. Zalver's Universal Elixir" in great bold letters, under which was the dubious promise "A Cure for All Ills."
Atop the cart, a hedgehog was holding forth in a great booming voice over the murmuring of the crowd he had evidently attracted. The hedgehog, who I assumed to be the so-called Professor Zalver, was dressed richly, an embroidered waistcoat and golden watch chain struggling to reach across his enormous stomach. A little pair of pince-nez were perched atop his snout, I supposed to give him an air of learning. He had evidently provided a bit of his elixir to another mammal upon his impromptu stage, a little bison calf who could have been no older than Molly, who supported himself with a crude wooden crutch. "You won't need that now, my lad!" the professor called out, and knocked the crutch away with a little walking stick of his own.
The crowd gave a great gasp, but the calf did not fall. "I can walk!" he cried, as he did exactly that, moving from one side of the cart to the other, "I can walk!"
A great shaggy bison that could only be the calf's mother rushed from the audience and enveloped him in a great hug, pulling him from the cart as though he weighed nothing. "Oh, bless you, Professor Zalver," she sobbed, though I could not help but noticing that her eyes were completely dry, "Bless you."
The professor gave a modest little bow, then pulled forth one of the bottles that was about six or eight inches tall. "Four and six for a bottle of this size," the professor called out to the eager crowd, some of which was pushing its way forward, "Continuous use for a month will make my elixir's healing effects entirely permanent!"
Even had I not been a doctor, I knew well enough to be wary of hawkers of patent medicines; when I had been a kit my uncle Charles had caught his arm in a thresher, which had nearly ripped it from his body. Though Dr. Coney the elder had amputated the arm with what I would later recognize as quite a bit of skill, the wound had pained my uncle greatly, and he had taken to using a medicine from a traveling merchant. Even the loss of his arm had not diminished him so much as whatever had been in that little bottle; by the time he could be convinced to stop he was a husk of his former self, his nerves so damaged he could not even care for himself.
The hedgehog and his accomplices were the lowest sort of mammal, to prey on the fears and desires for health of those too ignorant to recognize them as frauds. Indeed, I was easily the best-dressed mammal in the entire crowd except for Zalver himself; most of the rest were probably barely able to afford a tenement, and their clothes were frayed and well-patched. Had I the time to stop, I would have denounced Zalver as a fraud, but I hoped that, once the riot at the bank had passed, there would be police enough to put a stop to his chicanery. I continued to force my way through the crowd, ignoring the hedgehog's assistants who were milling around with crates of the elixir, until a jackal not nearly so well-dressed as his master reached out and grabbed my right paw with his, pulling me into a firm shake. "What a shame, milady, a shame indeed, to see one such as yourself so injured."
I did not deign to respond, and kept walking, managing my balance with the umbrella in my left paw, and the jackal continued his pitch, his grasp of my paw tightening a measure. "They say that money cannot buy everything, a sorry state of affairs I am sure you know, but it can buy health, milady, it can indeed," he said rapidly.
He brandished the bottle in his left paw at me. "Only two shillings for you, milady, an absolute bargain. Would you not pay a mere two shillings to walk without pain again?" the jackal asked, not loosening his grip upon my paw a whit, even as he continued walking with me towards the edge of the crowd.
"If your nostrum is worth tuppence, it's only for the glass in the bottle," I said shortly, "Let me be on my way."
The jackal's nostrils flared, and his grip upon my paw tightened further, to the point that I could feel the delicate little bones begin grinding together. "I think you could afford far more than tuppence, milady," he said, giving the honorific a mocking little tone, "More than two shillings in that bag, I expect."
His eyes darted over my shoulder and he gave a nod, and I realized what he had done. As he maintained his grip upon my paw and I had continued walking, he had maneuvered me behind the legs of an elephant, where we would pass quite unnoticed by the rest of the crowd. I realized that he meant to rob me, but I could not say that I feared him though he towered nearly a foot-and-a-half over me. I had ever been the smallest officer in the army, and while I could make no claims as to being the greatest fighter to ever serve, I was not entirely inexperienced at dealing with mammals larger than me. I saw something approaching my shoulder where the strap of the satchel rested in my peripheral vision, and raised the umbrella in my free paw with as much force as I could muster.
My long illness had robbed me of much of my strength, but my aim was as good as ever, and I could hear a cry of pain even as I felt the shock of my umbrella striking home at the underside of the jaw of the jackal's accomplice, another jackal so alike as to look like his twin. Before I could turn my attention to the jackal who had set up the attempt at robbery, he suddenly gave up his vice-like grip upon my paw even as he dropped the bottle of patent medicine he had held in the other. A small brown-furred paw shot out from behind the jackal and caught it, and I saw that it was Molly; with her other paw she had pulled viciously on the tail of the jackal. While both assailants were recovering, the little ferret grabbed me by the paw and pulled, navigating us around the mammals at the periphery of the crowd until we were clear. I doubted that the jackals would follow, not when there were still such easy pickings in the crowd; most likely they had simply gotten greedy at the thought of what riches a well-to-do lady might carry with her.
I motioned to Molly to give me a moment to recover my breath, as she had pulled me along at so great a pace that I could scarcely keep my balance, and my bad leg trembled from the exertion. "Thank you, Molly," I said, and I was in fact extraordinarily grateful at the mammal I had chosen to accompany me on my errand.
I did not know what Wilde had done, to earn such fierce loyalty from the ferret that she would be so devoted to me, but she was earning every farthing of her payment. While I recovered, the ferret was examining the bottle of Zalver's elixir she had caught. I did not know if she could read, but surely she had seen at least some of the demonstration the hedgehog had put on. Apparently coming to some decision, she uncorked it and went to drink from it, but I snatched it from her paw. "You can't drink this," I said, quite a bit more sharply than I intended, and she moved back a step at my tone.
I sighed. I did not know the full extent of the injury to her neck, having only seen the top of the twisted scar, but I could not fault her for wishing to be cured. Certainly, if there was some miracle treatment that could heal my leg I would have taken it myself, and I realized that the ferret and I were not too different. I took no pleasure in crushing a kit's dream, but it had to be done. I eased myself downwards, leaning heavily upon my umbrella to do so, until I could look Molly in the eye. "Molly," I said gently, "This could no more heal your throat than it could my leg."
She looked down at the ground, though I had already seen the tears welling in her eyes. It could not have been an easy life, the one she had led, and I suspected that even as her head had known that the elixir was worthless her heart had hoped desperately that it could heal her injury. I did not think an urchin held onto wonder particularly long, and I could feel a sympathetic sorrow at her pain, having killed what must have been nearly the last of it. Her ears back in abject misery, Molly offered me the bottle's cork, which I used to re-stopper the bottle. I was not one to litter, so I slid the bottle of worthless medicine into the satchel where I could properly dispose of it later.
I hesitated a moment. Had Molly been one of my younger sisters, or one of my young nieces, I knew what I would have done, but I did not know how she would react. Comfort and affection had always been willingly given between bunnies, and I did not know if it was the same for ferrets. Still, I could not stand to see her so, and I pulled her into my embrace, completely heedless of the grime that covered her. She squeezed me back tightly and we held it a moment before she let go, wiping at her eyes with one paw. "Come along," I said at last, "Come along."
We walked the rest of the way to Goredian's shop in silence as quickly as I could manage, Molly grasping my right paw and holding it the entire way.
Author's Notes: Before I get to my other notes for this chapter, Alons-y inc had a great question that made me realize there was something I haven't previously covered in my notes that's worth talking about. The question was about the repeated use of "guineas" throughout this story, rather than "sovereigns." Alons-y inc is quite correct that, by 1881, guinea coins were no longer being minted. The sovereign, worth one pound, entirely replaced it. However, this brings us into the interesting (to me, anyway) territory of pre-decimal British currency. Prior to February 15, 1971, British currency was not set up to have units evenly divisible by 10; one pound was made up of 240 pence with 12 pence in a shilling and 20 shillings in a pound. Incidentally, this is what J.K. Rowling was parodying with the frankly bizarre and unintuitive divisions (1 Galleon = 17 Sickles = 493 Knuts) of wizard money in Harry Potter.
The guinea was a golden coin, originally made to be worth 20 shillings. Due to fluctuations in the price of gold it reached the point that, when production was stopped in 1814, it had its value fixed at 21 shillings, but had previously been worth as much as 30 shillings. Having the major unit of your currency being worth 21 of the next smallest unit was pretty inconvenient, however, and in 1816 the pound was set as the standard, with the sovereign being minted to be worth 20 shillings. However, even when guineas stopped being made, some prices were still listed in guineas rather than in pounds, including land, certain luxury items, and livestock. This continues even to this day for a small number of items, although a guinea is now taken to mean the decimal equivalent (£1.05).
As such, it says something about the characters who report values in guineas. Mr. Goredian was essentially puffing himself up and trying to make his shop seem more high-class in chapter 7 by offering his prize in guineas rather than pounds. Dr. Hopps's use of guineas as offers to urchins and cabbies is indicative of growing up on a relatively successful farm, as there wouldn't be too many things that she would have interacted with that had a value over a pound, and most things that did would be reported in guineas. When Wilde offers Finn a guinea in chapter 8 after being told that their previously arranged price is too low, he's making a small joke by taking on an aristocratic air about the value of his own life.
Also note that, each time a value of a guinea is actually paid, it takes multiple coins rather than a single one; Wilde's little coin purse does not contain any guineas.
The other aspect to touch on is what all of the various prices for things are actually worth. I know that when I read anything set hundreds of years ago, I feel a lot like Admiral Kirk in 1986, wondering if $100 is a lot of money. To begin with, two tonnes of gold would have been worth about £299,670 in 1881. Currently, it'd be worth about £67.1 million (about $86.5 million, or €79.1 million). Dr. Hopps's military pension, mentioned in chapter 1, of 11 shillings and 6 pence a day in 1881 is equivalent to £53.23 today ($68.61, or €62.75). That makes it pretty understandable, I think, why she needs a roommate to live in a city. One guinea, Dr. Hopps's apparent favorite incentive to offer, would be worth somewhere around £97 today (about $120 or €110). Considering the relative difference in purchasing power between 1881 and 2017, that's a lot of money. Also considering that Wilde's purse had at least 12 guineas worth of coins in it, you may be given cause to wonder how truthful he was being in chapter 11 when he chose not to call a cab, claiming that he was saving his money to move out.
Hopefully that explanation wasn't too boring. I've said it before elsewhere, and I'll say it again here; I will always gladly answer any questions that people have. Please, feel free to ask whatever you like and I'll provide an answer. Thank you very much, Alons-y inc, for your great question and your kind words about the story!
Moving onto another topic, the 19th century was definitely the time of caveat emptor when it came to most consumer products, particularly medicines. As there were no regulations at the time as to what could be put into medicines, or even about accurately labeling the contents, there were plenty of cases where they were placebos at best and poison at worst. Typically, patent medicines would consist largely of alcohol with herbs or other ingredients added to give them a medicinal taste. It was also quite common for opiates to be added; since opium is a particularly strong painkiller, it was often the one used. Even worse, its strength as a cough suppressant and its narcotic properties meant that opium was even used in medicines meant for soothing babies or treating croup in infants. The use of narcotics and dangerous chemicals in patent medicines only began to decrease when increased public awareness and pressure for consumer protection gained strength towards the end of the century and into the early 20th century, especially as the result of high profile cases of patent medicines causing serious harm or death to people who took them.
Zalver's name comes from "Kwakzalvar," which is Dutch for someone who sells salves, and is the origin of a "quack" to mean a fraud peddling medical treatments. The patent medicine show in this chapter is a more or less textbook con, with the use of a plant in the form of the supposedly crippled calf and a shill in the form of his mother.
Threshers, which separate wheat grain from its stalk and husk, were invented in the early 19th century; although farms did not become fully mechanized until quite a bit later, even manually operated farm equipment could be extremely dangerous.