The Case of the Black Arrow (A Great Mouse Detective Fanfic) (COMPLETED)

Chapter 4

For the second time in less than a week, I was gazing up at a run down building. The neighborhood was slightly better than the location of the shoe maker's shop, at least. Basil was looking at the abandoned newspaper printery (located inside an abandoned human newspaper printery) with a fire in his eyes that gave me pause. While Basil was normally voracious in his pursuit of justice, and I no less enthusiastic in accompanying him, standing in front of another seedy building without a clearly laid-out plan had me doubting (not for the first time) his mental stability.

"You know, you never told me what we're going to do if we find this fellow," I grumbled. "We don't have backup yet to help us". Something told me Basil himself didn't even really know. Either that or he did have a plan and the notion of something going awry hadn't occurred to him. Both scenarios left me with a sense of impending doom.

"Details, details," Basil replied nonchalantly, more or less confirming the former scenario, which did exactly nothing to alleviate my reluctance. "Come, come, Doctor. If our vigilante has taken up residence inside, we should have a look before he becomes wise to our presence and flees".

Without ado, we entered the abandoned printery. The inside was in even greater disrepair than the outside. Giant human linotype machines in varying states of decrepitude lined the place from front to back. The scent of ink, metal, dust, and old paper assaulted our noses as we crept between the machines. Because we did not know where The Black Arrow was residing in the building, or if he was currently present in the first place, we took extra care to investigate as quietly as possible, barely speaking to each other at all. We traversed the massive expanse of the printery in search of any sign of our quarry, but as the minutes ticked by into hours, neither hide nor hair of The Black Arrow was apparent. Basil kept his eyes to the dusty floor looking for footprints or other clues, his eyebrows knitting further and further together in his every growing frustration. It was a sentiment that I fully empathized with at the time.

We rounded the corner of a linotype machine near the back wall. Basil still had his eyes on the floor in front of him. I, on the other hand, had my attention focused on the area around us. It was quite dim inside the printery with only tiny streams of light filtering through the dingy windows, and I had to squint my eyes to see. But along the far wall, coming out of a well shadowed crack in the baseboard that led outside, I could see them clearly: footprints in the dust. Despite my earlier apprehension, a surge of excitement coursed through me, and I tugged on Basil's coat sleeve to alert him of my findings. Furor etched its way across his face, and he dashed toward the footprints with me trailing not too far behind him. He kneeled on the floor, pulling out his magnifying glass to get a better look.

"These are definitely from our vigilante," he whispered while panning the magnifying glass over the footprints. It was difficult to distinguish some of them, as there were several sets going in and out from the crack in the wall. "The newest ones are only a few days old".

The excitement I had felt mere moments prior was suddenly dissipated, "That means he hasn't been here".

"Or he he hasn't left since last returning," countered Basil. "Or there is another entrance we have yet to find".

As always, Basil thought of possibilities I hadn't, so I simply nodded in agreement as he took a few more moments to examine the footprints. Once he was finished, we began to follow the trail. It led past and around the machine we were standing by toward the adjacent wall and disappeared around the corner. The footprints continued toward the baseboard along the wall.

And then abruptly stopped.

"What the devil?" I cursed. Basil remained silent, leaning in close to the baseboard with his magnifying glass to get a closer inspection.