The Lady of May Tulip (The Lynchman's Owl Adventures)

by B. Y. Yan

  “We’ve got it all out of them, my lord,” the baron was told. “It is the Sickles Gang which has taken up looking for your men, and we have rounded up as many of their members as we could find. Behind them is undoubtedly the purse of the foreigner, so we will be more than happy to fix them with any punishment you care to name for their betrayal.”

  “I haven’t the time to deal with them just now,” the Lord of the Coal Coast told them. “Just see to it that they starve, and you won’t find me ungrateful.”

  When the policemen departed Gains was swiftly given over into the company of his partner Gamble. And as he has no real family to speak of, there was no need to make any further allowances to his safety. A promise of settling his debts was more than enough for the baron to earn his undying gratitude and services.

  “Well,” said he to his servant and their guest, watching the young driver being led away by his older comrade, “that’s that then, and I daresay we have come out of it in the lead. The score, my dear Yamcey and Maddy, is now two-to-one.”

  However, his joy would turn out to be short lived. For some successes are often checked by unexpected failure, so now his own good fortune was balanced at midday by a turn of bad luck. Over lunch a wire arrived, and the news was not good.

  “We have lost our chemist, my lord,” he was told by Yamcey even as the milk was being poured out of a great clay jug for him at the table.

  “What was that now, hey?” cried the baron, standing straight up from his seat in such a rush that his chair was overturned.

  “They have found him,” the butler assured him gravely, “and he is dead.”

  “Dead?”

  “He washed up on shore, face-down, in the morning, and was fished out by some passing workmen. I have here a report from the coroner’s office. They place the death late last evening, and send their condolences.”

  “Well,” said the baron in some annoyance. “Now there is a wrench in the machine, eh, Yamcey? What do we do now? Surely we cannot let this trespass in our own yard go unreturned.”

  “Oh we will reply,” he was assured by his man, “but perhaps not in the way you expect. If he will choose for his own tools threats, murder, and arson, then we must not answer in kind. All the goodwill we have mustered for our noble cause cannot stomach a scandal at this hour.”

  “Then what do we do?” the baron wanted to know.

  “You have a full enough day as it is, my lord,” the valet told him. “In the afternoon I have arranged for you to circle the city’s schoolhouses, guildhalls and workmen’s lodges in the company of some esteemed clergymen. You are to speak up on your crusade to win back the lady’s honor, as well as publicly denounce the antics of your opponent. It should not be a hard sell, even for you.”

  “But—”

  The butler shook his head. “My dear Hungary, you may count yourself among the ranks of the beloved now. You must act like you belong there.”

  “And what will you be doing while I am out, pray?”

  “I have matters of my own to attend to, to those same ends. We will work our respective sides from light to shadow, and see if we cannot achieve something with our diligent efforts at the middle.”

  “And me, sir?” the voice at the other end of the table suddenly piped up.

  As one the cousins turned to look. They found Madeline on her feet, her countenance set in clear determination.

  “What can I do to help?”

  Here the baron was inclined to a gentleman’s thinking, keeping her out of harm’s way. Her foray last night, after all, had nearly led to disaster before the appearance of the Lynchman’s Owl. But his cousin had other ideas, and Hungary was headed off before he could speak.

  “I wonder, madam,” said Yamcey, “if you are literate.”

  It was not such an odd or unexpected question in that Age, and at once the young woman nodded. “I am.”

  “Then you can read and write, and write well besides?”

  “I believe I can satisfy any one of your desires in that area, yes.” She was, if not wholly offended, still a little miffed. “I was, after all, a professionally trained actor.”

  “You will forgive me, madam, but some of the greatest in your trade cannot string two written sentences together to save their lives,” he said. “But I am glad of your confidence at least, and you shall soon have an opportunity to demonstrate your qualities in that area.” To the baron now he added, “I shall need to borrow your Maddy for the day, my lord.”

  “She is all yours,” the baron replied.

  The young woman was then bowed out of the dining hall by the butler with her chin held high, and soon afterwards the baron departed Gildboors as well. I shall not begrudge you with the details of the day, for we are coming soon to the end of our tale and must hurry. It was early in the evening when, after a long day on a very different sort of campaign than he was used to, Hungary Mandalin returned home to find a good supper already laid out for him, but without either his most intimate of servants or his interesting new friend present. Despite the hunger which gnawed at him, curiosity won out in the baron’s heart, and he asked around of them. He was given the reply that they had, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, not left Yamcey’s apartment all day. What they were doing inside was anyone’s guess, but it surely involved writing in no small amounts, for wires were commissioned from that chamber endlessly to be sent buzzing down the cables to every corner of the city courtesy of the post. The baron, made very interested by these developments, went at once to see what was about.

  “Oh we were just writing many letters,” he was told by Madeline with a gay little laugh at the door. She tossed a backwards glance over her shoulder at the butler, which clearly illustrated the admiration she now held him in. “Mr. Yamcey, if he should ever consider leaving your service, my lord, has a grand career ahead of him as an author. I have never seen anyone write so much in so little time, and so well besides in so many different voices.”

  From inside the chamber the baron’s man bowed graciously.

  “In fact, I think I have caught onto his plans a little, and it is a marvelous scheme.” Again Madeline laughed, and the sound was like bells merrily ringing down the length of the hallway. “But whether we will see anything come of it is anyone’s guess.”

  “Yes,” said the baron. “Well.” He, the poor man, was again made to feel a proper third wheel on a bicycle. “Just so you know,” he told them both, “I have been busy as well. I have never known before today how much work it is to be loved. It is such a trying endeavor to please all those gathered around you with their own conflicting opinions. But I’ve made some headway in the matter, and we shall have the firm support of the populace in the days to come.”

  He stood in the doorway then, an uninvited stranger looking into a world of tablets, pencils and ruffling papers he had long neglected. If it were approval he was seeking he did not receive it from his man, who only managed a curt nod in his direction. Madeline, a more forgiving creature by nature, looped her arm through his piteously.

  “You shall tell me all about it, my lord,” she said to him most sweetly. “I am famished. Your valet is a machine of written words, but I would like a breath of fresh air away from inks and quills. Why don’t I join you for supper, and you can tell me of your adventures?”

  That seemed to mellow the baron somewhat, though he did manage one last slightly confused look into the butler’s apartment even as he was being led off down the hallway by the young woman on his arm. He found Yamcey with his head lowered, his pencil scratching over some paper beneath a flickering lamp. What he was writing was not to bear fruit until nearly a week after, when word was raised all over the city of the impending strike.

  “Here are the letters of the workmen’s union, the merchants’ guild, and registered complaints of the postal system for negligence and slow service—a first in our nation’s hundreds of years of history—by none other than my rival himself, Cudgel!” The baron was positively beside himself wit
h laughter as he spread out before his valet and Madeline a bulging satchel’s worth of letters and clippings collected over the past forty-eight hours. “At this rate the man won’t be able to buy bread to feed his troll without braving the picketing lines, and every cretin who does business with him is swiftly run out into the light by the vigilance of our own neighborhood watch-dogs. I must give you credit, Yamcey. Who would have thought a few letters to the editors of newspapers would produce such a virile response? It may not do much for our economy, for the whole of the Coal Coast is up in arms, but it is worth every penny lost to deal such a blow to that villain from such a source.”

  “It was Miss Madeline’s own improvisation on the night she rescued the train-conductor which was my inspiration,” said the valet with a nod towards the young woman. “Indeed, with the race fast becoming a regional sensation, it should take only a word for us to raise just such an army, eager to do their part for their beloved lady like our guest.”

  Madeline, for her part, blushed.

  “You do me too much credit, Mr. Yamcey. If you had not written all those wonderful letters”—she turned to the baron, all glowing pride— “Did you know, my lord, that over half were published word-for-word, whereas most of the others earned a long editorial column praising their merits and good sense? It’s what has set loose the populace to harass and menace Lord Cudgmore whenever and wherever he shows so much as a hair on his head, and it is infinitely a better reply for the murder of poor Mr. Garbunks than anyone could have hoped for.”

  “Well,” said the baron with a laugh, “you are much quicker to heap praise than I am on this fellow.” He clapped his servant on the shoulder hard enough to make the thinner man waver on his crutch. “But in this case it is well-deserved. Cudgel is probably being doused with red paint right now for Garbunks. You know I never truly believed the pen being mightier than the sword, and in times of strife I shall forever hold to that order might only come at the end of a bloody bayonet. But these days the two of you have made a very good case of it. Though, if I may be allowed to sour the moment, we are still short a chemist and an engineer to round out the crew of la Gallant.”

  “I am sure your Yamcey has another list of names working out in his mind,” Madeline assured him with a look full of confidence towards the butler. Hungary Mandalin, with one eyebrow raised, coughed awkwardly into his hand.

  As it turned out they hardly needed to have worried. In that area they were provided for by a miracle, though, I am sad to report, not without great cost. It seems the results of their journalistic campaign against Cudgmore reached further than anyone was expecting, and a long dormant rival of the foreign diplomat’s was soon awakened by this call to arms. The king himself, that unwilling, lazy product of an ancient bloodline long thought unfit to rule was, if you will recall, once an unsuccessful suitor of the lady in question. And the recent uproar over the impending race for her honor served to recall the memory of her beauty to him. In learning of the baron’s plight he has done the best he could, and at this very moment we will state without any pretense for subtlety that sixteen of his Royal Guard had been dispatched to deliver to Hungary Mandalin his own chemistry tutor.

  Their golden brocades and tall, cylindrical hats were more often than not much despised sights anywhere in the realm, but today as these agents of the Crown marched down Main Street there was a spectacular turnout of the common citizenry to show their appreciation. Ticker tapes were the least of it, for there were also confetti being thrown from the rooftops, and on every passing windowsill sat bottled tulips and the lily of the nation side-by-side. In front of the train station where they arrived, the baron was greeted with a deafening roar as he received his noble guests. In short, what began as an opportunity to avenge the injuries of a former national idol has taken on a new life of its own. It was quite rightfully now an affair of state, with the face of the entire country seemingly laid on the line over a bit of metal tracks and two whistling locomotives.

  “An event,” mumbled the baron to his man inside the cabin of his carriage as they came crunching up the driveway at Gildboors after a long, wearying day. “That’s what it is. It shall be passed down generations that some bore witness to this monumental moment between two nations over a woman. There has been nothing like it in our Age or any others before.”

  “In that you are correct, my lord,” said the butler, waving a bit of paper in his hand. “The newest wire, which you saw for yourself my reaching of the window to grab it from the mailman, pushes it further still.”

  “Oh?” asked his cousin. “Well what could it be now, eh?”

  “It is from the head offices of the Pan-Northeastern Armada, sir. They have extended an unwilling olive branch to your long standing feud.”

  The baron slammed a fist into his palm with great astonishment.

  “Ah! Peanuts, Yamcey? But they hate me better than the general populace, and I them even more!”

  “Nevertheless,” said the valet, “with the king openly supporting your crusade it is only a matter of time before others came aboard. The Peanuts have expressed an interest in your coming race, and have put up a fair prize to show their support. They are sending over their chief engineer to replace the one we lost to defection. Tobby Gilmered is head of manufacturing and design at the Armada shipyards, and current caretaker of the Gorilla Presses in their possession. Really, my lord, there is no better man for the job.”

  “Then why didn’t you sign up this fellow to begin with?” the baron wanted to know.

  “Because even I could never have counted on the Peanuts being any help,” the valet replied. “They have such a long standing animosity with you that I would not have anticipated anything short of the end of days to move them to your side.”

  “Well, there is something at least,” laughed the baron. “And I will take this man into my service if only as evidence that you do not know everything about everything. I suppose that is the full makeup of my crew then. How are the modifications on my train coming along?”

  “We have detached two of the rearmost carriages and removed all furniture from the first. The magnificent molding, however, we can do nothing about. Truth to be told in this area we must accept that we will operate under a disadvantage, for la Gallant, as you know, was built to be a rolling mansion with every comfort you might imagine. Lord Cudgmore’s Tulip, on the other hand, was always a speedster, for your rival has long been a patron of all things fast and furious. We must make allowances for your foe to lead the entire way until we overtake him by the finish.”

  “Well,” said the baron, “at least the woman shall be glad to hear of how things are developing. She would not even accept my invitation this morning to come out with us. She is committed to her letters, and nothing short of a cannonball fired into her window will budge her from her chair. You have set her on a warpath, Yamcey.”

  The valet inclined his head from his seat, and smiled a little to show his agreement. But the cousins were both wrong in their assessment of Madeline’s feelings towards the good news. In fact, the arrival of the king’s chemist and the impending loan of Tobby Gilmered seemed to distress her more than anything else. The baron, perplexed, exchanged a look with his man. In this he found Yamcey slowly shaking his head, for he as well could not comprehend the meaning of her discomfort.

  The young woman provided an answer herself to their curiosities.

  “It is her ladyship, my lords,” she told them in a quaking voice, “and how she will suffer at the hands of her husband now that you have the upper hand. Probably it is as you say, that he has allowed me to seek you out as a show of his own confidence and with the hopes that my presence will delay your efforts. Neck-in-neck before with murders and nighttime avengers he would have thought nothing of it, but with the whole city now rallying against him at every turn of his head, and a march of reinforcements from elsewhere in the country I shudder to think how badly his temper might have risen. He is a very poor loser, sirs, and his outlet—his only o
utlet for as long as this sorry business has been going on—will be his wife.”

  “But she is not here with him,” the baron pointed out.

  “Ah!” Madeline replied with a groan, “You do not know her husband as I do, so you may be forgiven for underestimating the length and reach of his cruelty. It is not today or tomorrow I am worried about, but eventually he must return to his own country, and there she will be waiting, helpless and at his mercy. Every insult he has taken, every embarrassment he is being made to endure, she will be made to repay twentyfold.”

  “But,” cried the baron, “but what can we do now? Call off the newspapers? Give back the chemist and engineer?”

  Madeline replied by suddenly taking his great hands in her small ones. Her fingers shook where they gripped his, but her hands were as warm as a hot brand on his skin.

  She smiled very sadly then. It was to be the last image they would have retained of her, for neither man would never again look upon her in their lifetimes after tonight.

  “No, my lord,” she told him. “Everything you have done you have done for a good cause, even when you had no reason to do so to begin with. You stuck your neck out for another when you did not have to, without ever even looking upon the face of the person you are trying to help. It is a rarity in this Age, as I’d imagine it would be in any other, and I cannot ask anymore from you.”

  “But—” began Hungary.

  Again she shook her head, saying very softly, “There is nothing more you can do. And on behalf of her ladyship, you have our undying gratitude. We will both of us watch from afar as you go on to race, and, I am certain, to win.”