Serial Sunday: The Renaissance Man and the Strange New World, Part III
- 5 hours ago
- 7 min read
By Ryan Fleming.
Outside a familiar brownstone in Manhattan, a quiet man stood on its stoop. He held a package in his hands, and a pistol in his pocket. Inside that same familiar brownstone, Charles Chance was brought up to speed by his partners on the appearance of a strange new world in the Pacific Ocean.
“Speculation of dragons and gold and all sorts,” Annie Thomas was concluding, “but despite such embellishments, it does appear that the actual reports of a vast new continent are at least true.”
“What’s the plan?” Chance asked.
His question was directed at Annie, stood halfway up the hall staircase; and Reginald Cullen, stood closest to Chance and having just taken the latter’s hat and gloves. To the outside world, Thomas was the secretary of the Renaissance Man and Cullen his loyal English butler. Within the Renaissance that existed outside the public eye, they were the main researchers and planners for the group’s adventures.
“We set out for the New World,” Annie said simply.
“To claim it?”
“No,” Benjamin Williams answered. “There will be plenty of those setting out from Hong Kong or Yokohama or Manilla or any number of other ports.”
“They will need time to outfit,” Cullen continued. “Men, weapons, equipment, flags to plant in the ground. The League might slow things down too if they are brave enough to ask the empires to let them rubber stamp it first.”
“We can set out much quicker, on a swifter ship,” Annie explained. “Even from an ocean away, we can still arrive whilst there’s still parts of the land without soldiers or bureaucrats already squatting on it.”
Chance nodded, understanding.
“We get a chance to survey and catalogue as much as possible, perhaps even take some specimens of flora and fauna, if any, before the land gets divided up.”
There came a knock at the door. Still thinking of the possibilities, Chance, standing mere inches away, began to open the door.
“Wait, sir!” Cullen said sharply.
The façade of the Renaissance Man was an important one to allow the wider group to operate freely, and the Renaissance Man would not open his own door.
Most people would thus not expect to be greeted by the Renaissance Man himself. Amongst them were the quiet man on the stoop with a package in his hands and a pistol in his pocket.
The quiet man’s eyes widened, and the package was dropped from his hands. The ruse was no longer needed.
Before it hit the ground, the gun was already partway out of his pocket.
Cullen, already dashing to the door, reached it as the quiet man reached out, gun in hand, across the threshold.
Between them, Chance and Cullen swung the heavy door closed on the gunman.
Had it been just the one of them, even the strong Chance, the momentum might not have been enough to swing the door before the trigger was squeezed.
The door threw the quiet man’s aim off just enough so that the bullet sailed past Chance and Cullen and embedded itself in the wooden frame of the vestibule door behind them.
The quiet man leaned forward, but it was already too late for him to get off another shot. The heavy door closed on his hand and the gun fell to the floor as his arm was trapped between the door and its frame.
Chance kicked the gun away behind him. Williams had sprung forward to join them.
The three of them pulled the door back open, ready to seize the would-be assassin on their doorstep. He had already disappeared in the swirling steam vapor rising from storm drains down the street.
Chance and Williams ran down the street in a vain attempt to either catch or glimpse the assassin. The rabbit warren of alleys threaded through Manhattan made for any number of escape routes. Inside, the remainder of the Renaissance examined the gun and the hole where the bullet had embedded itself, but a cursory glance revealed no clue as to the identity of the assassin.
“Think someone doesn’t want us landing on this new island?” Alastair offered.
“Continent,” Annie replied, “if the descriptions of it can be trusted. It’s entire possible that’s why that hitman was sent here.”
She frowned, considering further.
“He was quick in being sent, if sent he was. As far as the world knows, Chuck has only just begun looking into it. Someone else must be planning on making a quick beeline for the New World.”
“Or maybe Cullen needs to remember to invite the mailman in for a drink at Christmas.” Eileen suggested with a smile.
Cullen stared at her over his half-moon glasses.
Chance and Williams returned, the former locking the door behind them.
“No sign,” Williams told the rest. “That door shut on his arm pretty hard, I’ll make the usual calls to hospitals and clinics.”
“If that assassin was indeed sent because of this New World that has everywhere aflutter with speculation, then as Annie suggests we are not the only interested parties. I doubt any governments would have either the desire to send an assassin or, if it was some totalitarian regime we have offended recently, the ability to dispatch one so swiftly.” Cullen surmised.
“We need to move even quicker than we planned.” Annie concluded.
“Okay,” Williams began. “Chuck, Eileen, Alastair, let’s get in the car and drive down to the docks.”
“What are we doing down there?” Chuck asked.
“Organising supplies and a ship.”
“Why not an airship?”
Eileen shook her head.
“It’d be slow going across the continent, we’d have to stop more, and the marine forecast is still far more reliable than the air current predictions.”
Williams nodded in agreement.
“In a swift ship we can be down the Atlantic, across the Caribbean, through the Canal, and out into the Pacific in the same time it would take us to reach California in an airship.”
“Okay, so we get a ship and supplies, which do you need me on?
“You and Alastair handle the ship,” Williams said. “Eileen and I will arrange the supplies.”
“Cullen and I will see what we can find out about from the literature,” Annie began. “See if there’s anything that might give us some clue about this New World.”
“Think it might be Atlantis?” Chance asked.
“Wrong ocean,” Cullen answered. “Mu could be a possibility.”
“Either way,” Chance continued, smiling. “A lost continent! We’ve done lost worlds before but never lost continents!”
Alastair smiled in agreement, nodding his head at the exciting prospect.
“Well,” Cullen replied, barely hiding a smile of his own. “We had best get a move on, because this lost continent won’t remain lost for very much longer if Annie is right about that assassin.”
***
Annie and Cullen remained in the familiar brownstone to begin their research in the group’s own extensive library. Williams drove Chance, Eileen, and Alastair to their destination on the waterfront. Meanwhile, atop the tallest skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan, Maximilian S. Macmillan seethed and the latest reports that were delivered to him.
“He was on the doorstep, and he missed?”
His mouth was smiling, but his voice was snarling.
Ironstone, his hulking valet, stood six and a half feet tall. When his employer was displeased however, he shrunk to a mere half foot without changing size. He awaited the verbal, and perhaps even physical, lashing that would come.
Macmillan could no more inflict physical harm to Ironstone with his bare hands than a bee sting could harm a rhinoceros, but Ironstone would never strike back. It was the work he did best, and Macmillan had purchased his contract and pulled him out of the ring before his physicality declined or his mind went from too many blows to the head.
A physical scolding was not forthcoming, but Macmillan’s empty smile remained affixed to his face.
“You understand my agita?”
Ironstone remained silent. It was Macmillan’s preferred response to any question.
“How difficult is it to murder someone in New York? Someone right in front of you, who is not expecting it, with a gun in your hand?”
The stoic Ironstone let him get his rant out of the way, awaiting his next orders.
“Clearly, we need to reconsider some of our contract work to the city’s underworld.”
Macmillan leaned back in his winged desk chair and steepled his fingers.
“Naturally, we must pay this imbecile to keep his silence. However, I dislike paying for any service that has not actually been rendered.”
He narrowed his eyes at Ironstone.
“As such, if this imbecile cannot actually complete his task within an acceptable timeframe, which he has already failed at once, I must insist that the money for his silence be docked from your own wages.”
Ironstone showed no reaction.
“If you do not wish for such a penance to be paid from your own pocket, then you should find another solution that ensures this imbecilic button man cannot be traced back to anyone directly connected with myself. Whatever solution you think would protect our anonymity.”
His meaning was plain to Ironstone, who knew however much would be taken from his already meagre pay would be too much.
Finally, Ironstone nodded.
“I’m glad that you have taken responsibility for this setback.”
A red light on Macmillan’s desk console told him there was someone seeking an audience awaiting in an antechamber.
He ignored the light. No one was ever granted an immediate audience.
“Further,” he continued at Ironstone. “The Renaissance Man and his cronies have set out from their base. One man will probably not be enough to keep them from setting out on their own expedition.”
Ironstone nodded once more.
The vanishing of Macmillan’s rictus grin told Ironstone he was dismissed. Before he could disappear out of one door, Macmillan admitted his awaiting supplicant with the touch of a button.
The man that entered wore a uniform that most people would have guessed was naval, but a closer inspection would have revealed that his cap, which he naturally removed upon entering his employer’s study, bore no anchor nor other naval symbol but instead a pewter pair of wings.
“Captain,” Macmillan greeted him. “Tell me we are ready to begin our conquest.”
Ryan Fleming is the author of SLP's Reid in Braid and various short stories for the anthologies, as well as editing The Scottish Anthology.
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