Will Thomas - Some Danger Involved

My employer stuck his large head into the room. "Reading already, are you? Good lad. I won't interrupt you, then."

"No, no! Please do!"

"I was just wondering if you'd like to try a little shooting practice."

I sat up. That's what I needed, something to stir my blood. So far I'd felt like a counterfeit detective, driving about, watching Barker ask questions, reading out of books. Perhaps the scent of gunpowder in my nostrils would convince me of what I was to become.

"I've never shot a gun before," I admitted. "Is there a firing range in the area?"

"I have one set up in the cellar. Come along."

On the ground floor, in that long hall which ran a straight line from the front door to the back, there was a blank-looking door which led down a set of steep steps. The cellar was a single large room, with a section set off as a kind of lumber room. The walls and floor were lined with thick padding, which might have given the room a sinister appearance, if it weren't for the Indian clubs, medicine ball, and other accoutrements of physical culture. On the far wall was a circular paper target. I looked about but didn't see any pistols. Instead, Barker picked up an Ulster coat from the stair and held it out for me to put on.

"This was a little late in arriving, being specially made for me. The Krause brothers did the tailor work, while another friend of mine made theЕ modifications. Reach into the right pocket. What do you feel?"

"The butt of a pistolЕ and something else. Stiff leather?"

"Correct. The holster is built into the pocket. Look at the lining along the right, inside. What do you see?"

"A buttonhole. What's a buttonhole doing here?"

"Your patience, a moment longer. Put your hands in both pockets and face the target. Good. Now spread your feet, shoulder width. Step forward with your right foot. Raise your right arm, still with your hand in your pocket, firmly grasping the pistol, and pull your left arm behind you, shifting the entire coat."

I did as he said, moving the entire overcoat behind me as I stepped forward, and an amazing thing happened. The barrel of the pistol pushed out through the buttonhole.

"Fire!" he yelled in my ear, and I squeezed the trigger almost involuntarily. The shot went low, about a foot below the target. It was intensely loud in the small chamber.

"Really, Thomas," he said in mock disapproval. "Shooting a fellow in the vitals. Not very sporting. It takes too long for him to die, and it's a painful and ignoble death."

"Sorry, sir. The coat is rather heavy."

"It is. There is lead padding in the chest and back. I won't guarantee that it will stop a bullet, but it may at least slow it down. There are four more shots in your revolver, which, by the way, is a Webley Irish constable issue, with the site filed down. Let us see if you can hit the target this time."

I placed all four of them on the target, but only one within an inch of the bull's-eye. I thought the coat ingenious but not, as Barker would say, "sporting." A fellow might already be shot before he realized you had a gun.

"Better," my employer said. "There are a half dozen ways to aim and shoot, but the best is still to point as if one were pointing a finger. Too much thinking slows one down. Here is a box of rounds. There's cotton here for your ears' sake. Open that window to the garden when you're done or the whole house shall smell of powder. Keep practicing a few times a week, and you'll be as good as I."

"And how good is that?" I wondered aloud.

He stopped on the step and looked back over his shoulder. His hands moved up under his arms. He whirled, pulling two revolvers from out of nowhere. Bullets spat in unison not inches from my face. Emptied, the pistols were thrust back under his arms, where I heard them strike leather. Then his hands moved down to his pockets. His coat moved, the barrel appeared through the little eyelet in his coat, and a half dozen shots went off like firecrackers. Then he shifted the coat around and fired from the left side. The room reeked of gunpowder. Barker nodded good evening and left. If he said anything, I couldn't hear it. I couldn't hear anything.

Need I even mention that the bullets were clustered round the bull's-eye like four-and-twenty blackbirds? As I looked at the neat ring of holes, I remembered that, in prison argot, "barker" was the word used for a pistol. I thought he rather deserved the name.

The next morning, Monday, I was awakened to the sound of men working in the garden. Barker's bass rumble could be heard, offset by the tenor chatter of Chinese workmen. I seemed fated to be surrounded by Orientals these days. I got up and dressed and was on the ground floor, nearly to the end of the hall, when I was stopped in my tracks. The heavenly aroma of fresh coffee was in the air, pungent and earthy, the last thing I expected in Barker's house. My olfactory sense led me to a door on the left and through it. I found myself in the kitchen.

It wasn't a remarkable room; everything was functional rather than decorative. All the tools of a well-stocked kitchen were there, as well as vegetables in baskets, onions and garlic in strands, and herbs drying in bundles suspended from the ceiling. What was missing was the sturdy, middle-aged matron who reigned over kitchens the length and breadth of the land. In her place was a fleshy, bearish-looking man with a coffee cup in his hand and a sour look on his face, glaring out at the workers through a bay window in the back. He was unkempt, his nose was the hue and shape of a turnip, and he smoked a cigarette in imminent danger of burning his lips.

"Who in hell are you?" he snarled, in heavily accented English.

"I'm the new assistant," I answered. "Who in hell are you?"

"I am the cook." He was French, I decided. "†'Allo, Assistant."

"Hello, Cook. Is that coffee I smell?"

"That depends. Do you like coffee?"

"I'd decimate an entire native village for a good cup about now," I said.

The man crossed to a silver pot by the stove and poured coffee into a stout mug. "Spoken like a man. Noir or au lait, monsieur?"

"Noir, s'il vous plaоt," I answered in my best schoolboy French.

"Come over by the window and sit," he said, pointing to a small table with two chairs. "I am Etienne Dummolard."

"Thomas Llewelyn," I replied, grasping his offered hand, as broad as a flipper, and sitting down.

"So tell me, Monsieur Llewelyn (it came out 'le Vellan'), how do you like my cooking so far?"

I hesitated to be honest but took the chance anyway. "It must be difficult to keep all these spices from accidentally falling into the food."

The cook smiled and tossed the last of the cigarette onto the flagstone floor. "Very droll, monsieur. It is unfortunate that you have arrived in the middle of a disagreement between your employer and myself. I contend that he has no taste buds. I could cook one of his books for him and he would eat it without comment. I wished to discover just how bad my cooking could become before he would complain, for scientific purposes, you understand. Nothing so far. My Scottish feast was a work of art, wouldn't you say? Not so much as a grain of salt in the entire meal. A Frenchman would have shot me dead on the spot."

"You can cook, then?"

"I am a chef, trained in Paris, monsieur. I own the best French restaurant in Soho, La Toison d'Or. Would you care for an omelet?" He went to the stove, lit another cigarette on the hob, and took down a saucepan.

"Yes, please! So, why work for a man with no ability to appreciate your cooking?" I asked.

"Mon capitaine and I, we have a long history together. I could not desert him now. It was he who financed my restaurant. I work here in the mornings, and in my own kitchens during the afternoons and evenings. I leave the evening meals for Monsieur Mac toЕ what is? Heat up? Heat over?"