Will Thomas - Some Danger Involved

Within an hour we were all quite winded and perspiring, and Barker ended the class. He shook hands with various members of the police force, giving them encouragement and instruction, then we all returned to the locker room and changed back into our street clothes. The late March air, as we left the building, was very bracing compared to the stuffy heat of the gymnasium.

Even at this hour of the evening, there was generally a cab to be found in Whitehall. Barker and I hailed one. How adept I had become in the past four days at entering one, and how complacent over it all! We passed over Waterloo Bridge and took the route I had walked in the rain two days before. The chilling air soon dried me after my exertions in the gymnasium.

Barker had the cabman drop us at the garden gate. He was whistling to himself off-key. I wagered he still had at least one trick up his sleeve for the evening. He led me over the garden bridge and up to the larger of the two outbuildings. I noticed smoke rising from a small chimneypiece. Barker opened the door and motioned me in.

Inside it was stiflingly hot. Barker went over to a barrel, took a gourdful of water from it, and poured it slowly over a brazier of coals, which hissed and sputtered, and filled the small chamber with steam.

"Take off your clothes and hang them there," Barker ordered. "There is a half barrel of water and some Pears soap in the corner, where you may wash."

I did as I was told. Once I was covered in soap, Barker filled a bucket and poured it over my head. I felt like a drowned rat and somewhat embarrassed.

"What is the matter with you, man?" Barker growled. "If you are modest, put this on." He handed me a strip of white cotton fabric with a string at each corner.

"What is it?"

"It's what passes in half the world for undergarments. It's called a heko. It ties at each hip. There is a heated bath behind me. Get in."

The bath was perhaps eight foot square and deep enough to go over my head. It looked like it had once been a boiler. There were teak benches submerged on one side. I climbed down into it and soaked, while Barker splashed about in the half barrel. The bath was incredibly hot, almost unbearable. After my exertions, the heat was beginning to make me sleepy. There was a fluttering overhead and the bath suddenly erupted on all sides as Barker's fifteen stone struck the water all at once. I was hurled into one of the underwater benches. Barker eventually surfaced.

"Aah!" he said, his voice echoing in the small room. "Aah! I've been waiting all day for this!" He paddled about, floating on the surface. I noticed that, for modesty's sake, he'd donned one of the little swimming garments. As he reached for a towel to wipe his omnipresent spectacles, I noticed something more. His brawny arms and chest were a mass of scars, burns, brands, and tattoos. Who had seared that circular mark on his shoulder? What had caused the triangular scar on his collarbone, or the three parallel slashes along his ribs? What did the black Arabic-looking lettering on his upper arms mean, or the animal-shaped burns on his forearms? I hazarded a guess that Barker had joined every secret society from here to Kyoto and been in more than his share of battles.

"You're welcome to use this bath any day you like," Barker said. "Mac heats the water every evening at seven. This is the Japanese way of bathing. You wash off the daily grime in the foot bath there, then soak the internal impurities away in the bath. I daresay you'll sleep well tonight. How often would you say the average Englishman bathes?"

"I don't know," I answered. "Once a week? Twice a month?"

"And how often does the average Japanese bathe?"

"I'm at a loss. I have no idea."

"Twice a day. A day, mind! Now, which would you rather share an omnibus or cab with, someone who bathes twice a month or twice a day?"

The light dawned. What Barker in his not so subtle manner was trying to say was that I didn't meet his standard of hygiene. I began to take offense. As far as I knew, I bathed as often as everyone else I'd ever met, until now. But then, I'm neither a dog nor a child. A nightly bath wouldn't kill me, if my employer demanded it. Who would suppose a man as large and rough as Barker could be so fastidious?

"Out of the tub now, lad," Barker said briskly. Half asleep, I dried off with a nubby towel. As I sat for a moment on the bare wooden floor, drying my limbs, he suddenly seized my head in his large hands and began twisting it like a cork in a wine bottle until there was a cracking sound in my neck.

"That's better," he said. "It's good to get the kinks out, now and then."

Things got hazy after that. I vaguely remember his pulling back my arms and working his foot along my spine until all the vertebrae popped in a row. Then I have a fuzzy memory of Barker and Maccabee helping me up the stairs to my room. I believe I was singing "Men of Harlech," an old Welsh folk song, a trifle too loudly. After that, oblivion. Sweet oblivion.

I awoke the next morning feeling absolutely sensational. Birds twittered in the trees. I could smell the first blooms from the tulips, which had recently burst from the ground. The brook chuckled joyfully in its course, and somewhere, far, far away, as though in another world, I heard the clatter of hooves and the bustle of commerce.

I fairly leaped from my bed and began to dress. Somehow, I noticed, I had acquired a nightshirt. I pictured Barker and Mac trying to stuff my slack limbs into the shirt, and I laughed out loud. Then my thoughts turned to the business at hand. Trot them in, I thought to myself. The whole Anti-Semite League. I'll teach them a thing or two. I tried a move or two that Barker had shown me the night before. There was a cough behind me. I was posturing in front of the butler.

"I trust you slept well," he said, his voice heavy with irony.

"Never better."

"I've brought you a brioche and some coffee, at Mr. Dummolard's request. I'm not certain what you said to him yesterday, but I believe you've helped settle one of his feuds. Very temperamental, these artistic types."

"It must be hard having to serve up one of Dummolard's creations when he is in absentia. He leaves you to take the blame."

"Oh, Mr. Barker does not blame me for the cooking, sir. He never shows that he finds the food improper. Nevertheless, I believe he knows the difference. Therefore, I mustЕ thank you." It was hard for him to say it, I could see. He'd rather give up a tooth than a word of thanks.

"Not at all," I responded formally. Maccabee nodded and withdrew.

In the hall, I found Harm by the door, waiting to go out into the garden. I felt so good, I chucked the little beast under the chin and let him out. Perhaps he was too surprised to bite. He trotted out and plopped down in a small bed of thyme, rolling over on his back, with his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth.

Barker was there in the garden. He was, well, he was doing something. I didn't quite know what to call it. It involved moving about in a kind of slow dance, with elaborate steps and movements. They looked like some of the defense moves he had made in the gymnasium, except that these were very slow and more flowing.

"Internal exercises," Barker said, in answer to my unasked question. He did not break stride, but continued his little movements. "Good for the circulation and general well-being. Do you know what the Asian races think of us? They think we don't eat well, we don't stand well, we don't even breathe well. We never take time to appreciate beauty. We don't value what's important. What do you say to that?"

"I say there's some truth to it, I suppose."

"Did you sleep well?"

"I did, sir, thank you. And you?"

"Me?" he asked, as if I'd made a joke. "I always sleep well." He finished his little dance, took a lungful of air, and slowly blew it out. Then he walked past me. "You coming, lad?"