Some Danger Involved

9

Barker was silent after we returned to the office. He sat in his chair, with his fingers intertwined and his elbows on the desk, and did not move for twenty minutes. Whether he was praying, or meditating, or merely thinking, I took the time to go through the final post. At exactly five thirty, Jenkins sprinted out the door on his way to the Rising Sun and his first pint.

"How many men," Barker said aloud, "would it take to start a pogrom in London?"

I considered. "Fifty at least. Perhaps a hundred."

"And how many men in London have such a hatred of the Jews that they would band together to create one?"

"I have no idea."

"It cannot be that many. Oh, there is always that part of society that finds others inferior. We all have our little prejudices. But hatred, enough to form a league bent on destroying themЕ"

He went over to a smoking cabinet among his shelves and took down another carved pipe, a coiled dragon. Then he crossed to an old wooden jar, full of his new tobacco, and charged his pipe.

"There's only one way to gather a group of any size. One must canvass. Now, if I walked into a pub and said, 'Let's go next door and attack the Jews, beat them, and destroy their businesses,' I don't think I'd get many to go with me. The English are not barbarians. But if I said, 'Those Jews are taking our jobs, our homes, and pretty soon our women; let's teach them a lesson,' I'd probably clear the room. It's how mobs start. Most of the men in pubs are half bored, looking for something to do, and anxious to air their grievances."

"Someone should be watching the pubs, then," I stated.

"I agree."

"That's too tall an order for us. There are hundreds of them."

"We need volunteers watching them."

"The Jews!" I suggested.

"The Sephardim, perhaps. The Ashkenazim would be too obvious. I suppose we're only talking about the East End. Take a letter."

I reached for my notebook.

Sir Moses Montefiore

Saint Swithen Lane

The City

Sir Moses,

I am convinced that any possible pogrom would be pressed from the public houses around the East End. It would be to our advantage to recruit a force of our own to patrol as many of them as possible. Needless to say, these fellows would have to be nondescript. Do you think such an army is feasible?

Your obedient servant,

Cyrus Barker

"What about the Reverend McClain?" I asked. "Didn't you say he frequently went into pubs?"

"Now you're thinking like an enquiry agent, lad! Unfortunately, he is not generally in a position to overhear anything, considering that his face is so well known. He wears the blue ribbon of temperance and is not above busting up a pub with a stout hammer. Also, he wouldn't send any of his own people, for many of them have given up the bottle themselves. It would be too much of a temptation for them."

"Just the letter, then."

"Aye, the one letter will do. We'll drop it in the pillar-box on our way."

I knew he wanted me to ask where we were going, but I decided to keep silent. Barker went down the short hall, into one of the anonymous rooms with the yellow doors, and returned with two disreputable-looking Gladstone bags. He tossed one to me and we left the chambers.

We had sandwiches at the Rising Sun, across from Scotland Yard. The proximity to the Yard rather unnerved me, for I still had the former prisoner's antipathy to policemen. For a moment, I felt the clasp of cold iron around my wrists and ankles again, and the prodding of a truncheon in my kidneys. I had a sense of what would happen next, and I spoke up.

"We're going into 'A' Division, aren't we?"

Barker nodded between bites of ham and cheese. I found the ham almost inedible, but my employer was tucking it away between those square teeth of his.

"I teach a class there most Monday evenings," he explained. "Physical training and antagonistics, adapted to police work. Unarmed defense. You should find it instructive, and you'll get to toss around a few constables for a change."

Reluctantly, I followed my employer across the short street. The Yard looked large and foreboding in the twilight, like a medieval keep. As we walked into the building, I felt as much a prisoner as I did when I wore a convict's broad arrows. Step by step, I told myself. One foot in front of the other.

We passed a desk by the back entrance and were waved through by an officer. He seemed to know Barker on sight, but then Barker was not easy to forget, once seen. We passed down a congested hall full of constables, regular citizens, and idlers, and through an unmarked door, into a room full of lockers. Following Barker's example, I began to disrobe and hang my clothing in one of the lockers. In the Gladstone I found a thick, cable-knit black jumper and a pair of tight trousers of gray wool, with padding at the knees. The clothing looked comical on me, I thought, and only marginally better on my employer. He wore a pair of canvas shoes with rope soles. I was barefoot.

I was not prepared to walk out into the hallway in this bizarre costume, so I was relieved when Barker opened a side door and led me into a small gymnasium. The room had a wooden floor, with canvas mats here and there, and a wide mirror along one wall. Several men in clothing identical to our own were already in the room. Some were stretching, and others tumbling on the mats. One of them, I noticed, was Inspector Poole. As soon as Barker entered the room, all of the men stopped and moved to the mirror, lining up in a row.

"Good evening, gentlemen," Barker said, giving the men a formal bow. The men returned the bow and mumbled a greeting. "Tonight, I shall be showing you a few 'come-along' tricks that might be helpful to you with reluctant suspects. But first, we must warm up."

We began with various stretching exercises and some pushups. Barker showed us how to rise swiftly from a seated position on the ground, which we practiced repeatedly. Then my employer taught us some of the "come-alongs" he had spoken of. I will only mention one, which Barker called the "Tokyo come-along," because it is a favorite of the police in that far-off city. As any schoolboy knows, a bully or ruffian often begins his attack by reaching out with the left hand either to seize the lapel in preparation for a blow with the right hand or to inflict a light jab. The defender seizes the attacker's wrist with his left hand and steps back to the left, facing the other direction and pulling the attacker off balance. He snakes his right arm swiftly over and around the extended limb, anchoring his right hand high on his own lapel, or even the bicep of his other arm. Pressing down on the attacker's wrist causes painful overextension of the braced elbow and allows the defender to make the attacker "come along" wherever he wishes, in this case to the local constabulary. It's quite a neat little trick, I thought.

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.