“Watch who you’re colliding with, young cock,” said a voice in his ear.
He reached the spot where she had stood, but only a man, somebody’s butler, with a small child on his shoulders, moved in her place now, and the man refused to talk. The child looked down at Banks.
So he turned, stumbled, and near the east corner of the stand saw the last of the taffy bade rushing like the ghost of a doe, and they were hustling her — another woman and a man. “Wait!” he was only thinking it, “wait!” Here was the first taste from the cup of panic, seeing the girl, his wife, pulled suddenly away from him by an arm. When he reached the spot he found that Margaret had been caught at the top of the stairs leading down to the five swinging doors of the Men’s, and he stopped, drew back, put his hand on the rail. A cigarette flung in anger, haste, was burning down there near one of the vaulted doors and he thought he could hear still the old public squeak of the hinge. He could not descend those stairs, and once more he was tasting lime. In the cool shadow he leaned, clutched the dusty iron, closed his eyes.
“Mr. Banks.” It was Cowles, accompanied by Needles dressed in his silks. “Why, Mr. Banks, you’d better take care in the sun. Ain’t that right, Jimmy?”
“I saw her…,” he managed to say.
“Who’s that, Mr. Banks?”
“I saw my wife. …”
“Well, too bad for that, Mr. Banks, as the fellow says. Ain’t that right, Jimmy?”
“They took her into the Men’s.”
“Unlikely, I should say. You’d better watch the sun, Mr. Banks. Come now,” and he could hear the jockey shuffling his little boots, “come, you’d better join us at the Baths. They’re bracing, Mr. Banks, very bracing. …”
“Fool,” shaking the white gown in his face, “you fool!”
“But she pilfered the trunk, I tell you.”
“I never let it happen … but you did. You fool!”
“And what’s so smart about having a trunk full of clothes in the hall when you’re trying to keep her naked?”
“Don’t say smart to me, smart as a naked girl, you are! And I can’t even take a slip to watch the Bumpy Girl without you letting her at a trunk full of clothes that would keep us all in style.”
“You wasn’t supposed to be taking a slip. You was supposed to stay.”
“Don’t throw it back at me, don’t give us that! Just wait ’til Larry hears how it was you who was lax, you wait. …”
“Ah, Dora, I can’t keep awake all day.”
5
SIDNEY SLYTER SAYS
Mystery Horse’s Odds Rise Suddenly …
Rock Castle’s Trainer Suffers Gangman’s Death …
Marlowe’s Pippet: The Youngster Can Scoot …
… my great pleasure in announcing that I have sent five pounds, as promised, to one Mr. Harry Bailey, Poor Petitioners, Cock & Crown, East End. Mr. Bailey, carter by trade, suggests that, in his own words, “The horse will win. Ain’t it the obvious fact which the old woman and her old groom are hidin’? My poor lame sister dreamt it now three nights in a row, that the horse will win. And all respects, Mr. Slyter, I’m of the opinion she’s exactly right.” There’s a tip to make Sidney Slyter quake, there’s one for your pals! Dead, alive, uncertain of age, uncertain of origin, suspected ownership — victory these things say to our reader in East End! Perhaps you’ve put your finger on it, Mr. Bailey — the simple conviction of your phrasing chills my heart, Mr. Bailey, with the suffering which our ancients knew — but we must not blaspheme the outcome of the Golden Bowl with such ideas of certainty. What have the rest of you to say? Anyhow, congratulations to Mr. Bailey, cheers to Mr. Bailey’s sister. And five pounds to the next lucky person writing in. … But it’s Sidney Slyter here, and my assistant Eddie has been put on the job of checking our files. Eddie will be checking them now and, any moment now, will be calling me direct from Russell Square. Eddie’s just the boy for checking files. … And this is a new development: officials here have made it known that T. Cowles, of undesirable character and listed as trainer of Rock Castle, has been stabbed to death by members of a gang to which the victim Cowles himself belonged. And Sidney Slyter says queer company for Mr. Banks? Queer and dangerous? Fellow who operates the lift said Mrs. Laval was not available tonight; stepped out for dancing and bitters with a friend, he said. So Sidney can sit in the pub with the constable, or go throw dirty dice in the lane. But cheer up, cheer up, Eddie will be through to your Sidney Slyter soon. …
Michael Banks and Cowles and the jockey in his colors walked past the Booter’s, past the barn and millinery shops until they reached the Baths, where they found the constable’s two-wheeler leaning against the marble wall with water dripping from one of the iron pipes down to its greasy seat. A few bees were circling the klaxon and the water made a rusty summer’s pool on the leather.
“Look out,” said Cowles, “the old constable’s after his cleanliness again.”
“He’s been drinking,” the jockey said. “He wants to sweat away the beer. That’s all.”
The entrance to the Baths was on an alley. The building was of whitewashed stone and marble, and once, years before, the entire alley side had served as a sign. Now on the dirty white the paint was faded, but most of the letters in gold and brown could still be read: across the top of the wall and in a scroll “Steam Bathing” and under that the words “Good for Gentlemen,” and then another slogan, “Steam Cleans and Cures.” On either side of the door was painted the greater-than-life-size figure of a naked man, one view seen from the front, the other from the rear, both flexing their arms and both losing the deep red flesh of their paint to the sun and weather of harsh seasons.
Banks smiled once when he walked naked from the dressing room into the steam. He was immediately hot, wet in an instant, and felt his way through the whiteness that was solid and rolling and solid again all at once. Now and then four or five square feet would clear completely, and in one of these sudden evaporations he saw Cowles standing quite still and stretching, while the jockey was taking blind tentative steps, covering his face and mouth with the fingers and thumbs. But he heard the hissing, the sightlessness returned; they were groping in the same direction. Then: “Here, Mr. Banks,” it was Cowles, obliterated but close to him in the steam, “lie here. There’s room for three of us right here.”
There were tables — three now pushed together — tables and shelves to lie upon, slippery and warm, and a collection of live red iron pipes upon which the Steam Baths operator and his two young boys threw buckets of icy water: and the steam smelled first of flame, cold mountain streams, and of the bare feet and ankles of the man and boys at work. And then it smelled of wood, stone floors, of white lime sprinkled between the slats on the stone; and of the bathers then, the molecules of hair oil and sweat from the skin. He breathed — and tasted, smelled the vapors filling the lung, the eye, the ear. So many clouds of it, so thick that the tin-sheeted walls were gone and only a lower world of turning and crawling and groaning men remained.
The shelving, wide enough for a man, was built about the room in tiers that reached nearly to the ceiling, all this space cut by braces, planks, verticals. Between the tiers were the tables with hands, feet, at the edges. It was a crowded ventless chamber and filled with noise, a confused and fearful roaring. But these men were prone and here activity was nothing more than a turning over or a writhing. Every few minutes the smallest of the two boys would fling a pail of ice water not on the pipes but across the flesh of a prostrate bather and the man would scream: no place here for undervests or socks, tie clasp or an address written out on paper.