The read method of the Request class returns an integer.
public synchronized int read(byte[] b, int off, int len);
The method is called with a byte array, an offset point, and a length. It will return the byte array as specified. For further information, see either the Java.io.InputStream documentation in the Platform SDK section of the MSDN Library, or read the internal comments in the Java.io.InputStream.java file in the \Java\Classes subdirectory.