"Carrying bag marked 'G.W.'?"
"Carrying a bag, sir," he replied, with marked emphasis on what the grammarians were wont to call the indefinite article. "I didn't notice any letters on it. If you hurry you'll catch him up. He went that way," pointing with his hand. "Is anything the matter? Can I be of assistance?"
"I don't understand you," I returned sharply, wondering whether he, too, like the railway-porter, thought that my brother was a fugitive from justice.
"No offence, sir, but your friend seems to need looking after. He is either mad or dying. His eyes burned like live coals, and his face was as white as this snow here. I called out 'A rough night, sir!' but he glided on, looking neither to right nor left, and taking no notice of me."
These words increased my misgivings. I thanked the constable and, declining his proffered services, rushed on in the direction indicated by him. A line of footprints in the snow served to guide me, and following their course, I presently found myself in a street whose semi-detached villas were fronted with quiet unpretentious gardens separated from the pavement by stone balustrades.
There he was! Half-way down the street, standing beneath the light of a gas-lamp, was a cloaked man apparently taking a survey of a house facing the lamp, while shaking the snow from himself. I hurried forward to greet him, my feet making no sound on the soft snow.
"George!" I cried eagerly and breathlessly when within a few paces of him. "George!"
The figure turned to meet, but not to greet me. It was my brother's face I saw, but so haggard and disfigured by lines of pain as to be scarcely recognisable. His eyes frightened me as they gleamed in the lamplight; so glassy, so unnatural was their stare.