"Why, of course," he said, carefully expelling a jet of smoke from the corner of his closed lips, "he came back, my brother did."
"It was like this," he went on. "Apart from a general dislike of doing things that boys consider 'bad form' my brother had no scruples at all. For instance, if a stranger cheeks you, you _feel_ as if you'd like to hit him. My young brother _did_ hit him. What was still more to his advantage he gave people the impression that he was always ready to jump over the table at them. My impression is that the old Head didn't dare flog him and had been glad to find an excuse to get rid of him. It didn't occur to the old chap that my brother wouldn't come home. He little knew my brother!
"Several days passed and we began to get anxious. My mother telegraphed the Head and the railway company. No good. Now it's all very well for well-meaning people to say tell the police,' but when you are up against a private disgrace, you think pretty hard before you walk into a police station. My brother was fifteen and big for his age. Why, he might disguise himself anyhow. The week-end came before we made up our minds that the police would have to be notified. I went to Scotland Yard on the Saturday afternoon with a reward and description. I don't pretend that I felt very anxious about him. He had never sought either my friendship or my protection, and we looked at life from totally different angles. To me there was something common and dirty about an intrigue with a school-slavey. My brother, I thought, should have been above that sort of thing. But he wasn't and he never has been. With him a woman is just a woman. He raises his hand and they come running, and apologizing if they're late. So after I had been to Scotland Yard, I stayed down West, went to a theatre and looked in at _El Vino_ for a glass of port afterwards. _El Vino_ in those days had a curious reputation, quite different from the Continental or the Leicester Lounge. No one would ever suggest you were a loose fish because you drank a dock-glass in _El Vino_, though there were women there every night. Just as I was lifting the glass some one gave me a slap on the back. It was my young brother.
"'Hullo, Charley!' he says. 'Fancy _you_ here.'
