"Nothing but this hand-bag?" laughed the other, thinking he was joking.

"And a small portmanteau in the van," was the quiet reply. "I have no
other luggage."

"You have no other luggage?" repeated Laidlaw, turning sharply to see if
he were in earnest.

"Why should I need more?" the professor added simply.

Something in the man's face, or voice, or manner--the doctor hardly knew
which--suddenly struck him as strange. There was a change in him, a
change so profound--so little on the surface, that is--that at first he
had not become aware of it. For a moment it was as though an utterly
alien personality stood before him in that noisy, bustling throng. Here,
in all the homely, friendly turmoil of a Charing Cross crowd, a curious
feeling of cold passed over his heart, touching his life with icy
finger, so that he actually trembled and felt afraid.

He looked up quickly at his friend, his mind working with startled and
unwelcome thoughts.

"Only this?" he repeated, indicating the bag. "But where's all the stuff
you went away with? And--have you brought nothing home--no treasures?"

"This is all I have," the other said briefly. The pale smile that went
with the words caused the doctor a second indescribable sensation of
uneasiness. Something was very wrong, something was very queer; he
wondered now that he had not noticed it sooner.