excuse me but a key question is whether the Brice party saw this chap on the way up and left him their to pursue the Everest peak. Sir Edmund is right on if they considered helping him only on the way down when resources were critical and they were exhausted.
So what if they did? Maybe they thought he was resting for a bit. Maybe he even acknowledged that he was OK.
We really don't know what happened there. So every critique is a pointless exercise in "coulda shoulda".