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Unit 6: After Twenty Years by O. Henry

comes around all right. Going to call time on him sharp?” “I should say not!” said the other. Notes
“I’ll give him half an hour at least, If Jimmy is alive on earth he’ll be here by that time. So
long, officer.”
“Good night, sir,” said the policeman, passing on along his beat, trying doors as he went.
There was now a fine, cold drizzle falling, and the wind had risen from its uncertain puffs into
a steady blow. The few foot passengers astir in that quarter hurried dismally and silently
along with coat collars turned high and pocketed hands.
And in the door of the hardware store the man who had come a thousand miles to fill an
appointment, uncertain almost to absurdity, with the friend of his youth, smoked his cigar and
waited. About twenty minutes he waited, and then a tall man in a long overcoat, with collar
turned up to his ears, hurried across from the opposite side of the street. He went directly to
the waiting man.

“Is that you, Bob?” he asked, doubtfully. “Is that you, Jimmy Wells?” cried the man in the
door.

“Bless my heart!” exclaimed the new arrival, grasping both the other’s hands with his own.
“It’s Bob, sure as fate. I was certain I’d find you here if you were still in existence.
Well, well, well!—twenty years is a long time. The old restaurant’s gone, Bob; I wish it had
lasted, so we could have had another dinner there. How has the West treated you, old man?”
“Bully; it has given me everything I asked it for. You’ve changed lots, Jimmy. I never thought
you were so tall by two or three inches.”
“Oh, I grew a bit after I was twenty.”
“Doing well in New York, Jimmy?”

“Moderately. I have a position in one of the city departments.
Come on, Bob; we’ll go around to a place I know of, and have a good long talk about old
times.”
The two men started up the street, arm in arm. The man from the West, his egotism enlarged
by success, was beginning to outline the history of his career. The other, submerged in his
overcoat, listened with interest. At the corner stood a drug store, brilliant with electric lights.
When they came into this glare each of them turned simultaneously to gaze upon the other’s
face. The man from the West stopped suddenly and released his arm.
“You’re not Jimmy Wells,” he snapped. “Twenty years is a long time, but not long enough to
change a man’s nose from a Roman to a pug.”

“It sometimes changes a good man into a bad one,” said the tall man. “You’ve been under
arrest for ten minutes, ‘Silky’ Bob. Chicago thinks you may have dropped over our way and
wires us she wants to have a chat with you. Going quietly, are you? That’s sensible. Now,
before we go on to the station here’s a note I was asked to hand you. You may read it here
at the window. It’s from Patrolman Wells.” The man from the West unfolded the little piece
of paper handed him. His hand was steady when he began to read, but it trembled a little by
the time he had finished. The note was rather short:
“Bob, I was at the appointed place on time. When you struck the match to light your cigar I
saw it was the face of the man wanted in Chicago. Somehow I couldn’t do it myself, so I went
around and got a plain-clothes man to do the job. JIMMY.”

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