16. Journey's End

The policeman came up the dark street slowly. The time was about 10 o'clock and the night was cold.

The policeman, whose job it was to go round the district at this time of night, tried the door of a shop here and there to see if it was shut. As he was moving on, he suddenly saw a man who was standing in the door­way of a shop. The policeman walked up to him.

"It's all right, officer," the man said. "I'm just waiting for a friend. It's an appointment which I made twenty years ago. Let me explain to you. Twenty years ago there was a pub here."

"Yes, the pub was there over the road until five years ago," said the policeman. "Then they put that office building in its place."

The man in the doorway took a match out of a box to light a cigarette. In the light of the match the policeman saw the man's face. It was the face of a man about forty, with blue eyes and full lips.

"Twenty years ago," said the man, "I had a few drinks with Bill Scott, my best friend, in that pub. I was eighteen and Bill was twenty. The next day I was sailing to the USA. I told Bill to go with me, but you couldn't get Bill out of London- That night we decided to meet here again twenty years later on December 20th, at 10 o'clock."

"Have you heard from your friend since then ?" asked the policeman.

"Yes, for the first two years," answered the stranger. "But then I heard no more from him."

"Do you think your friend will come?" asked the policeman.

"The man I'm waiting for is the best friend in the world. I came 3,000 miles to see him. If he's alive, he'll come tonight."

"Well," said the policeman. "I hope your friend will come. Are you going to wait long?"

"I give him twenty minutes," said the man in the doorway.

"Well, good night, sir," said the policeman as he left the stranger. And in the doorway the man who had come 3,000 miles to meet his friend, smoked his cigarette and waited.

He waited for about ten minutes, and then a tall man in a long coat hurried over from the opposite side of the street. He went straight to the man. '

"Is that you, George?" he asked.

"Is that you, Bill Scott ?" answered the man in the door.

"Sure enough, it's George!" shouted the man in the long coat and took the other's hand. "Twenty years is a long time, but I was sure I'd find you here. The old pub's gone, George. So we must look for another. Never mind! Let's go this way. How did you like it in the States, George?"

"I had good luck right from the minute I landed in New York."

When the two men came into the light of a shop window, they both looked at one another.

The man from America stopped suddenly.

"You aren't Bill Scott," he said. "Twenty years is a long time, but not long enough to change blue eyes into black eyes."

"Twenty years can change a good man into a bad character," said the tall man. "You're wanted by the police. Are you coming quietly? Before we go to the police station, here's a piece of paper which I was asked to hand to 15 you. You may read it here at the window." The man from America read the few words which were written on it: 'George, I was at the appointed place in time. When you lighted your cigarette I saw it was the face of a man whom the police wanted to question. I couldn't do it myself, so I went to the station and asked a plain clothes man to do the job.

Bill.'

Adapted from After Twenty Years by O. Henry