chat pleasantly for a while before Bob realizes, as he sees the man's face illuminated by the light from a drugstore, that this isn't Jimmy.

As it turns out, the man is a police officer, and he places Bob under arrest. He also hands him a note written by none other than Jimmy Wells. It turns out that Jimmy really did meet Bob at the appointed hour outside the hardware store as they'd always planned; he was the beat cop that Bob had been talking to earlier. But as Jimmy didn't have the heart to arrest his old friend himself, he got a plainclothes officer to do it for him.

Both the reader and "Silky" Bob are doubly surprised by the ending of the story. Both believe that the plain clothes detective who invites Bob to come along and have a drink with him is Jimmy Wells-- although the reader may detect a clue to the detective's identity and purpose when Bob says:

"You've changed lots, Jimmy. I never thought you were so tall by two or three inches."

Bob does not discover the truth until they reach the brightly lighted  corner. Then he says:

"You're not Jimmy Wells. . . .Twenty years is a long time, but not long enough to change a man's nose from a Roman to a pug."

Then the arresting officer hands him a note, and Bob and the reader have a second surprise. The uniformed cop Bob had been talking to a little more than twenty minutes earlier had been his old friend. The note reads:

"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."

When Jimmy was about to leave, he said:

"I'll be on my way. Hope your friend comes around all right. Going to call time on him sharp?"

Bob replies:

"I should say not. . . . I'll give him half an hour at least."

Jimmy has only a half-hour in which to go "around" to his station and find another officer to impersonate him. The one he gets is described as "a tall man in a long overcoat, with collar turned up to his ears." He is taller than Jimmy and has an entirely different kind of nose, but he is the best Jimmy can get on such short notice.

According to O. Henry's description, the tall man "hurried across from the opposite side of the street." This shows time is of the essence. Jimmy had to get to his station, explain his problem, and find someone to impersonate him. Then his substitute had to get to the hardware store before Bob left. That is why O. Henry uses the word "hurried."

Bob has a clue that the plain clothes man is not Jimmy when he notices that he is two or three inches taller than his old friend. Was there any clue that the uniformed officer he was talking to before was in fact Jimmy Wells? It is pure coincidence that Jimmy has been assigned to a beat that includes the place where he had agreed to meet Bob twenty years earlier. Jimmy is a bit early for their appointment, so he is doing what he always does on patrol, including trying every shop door to see that it is securely locked. It is this typical policeman's behavior that keeps the reader from suspecting that the cop might be Jimmy Wells himself.

Jimmy doesn't realize that Bob is the man wanted in Chicago until:

The man in the doorway struck a match and lit his cigar. The light showed a pale, square-jawed face with keen eyes, and a little white scar near his right eyebrow.

This is a very good touch. The flame will naturally light up Bob's face but not provide any illumination for Jimmy's. Another nice touch is  that Jimmy is a cop in uniform. Bob would never suspect that his old friend would have joined the force. Jimmy lets Bob do most of the talking. He doesn't want his voice to give him away. Neither the reader nor "Silky" Bob gets a clue that Jimmy is the policeman, although there is a definite clue that the plain clothes detective is not Jimmy Wells.

"After Twenty Years" is a very short story but covers twenty years, two mistaken identities, and two surprise endings. This shows O. Henry's ingenuity at its sharpest.

O. Henry builds the suspense in this story by introducing the two characters, and then not letting you know who is who right away. They are two old friends who are meeting after twenty years, and he slowly feeds you details of their backstory. It later is revealed that one is a police officer and one is a crook, and the twist is that the police officer has been talking to the crook the entire time—and he didn’t know it! Neither does the reader, until the end.

In the beginning, we just see a very determined policeman seemingly walking his beat. His impressiveness is habitual. This means that he just can’t help it, because it is part of who he is by now. Duty and responsibility are ingrained in him. O. Henry is building suspense already, because that will be important later.

Then, in the doorway of a darkened hardware store, he sees a man with an unlit cigar. The conversation gets interesting. First of all, the man, “spoke quickly.”

"It's all right, officer," he said, reassuringly. "I'm just waiting for a friend. It's an appointment made twenty years ago. Sounds a little funny to you, doesn't it?...”

There are many telling things about this encounter. A darkened doorway? An unlit cigar? The man’s quick reaction to the police officer? Warning bells should be going off in the reader’s mind—this is foreshadowing.

The mean tells a story about making an appointment to meet twenty years ago with a friend named Jimmy. He lights his cigar and his face—and a scar—are clearly shown.

Well, we agreed that night that we would meet here again exactly twenty years from that date and time, no matter what our conditions might be or from what distance we might have to come.

The interesting thing about this is that the cop does not react, other than to say it is an interesting story and ask if he has heard from his friend. Bob, the cigar smoker, comments that Jimmy will be there because “he always was the truest, stanchest old chap in the world.”

The cop leaves and another man, comes, pretending to be Jimmy. Bob says immediately that he has changed a lot. That is another signal to the reader that it may not be Jimmy after all. It builds suspense, because we do may not know what is going on, but we know something is not right.

"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."

After that, the cop tells him he has been under arrest for ten minutes! Then he gives him a note from the real Jimmy, who tells him that when he met him he knew he had to arrest him but did not have the heart to do it himself, out of friendship.

The twist in this story is that Jimmy did show up, all along, and he both did and did not arrest Bob. Ironically, Bob turned into a criminal and Jimmy into a cop. Jimmy wanted to do the right thing and the wrong thing at the same time, and found a way to do his duty and do right by his friend. O. Henry gives us little hints all along, leading up to the final twist. The unlit cigar and then the flash that showed Jimmy who Bob was and allowed him to recognize his friend as a wanted man, and the fact that Jimmy never acknowledged who he was, as well as Bob’s reaction to seeing a cop, all foreshadow the surprise ending.

Twenty years is a long time to keep a promise. As you can see, it really did not change the kind of person Jimmy was. He remained the loyal and honest, and dependable person Bob said he would be. Bob said he would be there, and he was. Bob said he could count on Jimmy, and he could.

There's not much foreshadowing in this story, but O'Henry drops a few hints that Bob might be a criminal, such as mentioning the scar on his face and the diamond studded watchcase he carries. O'Henry also foreshadows that the person who talks to Bob at the end is not Jimmy when Bob says:

You've changed lots, Jimmy. I never thought you were so tall by two or three inches.

The point of view is third-person omniscient, but the narrator chooses to withhold certain facts from the reader until the end, which adds to the surprise. The most important withheld fact is that Jimmy Wells is the officer who initially approached Bob.

O'Henry is famous for his use of situational irony, which is when events work out differently than the characters expected. The chief irony is that a reunion with his best chum that Bob looks forward to as a happy time becomes the occasion of his arrest. Another irony is that Bob looks down on Jimmy as a plodder and sees himself as a success story, but by the end of the tale, the tables have turned.

The suspense comes in wondering whether Jimmy will show up and what he will be like if he does.

In "After Twenty Years," O. Henry molds his main characters with a certain anonymity that provides some foreshadowing while at the same time providing for the surprise ending.

• Foreshadowing

In the exposition of the story in which two old friends have agreed to meet twenty years after their parting ways, the first character who is introduced is simply referred to as the "policeman." Also, since this policeman, an officer of the law who patrols a certain neighborhood, is a familiar personage to readers of O. Henry's time, there is nothing about him which would lead these readers to think that he has a primary role in the narrative. His routine questioning of the man waiting for his old friend in the doorway arouses no suspicions, either, but it does provide subtle foreshadowing as the man's lighting of his cigar reveals a "little white scar near his right eyebrow" and a large diamond as a scarfpin. Another very subtle hint of what is to come are some words said by this stranger:

"We figured that in twenty years each of us ought to have our destiny worked out and our fortunes made, whatever they were going to be."

• Surprise Ending

Since the policeman on the beat seems insignificant, with the later appearance of "a tall man in a long overcoat" who goes directly to the man in the doorway, readers may well assume that he is Jimmy, the stranger's old friend for whom he has been waiting, especially because he asks, "Is that you, Bob?" But, when this tall man steps under the bright lights of a drug store as the two walk along arm-in-arm, the old friend suddenly stops, removes his arm, and says, "You're not Jimmy Wells," the narrative is then set up for the surprise ending. For, Patrolman Jimmy Wells has sent a plainclothes policeman to meet 'Silky Bob' and to give Jimmy's letter to his old friend, explaining why he has not met him.