MR. X. You are a queer fellow. You struck here like a bomb two weeks ago, and you introduced yourself as a Swedish-American who travels, collecting insects for a little museum.
MR. Y. Oh, don't bother about me.
MR. X. That's what you always say when I get tired of talking about myself and want to devote a little attention to you. Perhaps it was because you let me talk so much about myself that you won my sympathy. We were soon old acquaintances; there were no corners about you for me to knock against, no needles or pins to prick. There was something so mellow about your whole personality; you were so considerate, a characteristic which only the most cultivated can display; you were never noisy when you came home late, never made any disturbance when you got up in the morning; you overlooked trifles, drew aside when ideas became conflicting; in a word, you were the perfect companion; but you were altogether too submissive, too negative, too quiet, not to have me reflect about it in the course of time. And you are fearful and timid; you look as if you led a double life. Do you know, as you sit there before the mirror and I see your back, it's as if I were looking at another person. [Mr. Y. turns and looks in the mirror.] Oh, you can't see your back in the mirror. Front view, you look like a frank, fearless man who goes to meet his fate with open heart, but back view,—well, I don't wish to be discourteous, but you look as if you carried a burden, as if you were shrinking from a lash; and when I see your red suspenders across your white shirt—it looks like—like a big brand, a trade mark on a packing box.
MR. Y. [Rising]. I believe I will suffocate—if the shower doesn't break and come soon.
MR. X. It will come soon. Just be quiet. And the back of your neck, too, it looks as if there were another head on it, with the face of another type than you. You are so terribly narrow between the ears that I sometimes wonder if you don't belong to another race. [There is flash of lightning.] That one looked as if it struck at the sheriff's.
MR. Y. [Worried]. At the—sh-sheriff's!
MR. X. Yes, but it only looked so. But this thunder won't amount to anything. Sit down now and let's have a talk, as you are off again tomorrow.—It's queer that, although I became intimate with you so soon, you are one of those people whose likeness I cannot recall when they are out of my sight. When you are out in the fields and I try to recall your face, another acquaintance always comes to mind—some one who doesn't really look like you, but whom you resemble nevertheless.
MR. Y. Who is that?
MR. X. I won't mention the name. However, I used to have dinner at the same place for many years, and there at the lunch counter I met a little blond man with pale, worried eyes. He had an extraordinary faculty of getting about in a crowded room without shoving or being shoved. Standing at the door, he could reach a slice of bread two yards away; he always looked as if he was happy to be among people, and whenever he ran into an acquaintance he would fall into rapturous laughter, embrace him, and do the figure eight around him, and carry on as if he hadn't met a human being for years; if any one stepped on his toes he would smile as if he were asking pardon for being in the way. For two years I used to see him, and I used to amuse myself trying to figure out his business and character, but I never asked any one who he was,—I didn't want to know, as that would have put an end to my amusement. That man had the same indefinable characteristics as you; sometimes I would make him out an undergraduate teacher, an under officer, a druggist, a government clerk, or a detective, and like you, he seemed to be made up of two different pieces and the front didn't fit the back. One day I happened to read in the paper about a big forgery by a well-known civil official. After that I found out that my indefinable acquaintance had been the companion of the forger's brother, and that his name was Stråman; and then I was informed that the afore-mentioned Stråman had been connected with a free library, but that he was then a police reporter on a big newspaper. How could I then get any connection between the forgery, the police, and the indefinable man's appearance? I don't know, but when I asked a man if Stråman had ever been convicted, he answered neither yes nor no—he didn't know. [Pause.]
MR. Y. Well, was he ever—convicted?