Mr.X says
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 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.