Based on the description of the man at the doorway in the story "After Twenty Years" by O. Henry, do you think there was something strange about him?

The reader should sense that there was something strange about the man standing in the doorway because that was the effect O. Henry intended to produce. Here are the pertinent sentences:

Now and then you might see the lights of a cigar store or of an all-night lunch counter; but the majority of the doors belonged to business places that had long since been closed.

When about midway of a certain block the policeman suddenly slowed his walk. In the doorway of a darkened hardware store a man leaned, with an unlighted cigar in his mouth.

It is ten o'clock on a cold, wet, windy night. Most of the business places have been closed for hours. A well-dressed man is standing in the doorway of a darkened hardware store. What would such a man be doing there at that hour? Why doesn't he light his cigar? His only reason for being inside the doorway would be to light the cigar out of the wind and rain. But if he lit the cigar, wouldn't he have to stay in the doorway until he had smoked it?

When the man, whose name is Bob, starts talking to the cop, it turns out that he has a plausible reason for being there. The place used to be a restaurant. He had a date to meet his old friend Jimmy Wells at that restaurant but discovered that it had been torn down five years ago and replaced by shops. He had to stay in that spot because it was the only place where Jimmy could find him--if Jimmy remembered the appointment they had made twenty years ago.

Bob knows he looks suspicious. He doesn't like it. He tries a little too hard to act nonchalant. He lights his cigar to show (1) that that is why he is standing in a doorway, and (2) that he has nothing to hide. The reader is no longer suspicious of this man. He seems like a sentimental sort of fellow. He just wants to meet his old friend. He certainly couldn't have any intentions of burglarizing a hardware store. But the reader does not realize that Jimmy sees something different.

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. His scarf pin was a large diamond, oddly set.

Jimmy recognized the man in the doorway as 'Silky' Bob, the fugitive wanted by the Chicago police. Jimmy also recognized the man as the old pal with whom he had an appointment that night at ten o'clock. Chicago would not have been able to send any kind of picture by wire, but there would have been an elaborate verbal description, including the pale, square-jawed face, the keen eyes, the little white scar near the right eyebrow, and the oddly set diamond scarf pin. 

O. Henry is ingenious in his descriptions. He gives a full description of the cop without revealing who he really is. He describes 'Silky' Bob by matchlight without letting the reader guess that Jimmy Wells is seeing his old friend and a wanted man in the same person. We realize in retrospect that Bob shouldn't have lighted that cigar right in front of a uniformed cop! Didn't Bob think the New York Police might have gotten word about him from Chicago?

O. Henry makes the reader think there is something suspicious about the man in the doorway. This is because the author wants the reader to believe that the cop also thinks there is something suspicious. And Bob knows that he looks suspicious, which explains why he does all the talking, thereby providing all the necessary exposition in the form of dialogue. The reader is reassured that Bob is just there to meet an old friend. But the reader doesn't understand until some twenty minutes later that the old friend was the cop to whom Bob was talking. Evidently Jimmy did not stop because Bob looked suspicious but because he was keeping his appointment to meet his old friend.