Like a visual exhibit to go with James Fordyce’s account of being mugged outside a subway station last week, a map of violent injury was drawn across his face. Purple bruises circled his eyes and streaked along his cheekbones. Down the length of his swollen, broken nose was a line of scabs.

As bad as he looked and felt after three nights in a hospital, Mr. Fordyce said in an interview last week, he was determined that fear was not going to cost him the freedom of the city. At 74, Mr. Fordyce walks with a cane, has had two heart attacks, and is losing his sight. On the Sunday night that he was hurt, he was coming home alone from an evening out with a theater group.

“I can tell you one thing,” Mr. Fordyce said, “this is not going to stop me taking the subway.”

His narrative, including his description of being thrown down and then crawling up the subway steps, was published in an About New York column on Friday. Since then, however, an entirely new version of events has emerged, and it differs significantly from what Mr. Fordyce told the police, doctors, his wife, me and, apparently, himself. Detectives now believe that no crime took place.

On Friday, the detectives spoke to Mike Johnson, a neighbor of Mr. Fordyce in Washington Heights, who subsequently contacted me. After watching the last episode of “Downton Abbey,” Mr. Johnson said, he took his dog, Rex, for a walk along Fort Washington Avenue. He saw Mr. Fordyce stumble on a sidewalk flagstone and pitch forward.