"Look here, old sport, you've got to get somebody for me. But, as they drew back the sheet and looked at Gatsby with unmoved eyes, his protest continued in my brain: I went back to the drawing-room and thought for an instant that they were chance visitors, all these official people who suddenly filled it. The butler gave me his office address on Broadway, and I called Information, but by the time I had the number it was long after five, and no one answered the phone. Meyer Wolfsheim's name wasn't in the phone book. Just trust me and I'll get somebody for you -" I wanted to go into the room where he lay and reassure him: "I'll get somebody for you, Gatsby. "Any idea where they are? How I could reach them?" But she and Tom had gone away early that afternoon, and taken baggage with them. I called up Daisy half an hour after we found him, called her instinctively and without hesitation. At first I was surprised and confused then, as he lay in his house and didn't move or breathe or speak, hour upon hour, it grew upon me that I was responsible, because no one else was interested - interested, I mean, with that intense personal interest to which every one has some vague right at the end.
From the moment I telephoned news of the catastrophe to West Egg Village, every surmise about him, and every practical question, was referred to me. I found myself on Gatsby's side, and alone. And it rested there.īut all this part of it seemed remote and unessential. So Wilson was reduced to a man "deranged by grief" in order that the case might remain in its simplest form.
She convinced herself of it, and cried into her handkerchief, as if the very suggestion was more than she could endure. She showed a surprising amount of character about it too - looked at the coroner with determined eyes under that corrected brow of hers, and swore that her sister had never seen Gatsby, that her sister was completely happy with her husband, that her sister had been into no mischief whatever.
When Michaelis's testimony at the inquest brought to light Wilson's suspicions of his wife I thought the whole tale would shortly be served up in racy pasquinade-but Catherine, who might have said anything, didn't say a word. Most of those reports were a nightmare - grotesque, circumstantial, eager, and untrue. Some one with a positive manner, perhaps a detective, used the expression "madman" as he bent over Wilson's body that afternoon, and the adventitious authority of his voice set the key for the newspaper reports next morning. A rope stretched across the main gate and a policeman by it kept out the curious, but little boys soon discovered that they could enter through my yard, and there were always a few of them clustered open-mouthed about the pool. After two years I remember the rest of that day, and that night and the next day, only as an endless drill of police and photographers and newspaper men in and out of Gatsby's front door.
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