I wont stand this! cried Daisy. Oh, please lets get out.
Who are you, anyhow? broke out Tom. Youre one of that bunch that hangs around with Meyer Wolfshiem that much I happen to know. Ive made a little investigation into your affairs and Ill carry it further tomorrow.
You can suit yourself about that, old sport. said Gatsby steadily.
I found out what your drug-stores were. He turned to us and spoke rapidly. He and this Wolfshiem bought up a lot of side-street drug-stores here and in Chicago and sold grain alcohol over the counter. Thats one of his little stunts. I picked him for a bootlegger the first time I saw him, and I wasnt far wrong.
What about it? said Gatsby politely. I guess your friend Walter Chase wasnt too proud to come in on it.
And you left him in the lurch, didnt you? You let him go to jail for a month over in New Jersey. God! You ought to hear Walter on the subject of you.
He came to us dead broke. He was very glad to pick up some money, old sport.
Dont you call me old sport! cried Tom. Gatsby said nothing. Walter could have you up on the betting laws too, but Wolfshiem scared him into shutting his mouth.
That unfamiliar yet recognizable look was back again in Gatsbys face.
That drug-store business was just small change, continued Tom slowly, but youve got something on now that Walters afraid to tell me about.
I glanced at Daisy, who was staring terrified between Gatsby and her husband, and at Jordan, who had begun to balance an invisible but absorbing object on the tip of her chin. Then I turned back to Gatsby and was startled at his expression. He looked and this is said in all contempt for the babbled slander of his garden as if he had killed a man. For a moment the set of his face could be described in just that fantastic way.
It passed, and he began to talk excitedly to Daisy, denying everything, defending his name against accusations that had not been made. But with every word she was drawing further and further into herself, so he gave that up, and only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible, struggling unhappily, undespairingly, toward that lost voice across the room.
The voice begged again to go.
Please, Tom! I cant stand this anymore.
Her frightened eyes told that whatever intentions, whatever courage she had had, were definitely gone.
You two start on home, Daisy, said Tom. In Mr. Gatsbys car.
She looked at Tom, alarmed now, but he insisted with magnanimous scorn.
Go on. He wont annoy you. I think he realizes that his presumptuous little flirtation is over.
They were gone, without a word, snapped out, made accidental, isolated, like ghosts, even from our pity.
After a moment Tom got up and began wrapping the unopened bottle of whisky in the towel.
Want any of this stuff? Jordan? Nick?
I didnt answer.
Nick? He asked again.
What?
Want any?
No I just remembered that todays my birthday.
I was thirty. Before me stretched the portentous, menacing road of a new decade.
It was seven oclock when we got into the coupe with him and started for Long Island. Tom talked incessantly, exulting and laughing, but his voice was as remote from Jordan and me as the foreign clamour on the sidewalk or the tumult of the elevated overhead. Human sympathy has its limits, and we were content to let all their tragic arguments fade with the city lights behind. Thirty the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair. But there was Jordan beside me, who, unlike Daisy, was too wise ever to carry well-forgotten dreams from age to age. As we passed over the dark bridge her wan face fell lazily against my coats shoulder and the formidable stroke of thirty died away with the reassuring pressure of her hand.
So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight.
* * *The young Greek, Michaelis, who ran the coffee joint beside the ash-heaps was the principal witness at the inquest. He had slept through the heat until after five, when he strolled over to the garage, and found George Wilson sick in his office really sick, pale as his own pale hair and shaking all over. Michaelis advised him to go to bed, but Wilson refused, saying that hed miss a lot of business if he did. While his neighbour was trying to persuade him a violent racket broke out overhead.
Ive got my wife locked in up there, explained Wilson calmly. Shes going to stay there till the day after tomorrow, and then were going to move away.
Michaelis was astonished; they had been neighbours for four years, and Wilson had never seemed faintly capable of such a statement. Generally he was one of these worn-out men: when he wasnt working, he sat on a chair in the doorway and stared at the people and the cars that passed along the road. When anyone spoke to him he invariably laughed in an agreeable, colourless way. He was his wifes man and not his own.
So naturally Michaelis tried to find out what had happened, but Wilson wouldnt say a word instead he began to throw curious, suspicious glances at his visitor and ask him what hed been doing at certain times on certain days. Just as the latter was getting uneasy, some workmen came past the door bound for his restaurant, and Michaelis took the opportunity to get away, intending to come back later. But he didnt. He supposed he forgot to, thats all. When he came outside again, a little after seven, he was reminded of the conversation because he heard Mrs. Wilsons voice, loud and scolding, downstairs in the garage.
Beat me! he heard her cry. Throw me down and beat me, you dirty little coward!
A moment later she rushed out into the dusk, waving her hands and shouting before he could move from his door the business was over.
The death car as the newspapers called it, didnt stop; it came out of the gathering darkness, wavered tragically for a moment, and then disappeared around the next bend. Mavro Michaelis wasnt even sure of its colour he told the first policeman that it was light green. The other car, the one going toward New York, came to rest a hundred yards beyond, and its driver hurried back to where Myrtle Wilson, her life violently extinguished, knelt in the road and mingled her thick dark blood with the dust.
Michaelis and this man reached her first, but when they had torn open her shirtwaist, still damp with perspiration, they saw that her left breast was swinging loose like a flap, and there was no need to listen for the heart beneath. The mouth was wide open and ripped a little at the corners, as though she had choked a little in giving up the tremendous vitality she had stored so long.
* * *We saw the three or four automobiles and the crowd when we were still some distance away.
Wreck! said Tom. Thats good. Wilsonll have a little business at last.
He slowed down, but still without any intention of stopping, until, as we came nearer, the hushed, intent faces of the people at the garage door made him automatically put on the brakes.
He slowed down, but still without any intention of stopping, until, as we came nearer, the hushed, intent faces of the people at the garage door made him automatically put on the brakes.
Well take a look, he said doubtfully, just a look.
I became aware now of a hollow, wailing sound which issued incessantly from the garage, a sound which as we got out of the coupe and walked toward the door resolved itself into the words Oh, my God! uttered over and over in a gasping moan.
Theres some bad trouble here, said Tom excitedly.
He reached up on tiptoes and peered over a circle of heads into the garage, which was lit only by a yellow light in a swinging metal basket overhead. Then he made a harsh sound in his throat, and with a violent thrusting movement of his powerful arms pushed his way through.
The circle closed up again with a running murmur of expostulation; it was a minute before I could see anything at all. Then new arrivals deranged the line, and Jordan and I were pushed suddenly inside.
Myrtle Wilsons body, wrapped in a blanket, and then in another blanket, as though she suffered from a chill in the hot night, lay on a work-table by the wall, and Tom, with his back to us, was bending over it, motionless. Next to him stood a motor-cycle policeman taking down names with much sweat and correction in a little book. At first I couldnt find the source of the high, groaning words that echoed clamorously through the bare garage then I saw Wilson standing on the raised threshold of his office, swaying back and forth and holding to the doorposts with both hands. Some man was talking to him in a low voice and attempting, from time to time, to lay a hand on his shoulder, but Wilson neither heard nor saw. His eyes would drop slowly from the swinging light to the laden table by the wall, and then jerk back to the light again, and he gave out incessantly his high, horrible call:
Oh, my Ga-od! Oh, my Ga-od! Oh, Ga-od! Oh, my Ga-od!
Presently Tom lifted his head with a jerk and, after staring around the garage with glazed eyes, addressed a mumbled incoherent remark to the policeman.
M-a-v the policeman was saying, o
No, r corrected the man, M-a-v-r-o
Listen to me! muttered Tom fiercely.
r said the policeman, o
g He looked up as Toms broad hand fell sharply on his shoulder. What you want, fella?
What happened? thats what I want to know.
Auto hit her. Insantly killed.
Instantly killed, repeated Tom, staring.
She ran out in a road. Son-of-a-bitch didnt even stopus car.
There was two cars, said Michaelis, one comin, one goin, see?
Going where? asked the policeman keenly.
One goin each way. Well, she his hand rose toward the blankets but stopped half way and fell to his side she ran out there an the one comin from NYork knock right into her, goin thirty or forty miles an hour.
Whats the name of this place here? demanded the officer.
Hasnt got any name.
A pale well-dressed negro stepped near.
It was a yellow car, he said, big yellow car. New.
See the accident? asked the policeman.
No, but the car passed me down the road, going fastern forty. Going fifty, sixty.
Come here and lets have your name. Look out now. I want to get his name.
Some words of this conversation must have reached Wilson, swaying in the office door, for suddenly a new theme found voice among his gasping cries:
You dont have to tell me what kind of car it was! I know what kind of car it was!
Watching Tom, I saw the wad of muscle back of his shoulder tighten under his coat. He walked quickly over to Wilson and, standing in front of him seized him, firmly by the upper arms.