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But they knew then, I firmly believe.

With scarcely a word said, four of us, the chauffeur, butler, gardener and I, hurried down to the pool.

There was a faint, barely perceptible movement of the water as the fresh flow from one end urged its way toward the drain at the other.

With little ripples that were hardly the shadows of waves, the laden mattress moved irregularly down the pool.

A small gust of wind that scarcely corrugated the surface was enough to disturb its accidental course with its accidental burden.

The touch of a cluster of leaves revolved it slowly, tracing, like the leg of compass, a thin red circle in the water.

It was after we started with Gatsby toward the house that the gardener saw Wilson's body a little way off in the grass, and the holocaust was complete.

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.

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.

Someone with a positive manner, perhaps a detective, used the expression "mad man" 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.

Most of those reports were a nightmare-grotesque, circumstantial, eager and untrue.

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.

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.

She convinced herself of it and cried into her handkerchief as if the very suggestion was more than she could endure.

So Wilson was reduced to a man "deranged by grief" in order that the case might remain in its simplest form.

And it rested there.

But all this part of it seemed remote and unessential.

I found myself on Gatsby's side, and alone.

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.

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.

I called up Daisy half an hour after we found him, called her instinctively and without hesitation. But she and Tom had gone away early that afternoon, and taken baggage with them.

"Left no address?"

"No."

"Say when they'd be back?"

Chapter 9

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