“Do you mean you’re in love with Miss Baker?”
“No, old sport, I’m not. But she’s kindly consented to tell you the story.”
This annoyed me. I hadn’t asked Jordan to tea in order to discuss Jay Gatsby. The man had his nerve, and for a moment I was sorry I’d ever set foot on his overpopulated lawn.
“But what business is it of mine, Mr. Gatsby?”
He wouldn’t say another word. His dignity or his aloofness grew on him as we neared the city. We passed Port Roosevelt, where there was a glimpse of red-belted ocean-going ships, and sped along a cobbled slum lined with the dark, undeserted saloons of the faded gilt nineteen-hundreds. Then the valley of ashes opened out on all sides of us, and I had a glimpse of Mrs. Wilson straining at the garage pump with panting vitality as we went by.
With fenders spread like wings we scattered light through half Astoria—only half, for as we twisted among the pillars of the elevated I heard the familiar “jug-jug-spat!’” of a motorcycle, and a frantic policeman rode alongside.
“All right, old sport,” called Gatsby. We slowed down; taking a white card from his wallet he waved it before the policeman’s eyes.
“Right you are,” agreed the policeman, tipping his cap. “Know you next time, Mr. Gatsby. Excuse me!”
“What was that?” I inquired. “The picture of Oxford?”
“I did the commissioner a favor once, and he sends me a Christmas card once a year.”
Over the great bridge, with the sunlight through the girders making a constant flicker upon the moving cars, with the city rising up across the river in white heaps and sugar lumps all built with a wish out of non-olfactory money. The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.
A dead man passed us in a hearse heaped with blooms, followed by two carriages with drawn blinds and by more cheerful carriages for friends. The friends looked out at us with the tragic eyes and short upper lips of south-eastern Europe and I was glad that the sight of Gatsby’s splendid car was included in their somber holiday. As we crossed Blackwells Island a limousine passed us, driven by a white chauffeur, in which sat three modish negroes, two bucks and a girl. I laughed aloud as the yolks of their eyeballs rolled toward us in haughty rivalry.
“Anything can happen now that we’ve rolled over this bridge,” I thought; “anything at all…”
Even Gatsby could happen, without any particular wonder.
Roaring noon. In a well-fanned Forty-second Street cellar I met Gatsby for lunch. Blinking away the brightness of the street outside my eyes picked him out obscurely in the ante-room, talking to another man.
“Mr. Carraway, this is my friend Mr. Wolfshiem.”
A small flat-nosed Jew raised his large head and regarded me with two fine growths of hair which luxuriated in either nostril. After a moment I discovered his tiny eyes in the half darkness.
“—so I took one look at him—” said Mr. Wolfshiem, shaking my hand earnestly, “—and what do you think I did?”
“What?” I inquired politely.
But evidently he was not addressing me for he dropped my hand and covered Gatsby with his expressive nose.
“I handed the money to Mark and I sid, ’All right, Mark, don’t pay him a penny till he shuts his mouth.’ He shut it then and there.”
Gatsby took an arm of each of us and moved forward into the restaurant whereupon Mr. Wolfshiem swallowed a new sentence he was starting and lapsed into a somnambulatory abstraction.
“Highballs?” asked the headwaiter.
“This is a nice restaurant here,” said Mr. Wolfshiem looking at the contented nymphs on the ceiling. “But I like across the street better!”
“Yes, highballs,” agreed Gatsby, and then to Mr. Wolfshiem: “It’s too hot over there.”
“Hot and small—yes,” said Mr. Wolfshiem, “but full of memories.”
“What place is that?” I asked.
“The old Metropole.”
“The old Metropole,” said Mr. Wolfshiem gloomily. “Filled with faces dead and gone. Filled with friends gone now forever. I can’t forget so long as I live the night they shot Rosy Rosenthal there. It was six of us at the table and Rosy had eat and drunk a lot all evening. When it was almost morning the waiter came up to him with a funny look and says somebody wants to speak to him outside. ’All right’ says Rosy and begins to get up and I pulled him down in his chair.
“’Let the bastards come in here if they want you, Rosy, but don’t you, so help me, move outside this room.’
“It was four o’clock in the morning then and if we’d of raised the blinds we’d of seen daylight.”
“Did he go?” I asked innocently.
“Sure he went”—Mr. Wolfshiem’s nose flashed at me indignantly. “He turned around in the door and says, ’Don’t let that waiter take away my coffee!’ Then he went out on the sidewalk and they shot him three times in his full belly and drove away.”
“Four of them were electrocuted,” I said, remembering.
“Five with Becker.” His nostrils turned to me in an interested way. “I understand you’re looking for a business gonnegtion.”
The juxtaposition of these two remarks was startling. Gatsby answered for me.
“Oh, no,” he exclaimed, “this isn’t the man.”
“No?” Mr. Wolfshiem seemed disappointed.
“This is just a friend. I told you we’d talk about that some other time.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Mr. Wolfshiem. “I had a wrong man.”
A succulent hash arrived and Mr. Wolfshiem, forgetting the more sentimental atmosphere of the old Metropole, began to eat with ferocious delicacy. His eyes, meanwhile, roved very slowly all around the room—he completed the arc by turning to inspect the people directly behind. I think that, except for my presence, he would have taken one short glance beneath our own table.
“Look here, old sport,” said Gatsby leaning toward me. “I’m afraid I made you a little angry this morning in the car.”
“Not at all, Mr. Gatsby. Though I don’t understand why your request has to come through Miss Baker.”
“You will this afternoon. You’ll find it’s a very natural situation after all. She’s a fine sportswoman and she’d never do anything even faintly questionable.”
Suddenly Gatsby looked at his watch, jumped up and hurried from the room leaving me with Mr. Wolfshiem at the table.
“He has to telephone,” said Mr. Wolfshiem, following him with his eyes. “Fine fellow, isn’t he? Handsome to look at and a perfect gentleman.”
“Yes.”
“He’s an Oggsford man.”
“Oh.”
“He went to Oggsford College in England. You know Oggsford College?”
“I’ve heard of it.”
“It’s one of the most famous colleges in the world.”
“Have you known Gatsby for a long time?” I inquired.
“Several years,” he answered in a gratified way. “I made the pleasure of his acquaintance just after the war. But I knew I had discovered a man of fine breeding after I talked with him an hour. I said to myself, there’s the kind of man you’d like to take home and introduce to your mother and sister.” He paused. “I see you’re looking at my cuff buttons.”
I hadn’t been looking at them, but I did now. They were composed of irregular pieces of ivory.
“Finest specimens of human molars,” he informed me.
“Well!” I inspected them. “That’s a very interesting idea.”
“Yeah.” He flipped his sleeves up under his coat. “Yeah, Gatsby’s very careful about women. He would never so much as look at a friend’s wife.”
When the subject of this instinctive trust returned to the table and sat down Mr. Wolfshiem drank his coffee with a jerk and got to his feet.
“I have enjoyed my lunch,” he said, “and I’m going to run off from you two young men before I outstay my welcome.”
“Don’t hurry, Meyer,” said Gatsby, without enthusiasm. Mr. Wolfshiem raised his hand in a sort of benediction.
“You’re very polite but I belong to another generation,” he announced solemnly. “You sit here and discuss your sports and your young ladies and your——” He supplied an imaginary noun with another wave of his hand——”As for me I am fifty years old, and I won’t impose myself on you any longer.”
As he shook hands and turned away his tragic nose was trembling. I wondered if I had said anything to offend him.
“He becomes very sentimental sometimes,” explained Gatsby. “This is one of his sentimental days. He’s quite a character around New York—a denizen of Broadway.”
“Who is he anyhow—an actor?”
“No.”
“A dentist?”
“Meyer Wolfshiem? No, he’s a gambler.” Gatsby hesitated, then added coolly: “He’s the man who fixed the World’s Series back in 1919.”
“Fixed the World’s Series?” I repeated.
The idea staggered me. I knew of course that the World’s Series had been fixed in 1919 but if I had thought of it at all I would have thought of it as a thing that merely happened, the end of some inevitable chain. It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people—with the singlemindedness of a burglar blowing a safe.
“How did he happen to do that?” I asked after a minute.
“He just saw the opportunity.”
“Why isn’t he in jail?”
“They can’t get him, old sport. He’s a smart man.”
I insisted on paying the check; as the waiter brought my change I caught sight of Tom Buchanan on the other side of the crowded room.
“Come along with me for a minute,” I said. “I’ve got to say hello to a man.”
When we came near Tom jumped up and took half a dozen steps in our direction.
“Where’ve you been?” he demanded eagerly. “Daisy’s furious because you haven’t called up.”
“This is Mr. Gatsby, Mr. Buchanan.”
They shook hands briefly and a strained,
