His movements—he was on foot all the time— were afterward traced to Port Roosevelt and thento Gad’s Hill where he bought a sandwich that hedidn’t eat and a cup of coffee. He must have beentired and walking slowly for he didn’t reach Gad’sHill until noon. Thus far there was no difficulty inaccounting for his time—there were boys who hadseen a man “acting sort of crazy” and motorists atwhom he stared oddly from the side of the road.
Then for three hours he disappeared from view. Thepolice， on the strength of what he said to Michaelis，that he “had a way of finding out，” supposed thathe spent that time going from garage to garagethereabouts inquiring for a yellow car. On the otherhand no garage man who had seen him ever cameforward—and perhaps he had an easier， surer wayof finding out what he wanted to know. By half pasttwo he was in West Egg where he asked someonethe way to Gatsby’s house. So by that time he knewGatsby’s name.
At two o’clock Gatsby put on his bathing suit andleft word with the butler that if any one phonedword was to be brought to him at the pool. Hestopped at the garage for a pneumatic mattress thathad amused his guests during the summer， and thechauffeur helped him pump it up. Then he gaveinstructions that the open car wasn’t to be takenout under any circumstances—and this was strangebecause the front right fender needed repair.
Gatsby shouldered the mattress and started forthe pool. Once he stopped and shifted it a little，and the chauffeur asked him if he needed help， buthe shook his head and in a moment disappearedamong the yellowing trees.
No telephone message arrived but the butler went without his sleep and waited for it until fouro’clock—until long after there was any one to giveit to if it came. I have an idea that Gatsby himselfdidn’t believe it would come and perhaps he nolonger cared. If that was true he must have felt thathe had lost the old warm world， paid a high price forliving too long with a single dream. He must havelooked up at an unfamiliar sky through frighteningleaves and shivered as he found what a grotesquething a rose is and how raw the sunlight was uponthe scarcely created grass. A new world， materialwithout being real， where poor ghosts， breathingdreams like air， drifted fortuitously about… like thatashen， fantastic figure gliding toward him throughthe amorphous trees.
The chauffeur—he was one of Wolfshiem’s protégés—heard the shots—afterward he could onlysay that he hadn’t thought anything much aboutthem. I drove from the station directly to Gatsby’shouse and my rushing anxiously up the front stepswas the first thing that alarmed any one. But theyknew then， I firmly believe. With scarcely a wordsaid， four of us， the chauffeur， butler， gardener and I，hurried down to the pool.
There was a faint， barely perceptible movementof the water as the fresh flow from one end urgedits way toward the drain at the other. With littleripples that were hardly the shadows of waves， theladen mattress moved irregularly down the pool.
A small gust of wind that scarcely corrugated thesurface was enough to disturb its accidental coursewith its accidental burden. The touch of a clusterof leaves revolved it slowly， tracing， like the leg ofcompass， a thin red circle in the water.
It was after we started with Gatsby toward thehouse that the gardener saw Wilson’s body a littleway off in the grass， and the holocaust was complete.
