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.”
“Don’t 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 Gatsby’s face.
“That drugstore business was just small change,” continued Tom slowly, “but you’ve got something on now that Walter’s 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