25

Almost at the moment when Mr.Gatsby identified himself,a butler hurried toward him with the informationthat Chicago was calling him on the wire.

He excused himself with a small bow that included each of us in turn.

"If you want anything just ask for it.old sport."he urged me.

"Excuse me.I will rejoin you later."When he was gone I turned immediately to Jordanconstrained to assureher of my surprise.I had expeeted that Mr.Gatsby would be a florid and corpulent person in his middle years.

"Who is he?"I demanded.

"Do you know?"

"He's just a man named Gatsby.""Where is he from.I mean?And what does he do?"

"Now you're started on the subject,"she answered with a wan smile.

"Well,he told me once he was an Oxford man."A dim background started to take shape behind him,but ather next remark it faded away.

"However.I don't believe it."

"Why not?""I don't know,"she insisted,"I just don't think he went there."Something in her tone remindedme of the other girl's"I think he killed a man,"and had the effect of stimulating my curiosity.I would haveaccepted without question the information that Gatsby sprang from the swamps of Louisiana or from thelower East Side of New York.That was comprehensible.

But young men didn'tat least in my provincial inexperience I believed they didn'tdrift coolly out ofnowhere and buy a palace on Long Island Sound.

"Anyhow,he gives large parties,"said Jordan.changing the subject with an urbane distaste for the concrete.

"And I like large parties.They're so intimate.

At small parties there isn't any privacy."There was the boom of a bass drum,and the voice of the orchestraleader rang out suddenly above the echolalia of the garden.

"Ladies and gentlemen,"he cried.

"At the request of Mr.Gatsby we are going to play for you Mr.Vladimir Tostoff's latest work,whichattracted so much attention at Carnegie Hall last May.If you read the papers,you know there was a bigsensation."He smiled with jovial condescension.and added:"Some sensation!"Whereupon everybodylaughed.

"The piece is known,"he concluded lustily."asVladimir Tostoffs Jazz History of the World.."The natureof Mr.Tostoff's composition eluded me,because just as it began my eyes fell on Gatsby.standing alone onthe marble steps and looking from one group to another with approving eyes.His tanned skin was drawnattractively tight on his face and his short hair looked as though it were trimmed every day.I could seenothing sinister about him.I wondered if the fact that he was not drinking helped to set him off from hisguests,for it seemed to me that he grew more correct as the frateral hilarity increased.