I hardly know where I am when I hear about a thing like this and am completely knocked down and out.
Yours truly MEYER WOLFSHIEM_
and then hasty addenda beneath :
_Let me know about the funeral etc do not know his family at all._ When the phone rang that afternoon and Long Distance said Chicago was calling I thought this would be Daisy at last. But the connection came through as a man’s voice, very thin and far away.
“This is Slagle speaking….”
“Yes ?” The name was unfamiliar.
“Hell of a note, isn’t it ? Get my wire ?”
“There haven’t been any wires.”
“Young Parke’s in trouble,” he said rapidly. "They picked him up when he handed the bonds over the counter. They got a circular from New York giving’em the numbers just five minutes before. What d’you know about that, hey ? You never can tell in these hick towns——"
“Hello !” I interrupted breathlessly. "Look here—this isn’t Mr. Gatsby. Mr. Gatsby’s dead."
There was a long silence on the other end of the wire, followed by an exclamation… then a quick squawk as the connection was broken. I think it was on the third day that a telegram signed Henry C. Gatz arrived from a town in Minnesota. It said only that the sender was leaving immediately and to postpone the funeral until he came.
It was Gatsby’s father, a solemn old man very helpless and dismayed, bundled up in a long cheap ulster