After saying goodbye to Gatsby (who had to run off to receive a phone call from

Philadelphia), Nick leaved the party.

As he walked home, he saw a crowd gathered around an automobile accident.

In the ditch, beside the road, rested a new coupé with ragged right side and
without front wheel, which had left Gatsby’s drive not two minutes before.

The wheel was lying on the road and several drivers examined it and a traffic jam
formed.

A man in a long duster had dismounted from the wreck and stood in the middle of
the road, looking at the car, the tyre and the observers.

Then the man talked to people, and Nick recognized him. It was the late patron of
Gatsby’s library.

He was asked how this happened and what happened, but he answered briefly
and not clearly.

Owl Eyes said that he knew nothing whatever about mechanics and that he did
not know how to drive a car. Everyone froze in horror and continued to tell him
that if a person does not know how to drive a car, then he should not drive! But
the criminal explained that he was not driving, there were two people in the car.

When the door of the coupe opened, a pause began. Then a pale, dangled person
stepped out of the car very slowly. The ghost staggered for a while before he saw
the man in the duster. He thought that the gas was over, but Owl Eyes pointed at
the amputated wheel and someone from the crowd said that the wheel went
completely off. Then there was a pause. And the ghost asked the crowd about a
gas “line station”. A dozen men explained to him that the wheel and car were no
longer joined by any physical bond.

Nick turned away and went home on the lawn. But on the way, he glanced back
and saw a wafer of a moon was shining over Gatsby’s house. The night was fine.
An unexpected emptiness came and the figure of the host seemed lonely, who
stood on the porch, his hand up in a formal gesture of farewell.