“I wonder,” said the man in the dark, “if you have read Schimmelpenninck on the Sexagintal and the Duodecimal in the Chaldee Mysteries?”
“I have not and I doubt if anyone else has. I would guess that you are also Schimmelpenninck and that you have just made up the name on the spur of the moment.”
“I am Schimm, it is true, but I made up the name on the spur of a moment many years ago.”
“I am a little bored with you,” said Vincent, “but I would appreciate it if you’d do your glass-filling trick once more.”
“I have just done so. And you are not bored; you are frightened.”
“Of what?” asked Vincent, whose glass was in fact full again.
“Of reentering a dread that you are not sure was a dream. But there are advantages to being both invisible and inaudible.”
“Can you be invisible?”
“Was I not when I went behind the bar just now and fixed you a drink?”
“How?”