“Yes, and he’s confided it to Magnus,” said Amel, “and he’s shaken the ghost’s confidence in his own material body. He’s shaken them all. Hesketh is in fear now. Riccardo is in fear now. They are all in fear of the particle bodies they have created for themselves, that they may be imprisoned as he is now imprisoned. He wanted to ask you to drink his blood.” Amel started laughing, his wild mad laugh. “Don’t you see? The miserable spirit Gremt has gotten what he wanted: to be flesh and blood; and now there’s no reversing it.” He went on howling with laughter.

I wanted to protest, to say “How the Hell do you know?” but I had the strong sense that he did know and he was right. So what was this body in which Gremt talked and walked and slept? Could he ingest food? Did he sleep? Did he dream? Had he any telepathic power?

“Teskhamen knows,” said Amel. “Teskhamen knows and did not mean for me to know, or you to know, and by way of trying to hide it, he revealed it to me.” He laughed again. “Such geniuses!”

I said nothing for a moment. And then I looked back at the nearest window, at the light flickering beyond the snow in the leaded diamond panes of glass.

“That must be perfectly horrible,” I whispered.

Amel answered me with more laughter. “Let’s be off to find Louis,” he said.

I didn’t care about Amel. I thought of what this must mean for Gremt. I thought of what it had to mean. I weighed all aspects of it in light of what I knew of Gremt and ghosts and spirits. And I knew how this spirit had wanted to become flesh and blood.

“Well, he can die, then, and be a spirit once more, can’t he?” I said.

“I don’t know,” said Amel. “Do you think he’s willing to find out? No being on the earth wants to die, in case you haven’t noticed.”

Probably not. Most assuredly not.

“Come now, enough of these ‘things,’ ” he said with a tone of remarkable weariness. “New Orleans waits. Louis waits. And if he hasn’t come down to New Orleans as you asked, I say we go to New York and get him.”

He had mentioned Louis countless times in the last six months, but the strange thing was, I didn’t trust him with all these mentions of how I needed Louis, and ought to write to Louis, and ought to pick up one of the many telephones around me and call Louis. I had some deep fear that he was in fact jealous of Louis, but I was ashamed of that feeling. Now he was saying, Let’s go, let’s find Louis.