V.

Even if it were not, could it matter? A phrase (it often happened when he was exhausted) kept cycling round and round, preconsciously, just under the threshold of lip and tongue movement: "Events seem to be ordered into an ominous logic." It repeated itself automatically and Stencil improved on it each time, placing emphasis on different words - "events seem"; "seem to be ordered"; "ominous logic" - pronouncing them differently, changing the "tone of voice" from sepulchral to jaunty: round and round and round. Events seem to be ordered into an ominous logic. He found paper and pencil and began to write the sentence in varying hands and type faces. Profane lurched in on him thus.

"Paola's back with her husband," said Profane and collapsed on the bed. "She'll go back to the States."

"Someone," Stencil muttered, "is out of it, then." Profane groaned and pulled blankets around him. "Look here," said Stencil. "Now, you're sick." He crossed to Profane, felt his forehead. "High fever. Stencil must get a doctor. What the hell were you doing out at this hour anyway."

"No." Profane flopped over, fished under the bed in his ditty bag. "APC's. I'll sweat it out."

Neither spoke for a while but Stencil was too distraught to hold anything in. "Profane," he said.

"Tell Paola's father. I'm only along for the ride."

Stencil began to pace. Laughed: "Stencil doesn't think he believes him any longer." Profane rolled over laboriously and blinked at him.

"V.'s is a country of coincidence, ruled by a ministry of myth. Whose emissaries haunt this century's streets. Porcépic, Mondaugen, Stencil pere, this Maijstral, Stencil fils. Could any of them create a coincidence? Only Providence creates. If the coincidences are real then Stencil has never encountered history at all, but something far more appalling.

"Stencil came on Father Fairing's name once, apparently by accident. Today he came on it again, by what only could have been design."

"I wonder," said Profane, "if that was the same Father Fairing . . ."

Stencil froze, the booze jittering in his glass. While Profane, dreamy, went on to tell of his nights with the Alligator Patrol, and how he'd hunted one pinto beast through Fairing's Parish; cornered and killed it in a chamber lit by some frightening radiance.

Carefully Stencil finished the whisky, cleaned out the glass with a handkerchief, set the glass on the table. He put on his overcoat.

"You going out for a doctor," Profane said into the pillow.

"Of sorts," Stencil said.

An hour later he was at Maijstral's.

"Don't wake her," Maijstral said. "Poor child. I'd never seen her cry."

"Nor have you seen Stencil cry," said Stencil, "but you may. Ex-priest. He has a soul possessed by the devil sleeping in his bed."

"Profane?" In an attempt at good humor: "We must get to Father A., he's a frustrated exorcist, always complaining about the lack of excitement."

"Aren't you a frustrated exorcist?"

Maijstral frowned. "That's another Maijstral."

"She possesses him," Stencil whispered. "V."

"You are as sick."

"Please."

Maijstral opened the window and stepped out on the balcony. Valletta by nightlight looked totally uninhabited. "No," Maijstral said, "you wouldn't get what you wanted. What - if it were your world - would be necessary. One would have to exorcise the city, the island, every ship's crew on that Mediterranean. The continents, the world. Or the western part," as an afterthought. "We are western men."

Stencil shrank at the cold air moving in through the window.

"I'm not a priest. Don't try appealing to someone you've only known in a written confession. We do not walk ganged, Stencil, all our separate selves, like Siamese quintuplets or more. God knows how many Stencils have chased V. about the world."

"Fairing," Stencil croaked, "in whose Parish Stencil was shot, preceded your Father Avalanche."

"I could have told you. Told you the name."

"But."

"Saw no advantage in making things worse."

Stencil's eyes narrowed. Maijstral turned, caught him looking cagy.

"Yes, yes. Thirteen of us rule the world in secret."

"Stencil went out of his way to bring Profane here. He should have been more careful; he wasn't. Is it really his own extermination he's after?"

Maijstral turned smiling to him. Gestured behind his back at the ramparts of Valletta. "Ask her," he whispered. "Ask the rock."

III

Two days later Maijstral arrived at the lodging-house to find Profane lying dead drunk and slaunchwise on the bed. Afternoon sun illuminated a swathe of face in which every hair of a week's growth showed up separate and distinct. Profane's mouth was open, he was snoring and drooling and apparently enjoying himself.

Maijstral gave Profane's forehead the back of his hand: fine. The fever had broken. But where was Stencil? No sooner asked than Maijstral saw the note. A cubist moth, alit forever on the gross heap of Profane's beer belly.