- The Abstentionists wanted a new constitution.
- The Mizzists - comprising three clubs: Giovine Malta, Dante Alighieri, Il Comitato Patriottico - sought (a) Italian hegemony in Malta, (b) aggrandizement for the leader, Dr. Enrico Mizzi.
- The Church - here perhaps Stencil's C. of E. stuffiness colored an otherwise objective view - wanted only what the Church always desires during times of political crisis. She awaited a Third Kingdom. Violent overthrow is a Christian phenomenon.
The matter of a Paraclete's coming, the comforter, the dove; the tongues of flame, the gift of tongues: Pentecost. Third Person of the Trinity. None of it was implausible to Stencil. The Father had come and gone. In political terms, the Father was the Prince; the single leader, the dynamic figure whose virtu used to be a determinant of history. This had degenerated to the Son, genius of the liberal love-feast which had produced 1848 and lately the overthrow of the Czars. What next? What Apocalypse?
Especially on Malta, a matriarchal island. Would the Paraclete be also a mother? Comforter, true. But what gift of communication could ever come from a woman . . .
Enough, lad, he told himself. You're in dangerous waters. Come out, come out.
'Don't turn around now,' Demivolt broke in conversationally, 'but it's she. At Maijstral's table.'
When Stencil did turn around he saw only a vague figure in an evening cape, her face shadowed by an elaborate, probably Parisian bonnet.
'That is Veronica Manganese.'
'Gustavus V is ruler of Sweden. You are brimful of intelligence, aren't you.'
Demivolt gave Stencil a thumbnail dossier on Veronica Manganese. Origins uncertain. She'd popped up in Malta at the beginning of the war, in the company of one Sgherraccio, a Mizzist. She was now intimate with various renegade Italians, among them D'Annunzio the poet-militant, and one Mussolini, an active and troublesome anti-socialist. Her political sympathies weren't known; whatever they might be, Whitehall was less than amused. The woman was clearly a troublemaker. She was reputed to be wealthy; lived alone in a villa long abandoned by the baronage of Sant' Ugo di Tagliapiombo di Sammut, a nearly defunct branch of the Maltese nobility. The source of her income was not apparent.
'He's a double agent, then.'
'It would seem so.'
'Why don't I go back to London. You seem to be doing quite well -'
'Negative, negative, Sidney. You do remember Florence.'
A waiter materialized with more Barcelona beer. Stencil fumbled for his pipe. 'This must be the worst brew in the Mediterranean. You deserve another, for that. Can't Vheissu ever be a dead file?'
'Call Vheissu a symptom. Symptoms like that are always alive, somewhere in the world.'
'Sweet Christ, we've only now concluded one. Are they quite ready, do you think, to begin this foolishness again?'
'I don't think,' Demivolt smiled grimly. 'I try not to. Seriously, I believe all elaborate games of this sort arise from someone in the Office - high up, of course - getting a hunch. Saying to himself, 'Look here: something is wrong, you know.' He's usually right. In Florence he was right, again only as far as we're talking about symptoms and not about any acute case of whatever the disease is.
'Now you and I are only private-soldiers. For myself, I wouldn't presume. That manner of guesswork draws from a really first-rate intuitiveness. Oh, we have our own minor hunches, of course: your following Maijstral tonight. But it's a matter of level. Level of pay-grade, level of elevation above the jumble, where one can see the long-term movements. We're in it, in the thick, after all.'
'And so they want us together,' Stencil murmured.
'As of now. Who knows what they'll want tomorrow?'
'And I wonder who else is here.'
'Look sharp. There they go.' They let the two across the street move off before they arose. 'Like to see the island? They're probably on their way out to the Villa. Not that the rendezvous is apt to prove very exciting.'
So they made their way down Strada Stretta, Demivolt looking like a jaunty anarchist with the black bundle under one arm.
'The roads are terrible,' Demivolt admitted, 'but we have an automobile.'
'I'm frightened to death of automobiles.'
Indeed he was. On route to the villa Stencil clutched the Peugeot's seat, refusing to look at anything but the floorboards. Autos, balloons, aeroplanes; he'd have nothing to do with them.
'Isn't this rather crude,' he gritted, huddled behind the windscreen as if expecting it to vanish at any moment. 'There's no one else on the road.'
'At the speed she's going she'll lose us soon enough,' Demivolt chirruped, all breezy. 'Relax, Sidney.'
They moved southwest into Floriana. Ahead, Veronica Manganese's Benz had vanished in a gale of cinders and exhaust. 'Ambush,' Stencil suggested.
'They're not that sort.' After awhile Demivolt turned right. They worked their way thus round Marsamuscetto in near-darkness. Reeds whistled in the fens. Behind them the illuminated city seemed tilted toward them, like some display case in a poor souvenir shop. And how quiet was Malta's night. Approaching or leaving other capitals, one always caught the sense of a great pulse or plexus whose energy reached one by induction; broadcasting its
