Farley's eyes went immediately to the figure in the middle. It was a man, possibly young, possibly in middle age, it was impossible to tell, for the hooded face was ravaged beyond description, the eyes turned upwards, showing only the whites, the skin mottled, flecked with scabs, the teeth in the open, drooling mouth sloping towards the throat as though knocked backwards. Farley's glimpse of him was brief, but his diagnostic sense, honed by months of practice in Barich, told him instantly that the man was in the last stages of syphilitic dementia.

Overcome with pity, Farley stretched out a helping hand towards the stricken man. But no sooner had the man's companions caught sight of him than they fled, melting away into the darkness. Farley stared after them and then headed down the path, to the laboratory.

When he was a few yards from the bungalow an unexpected sound came to his ears: a low chant, sung in unison by a number of voices. Slowing his pace, he listened carefully. It was soon evident that the source of the sound lay not in the bungalow but elsewhere. Looking carefully around, through the trees and bamboo thickets, Farley saw that a number of people had gathered around a low outhouse, a short distance away. They were squatting in a circle, around a fire, chanting to the accompaniment of hand-held brass cymbals, as though in preparation for a ritual or ceremony.

Curious now, he hurried towards the outhouse, but just then the main door of the laboratory flew open and the young assistant came running out. Under the guise of an effusive welcome, he ushered Farley quickly towards the laboratory.

Just as he was about to enter the laboratory, Farley noticed a great deal of activity in a nearby anteroom. The assistant tried to hurry him past but by dint of dragging his feet Farley managed to steal a quick glance into the room. The sight that met his eyes was so bewildering that he uttered no protest when his guide manoeuvred him through the laboratory door. What he saw was this: the woman Mangala was seated at the far end of the room, on a low divan, but alone and in an attitude of command, as though enthroned. By her side were several small bamboo cages, each containing a pigeon. Yet it was not the birds themselves, but rather the state they were in that amazed him. For they were slumped on the floors of their cages, shivering, evidently near death.

Nor was that all. On the floor, by the divan, clustered around the woman's feet, were some half-dozen people in various attitudes of supplication, some touching her feet, others lying prostrate. Two or three others were huddled against the wall, wrapped in blankets. Although Farley had glanced into their scarred, unseeing faces for no more than an instant, he recognized at once that they, like the man he had seen in the bamboo thicket, were syphilitics, in the final stages of the terrible disease.

Now the young assistant began once again to perform the charade of the previous day, fetching slides, and hurrying back and forth across the room as though egging him on towards some extraordinary discovery. Farley did not demur. He went mechanically about the business of examining the slides they presented him, while his mind remained fixed upon the extraordinary tableau he had glimpsed outside.

If there was much that was bewildering about the strange scenes outside, there was one aspect of it that was perfectly comprehensible to Farley, from his own experience. More than once in Barich he had found himself becoming the reluctant repository of the last despairing hopes of a frantic and fearful family that had arrived at the clinic's doorstep carrying a mortally ill relative through forests and over mountains. He knew the faces of those people, the beseeching supplication in their voices, the waning light of hope in their eyes. His conscience called out to him to go outside and tell them not to waste their hopes on whatever quackery it was that this woman offered; to expose the falsehoods that she and her minions had concocted to deceive those simple people. It was his duty, he knew, to tell them that mankind knew no cure for their condition; that this false prophetess was cheating them of money they could ill afford.

Yet he stayed where he was in the hope that with some patience he would be able to see the matter through to the end. Minute followed minute and hour followed hour, and still he kept his eye fixed upon the microscope, pretending to examine everything that was placed in front of him. As the hours wore on, he could feel the impatience growing around him; he could hear it in hurrying footsteps; he could feel it in the eyes that were boring through his back, willing him to leave so they could get on with whatever they had planned. But he stayed at his place, unmoving, immobile, to all appearances utterly absorbed in the slides.

Then at last, when the daylight had nearly faded, Farley called out: 'Bearer, kindly light the gas lamps. I have a great deal more to do.'

At this the assistant began to expostulate: 'But, sir, there is nothing here, you will see nothing, you are simply wasting your time, for no reason.'

Farley had been hoping and waiting for precisely such a moment. Now, raising his voice, he said: 'Hear me well: I shall not leave this laboratory until I have seen the transformations that Laveran described. I am willing to stay here all night, if need be: I shall stay as long as I must.'

With that he lowered his head to the microscope once again. But in the meanwhile he had taken the precaution of placing the glass tumbler before him again, and now out of the corner of his eyes he saw the assistant snatching up a set of clean slides and slipping away to the anteroom.

Once he was gone, Farley made his way silently across the laboratory. Flattening himself against the wall, he crept towards the door until he had manoeuvred himself into a position where he could look into the anteroom without himself being detected.

Farley had steeled himself for anything, or so he thought, but he was unprepared for what he saw next. First the assistant went up to the woman, Mangala, still regally ensconced on her divan, and touched his forehead to her feet. Then in the manner of a courtier or acolyte he whispered some word of advice in her ear. She nodded in agreement and took the clean slides from him. Reaching for the birdcages she allowed her hand to rest upon each of the birds in turn, as though she were trying to ascertain something. Then she seemed to come to a decision; she reached into a cage, and took one of the shivering birds into her lap. She folded her hands over it and her mouth began to move as though muttering a prayer. Then suddenly a scalpel appeared in her right hand; she held the bird away from her and with a single flick of her wrist beheaded the dying pigeon. Once the flow of blood had lessened, she picked up the clean slides, smeared them across the severed neck, and handed them to the assistant.

Farley had the presence of mind to go hurrying across the room to his microscope. No sooner had he seated himself than the young man came in.

'Please examine these now, sir,' he said with a wide smile. 'Maybe you will at last achieve success in your quest.'

Farley turned the slides over his hand. 'But,' he said, 'these are not properly stained: the blood on them is still fresh.'

'Yes, sir,' said the assistant, offhandedly. 'Perhaps that which you are looking for can only be seen in freshly drawn blood.'

Farley placed the slide under the microscope and looked into the instrument. At first he saw nothing unusual; nothing that would have indicated to him, had he not known, that this exhibit came from a pigeon. He noticed the familiar granules of malarial pigment. But then suddenly he saw movement; under his eyes amoeboid forms began to squirm and move, undulating slowly across the glassy surface. Then all at once there was a flurry of movement and they began to disintegrate: it was then that he saw Laverari's rods appear, hundreds of them, tiny cylindrical things, with their pointed, penetrating heads piercing the bloody miasma.