One day towards the end of May, however, just as I was leaving Bronx Park to return to town, Professor Lesard, of the reptilian department, called out to me that Professor Farrago wanted to see me a moment; so I put my pipe into my pocket again and retraced my steps to the temporary, wooden building occupied by Professor Farrago, general superintendent of the Zoological Gardens. The professor, who was sitting at his desk before a pile of letters and replies submitted for approval by me, pushed his glasses down and looked over them at me with a whimsical smile that suggested amusement, impatience, annoyance, and perhaps a faint trace of apology. "Now, here's a letter," he said, with a deliberate gesture towards a sheet of paper impaled on a file--"a letter that I suppose you remember." He disengaged the sheet of paper and handed it to me. "Oh yes," I replied, with a shrug; "of course the man is mistaken--or--" "Or what?" demanded Professor Farrago, tranquilly, wiping his glasses. "--Or a liar," I replied. After a silence he leaned back in his chair and bade me read the letter to him again, and I did so with a contemptuous tolerance for the writer, who must have been either a very innocent victim or a very stupid swindler. I said as much to Professor Farrago, but, to my surprise, he appeared to waver. "I suppose," he said, with his near-sighted, embarrassed smile, "that nine hundred and ninety-nine men in a thousand would throw that letter aside and condemn the writer as a liar or a fool?" "In my opinion," said I, "he's one or the other." "He isn't--in mine," said the professor, placidly. "What!" I exclaimed. "Here is a man living all alone on a strip of rock and sand between the wilderness and the sea, who wants you to send somebody to take charge of a bird that doesn't exist!" "How do you know," asked Professor Farrago, "that the bird in question does not exist?" "It is generally accepted," I replied, sarcastically, "that the great auk has been extinct for years. Therefore I may be pardoned for doubting that our correspondent possesses a pair of them alive." "Oh, you young fellows," said the professor, smiling wearily, "you embark on a theory for destinations that don't exist." He leaned back in his chair, his amused eyes searching space for the imagery that made him smile. "Like swimming squirrels, you navigate with the help of Heaven and a stiff breeze, but you never land where you hope to--do you?" Rather red in the face, I said: "Don't you believe the great auk to be extinct?" "Audubon saw the great auk." "Who has seen a single specimen since?" "Nobody--except our correspondent here," he replied, laughing. I laughed, too, considering the interview at an end, but the professor went on, coolly: "Whatever it is that our correspondent has--and I am daring to believe that it _is_ the great auk itself--I want you to secure it for the society."