My day was a busy one, and I had an early dinner at the Savage Club with Tarp Henry, to whom I gave some account of my adventures.  He listened with a sceptical smile on his gaunt face, and roared with laughter on hearing that the Professor had convinced me.

“My dear chap, things don’t happen like that in real life.  People don’t stumble upon enormous discoveries and then lose their evidence.  Leave that to the novelists.  The fellow is as full of tricks as the monkey-house at the Zoo.  It’s all bosh.”

“But the American poet?”

“He never existed.”

“I saw his sketch-book.”

“Challenger’s sketch-book.”

“You think he drew that animal?”

“Of course he did.  Who else?”

“Well, then, the photographs?”

“There was nothing in the photographs.  By your own admission you only saw a bird.”

“A pterodactyl.”

“That’s what he says.  He put the pterodactyl into your head.”

“Well, then, the bones?”

“First one out of an Irish stew.  Second one vamped up for the occasion.  If you are clever and know your business you can fake a bone as easily as you can a photograph.”

I began to feel uneasy.  Perhaps, after all, I had been premature in my acquiescence.  Then I had a sudden happy thought.

“Will you come to the meeting?” I asked.

Tarp Henry looked thoughtful.

“He is not a popular person, the genial Challenger,” said he.  “A lot of people have accounts to settle with him.  I should say he is about the best-hated man in London.  If the medical students turn out there will be no end of a rag.  I don’t want to get into a bear-garden.”

“You might at least do him the justice to hear him state his own case.”

“Well, perhaps it’s only fair.  All right.  I’m your man for the evening.”

When we arrived at the hall we found a much greater concourse than I had expected.  A line of electric broughams discharged their little cargoes of white-bearded professors, while the dark stream of humbler pedestrians, who crowded through the arched door-way, showed that the audience would be popular as well as scientific.  Indeed, it became evident to us as soon as we had taken our seats that a youthful and even boyish spirit was abroad in the gallery and the back portions of the hall.  Looking behind me, I could see rows of faces of the familiar medical student type.  Apparently the great hospitals had each sent down their contingent.  The behavior of the audience at present was good-humored, but mischievous.  Scraps of popular songs were chorused with an enthusiasm which was a strange prelude to a scientific lecture, and there was already a tendency to personal chaff which promised a jovial evening to others, however embarrassing it might be to the recipients of these dubious honors.