The walls were adorned with the heads of wild beasts and their great furry hides shared honors with the Persian rugs on the floor.

Hare was a man who would pack up at a moment's notice and go to the far ends of the world to find a perfect black panther, a cheetah with a litter, or a great horned rhinoceros.

He was tall and broad, and amazingly active, for all that his hair and mustache were almost white.

For thirty years or more he had gone about the hazardous enterprise of supplying zoological gardens and circuses with wild beasts.

He was known from Hamburg to Singapore, from Mombassa to Rio Janeiro.