THE THINKING MACHINE

Seven of Futrelle’s 47 stories about Augustus S.F.X. Van Dusen, originally published in 1905 and collected in 1907, five years before the author went down with the Titanic.

He’s not much to look at, and his manners could stand a polish. (His most frequent greeting is “Well?”) For sheer brainpower, though, not even Sherlock Holmes can top the detective dubbed The Thinking Machine. Accompanied and often assisted by newspaper reporter Hutchinson Hatch, he’s available to solve an impressively wide range of crimes. Even “The Scarlet Thread” and “The Flaming Phantom,” the most routine of these stories, are ingenious in demonstrating how an aspiring murderer doused the flame but kept the gas going in the target’s home and why something called the THING is haunting an otherwise respectable domicile. “The Man Who Was Lost,” “The Great Auto Mystery,” “The Ralston Bank Burglary,” and “The Mystery of a Studio” all showcase both the powers of the irritable sleuth and the author’s ability to generate suspense from apparently simple mysteries—who blew up a bank’s impregnable safe? What’s become of a missing artist’s model? What’s the connection between a murdered actress and another woman’s elopement? What’s the true identity of the amnesiac John Doane?—by letting the detective spin out one possibility after another instead of simply grilling suspects. The masterpiece here, however, is the endlessly anthologized story “The Problem of Cell 13,” in which The Thinking Machine bets a friend he can escape from solitary confinement in a local prison within a week. Spoiler: Even after his successful escape, his explanation is strewn with surprises.

A largely forgotten detective well worth getting to know beyond his signature appearance.