Jacques Futrelle Short Stories Volume 2 (2 of 107)

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PROBLEM OF DRESSING ROOM A (CONT'D)

There was a little murmur of astonishment when Professor Van Dusen appeared. He was slight to the point of childishness, and his thin shoulders seemed to droop beneath the weight of his enormous head. He wore a number eight hat. His brow rose straight and dome-like, and a heavy shock of long yellow hair gave him almost a grotesque appearance. The eyes were narrow slits of blue, squinting eternally through thick glasses; the face was small, clean shaven, and white with the pallor of the student. His lips made a perfectly straight line. His hands were remarkable for their whiteness, their flexibility, and for the length of the slender fingers. Physical development had never entered into the schedule of his fifty years of life.

The Russian smiled as he sat down at the chess table. He felt that he was humoring a crank. The other masters were grouped near by, curiously expectant. Professor Van Dusen began the game, opening with a queenÂ's gambit. At his fifth move, made without the slightest hesitation, the smile left the RussianÂ's face. At the tenth the master's grew tensely eager. The Russian champion was playing for honor now.

Professor Van DusenÂ's fourteenth move was kingÂ's castle to queenÂ's four. “Check,” he announced.

After a long study of the board the Russian protected his king with a knight. Professor Van Dusen noted the play, then leaned back in his chair with finger tips pressed together. His eyes left the board and dreamily studied the ceiling. For at least fifteen minutes there was no sound, then:

“Mate in fifteen moves!” he said quietly.

There was a quick gasp of astonishment. It took the practised eyes of the masters several minutes to verify the announcement. But the Russian champion saw and leaned back in his chair, a little white and dazed. He was not astonished; he was helplessly floundering in a maze of incomprehensible things. Suddenly he arose and grasped the slender hand of his conqueror.

“You have never played chess before?” he asked.

“Never.”

“Mon Dieu! You are not a man; you are a brain—a machine—a thinking machine.”

“ItÂ's a childÂ's game,” said the scientist abruptly. There was no note of exultation in his voice; it was still the irritable, impersonal tone which was habitual.

This, then, was Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, Ph. D., LL. D., F. R. S., M. D., etc., etc., etc. This is how he came to be known to the world at large as The Thinking Machine. The RussianÂ's phrase had been applied to the scientist as a title by a newspaper reporter, Hutchinson Hatch. It had stuck.


The First Problem


THAT strange, seemingly inexplicable chain of circumstances which had to do with the mysterious disappearance of a famous actress, Irene Wallack, from her dressing room in a Springfield theater in the course of a performance, while the echo of tumultuous appreciation still rang in her ears, was perhaps the first problem which was not purely scientific that The Thinking Machine was ever asked to solve. The scientistÂ's aid was enlisted in this case by Hutchinson Hatch, reporter.

“But I am a scientist, a logician,” The Thinking Machine had protested. “I know nothing whatever of crime.”

“No one knows that a crime has been committed,” the reporter hastened to say.

“There is something far beyond the ordinary in this affair. A woman has disappeared, evaporated into thin air in the hearing, almost in sight, of her friends. The police can make nothing of it. It is a problem for a greater mind than theirs.”

Professor Van Dusen waved the newspaper man to a seat and himself sank back into a great cushioned chair in which his diminutive figure seemed even more child-like than it really was.

“Tell me the story,” he said petulantly, “All of it.”

The enormous yellow head rested against the chair back, the blue eyes squinted steadily upward, the slender fingers were pressed tip to tip. The Thinking Machine was in a receptive mood. Hatch was triumphant; he had had only a vague hope that he could interest this man in an affair which was as bizarre as it was incomprehensible.

“Miss Wallack is thirty years old and beautiful,” the reporter began. “As an actress she has won high recognition not only in this country but in England. You may have read something of her in the daily papers, and if——”

“I never read the papers,” the other interrupted curtly. “Go on.”

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