The Problem of Cell Thirteen by Jacques Futrelle

First published: 1905

Type of plot: Suspense

Time of work: 1905

Locale: Boston

Principal Characters:

  • Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, a scientist and the protagonist, known as "The Thinking Machine"
  • Hutchinson Hatch, a newspaper reporter who assists Van Dusen
  • Dr. Charles Ransome, a scientist who challenges Van Dusen to escape from death row prison cell 13
  • Alfred Fielding, an ally of Ransome
  • The warden of Chisholm Prison, who is charged with keeping Van Dusen prisoner for one week

The Story

Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, Ph.D., L.L.D., F.R.S., M.D., M.D.S., is a scientist and logician. The popular press made him known as "The Thinking Machine" when, a novice at the game of chess, he challenged and beat a chess master, bringing to bear logic rather than familiarity with the game. He spends much time in his own small laboratory, from which emanate ideas that deeply influence the scientific world. He claims that logic can solve all problems, and his self-confidence is equal to his achievements.

mss-sp-ency-lit-228281-145367.jpg

Visiting him one evening, fellow scientists Charles Ransome and Alfred Fielding are irritated by that confidence. Trying to imagine a situation that logic alone cannot master, Ransome mentions prisons, saying that even The Thinking Machine cannot reason his way out from a prison cell. Van Dusen claims that, indeed, he can do so. That same night, Ransome and Fielding arrange for Van Dusen to be imprisoned in death row cell 13 of Chisholm Prison. They deliver him to the warden of that prison. Before being taken to his cell, Van Dusen makes several eccentric, but apparently harmless, requests. He asks that his shoes be polished; he also asks for tooth powder and twenty-five dollars in the form of one five-dollar and two ten-dollar bills. The warden honors the requests, and The Thinking Machine, after being thoroughly searched, is taken to his cell, still promising to rejoin his friends for dinner at the end of one week.

In the days that follow, several events shake the warden's faith in his escape-proof prison. While Van Dusen talks with jailers and examines his cell in order to plan his escape, he also begins to leave a series of notes, giving them to his jailers or dropping them from his barred windows. He uses part of his white shirt as paper, and he continues to write on white linen even after the warden takes this shirt away. Moreover, The Thinking Machine has found substances to serve as pen and ink, although he took no such materials to the cell. In the notes, Van Dusen includes two five-dollar bills; he entered the cell with only one. The warden arranges a 3:00 a.m. search but finds little more than a dead rat stuck into an old pipe. After the search, The Thinking Machine produces still more small bills and even coins. At the same time, another prisoner, housed in the cell directly above Van Dusen's, screams in the night, terrorized by a mysterious voice that seems to know all about his crime. He has been accused of killing a woman by throwing acid in her face, and now this voice speaks to him of acid in the dead of night until he hysterically confesses the killing.

The events continue until the seventh day, which is much quieter except that an arc lamp illuminating the prison yard fails. This causes the warden to call the electric company. As the electricians are due to arrive, the warden goes downstairs where he finds Ransome and Fielding waiting at the gate; this is the day on which The Thinking Machine has promised to accomplish his escape. As they stand together by the gate, the warden receives a special delivery letter from The Thinking Machine, confirming their dinner engagement for that evening. The warden sends a guard to check on The Thinking Machine. The guard reports that he is lying quietly in his cell.

The electricians arrive, as do two newspaper reporters. One reporter is Hutchinson Hatch; the other is The Thinking Machine himself, who takes the group back to his cell. There, he shows the men a yellow wig atop a blanket. When he rolls back the blanket, he reveals, carefully arranged on the bed, a dagger, three files, ten feet of wire, some thirty feet of strong rope, a pair of steel pliers, a tack hammer, and a pistol. He also points out that all the window bars and the lower bars in the cell door have been cut through.

At dinner that night, he explains what he has done. When he entered the cell, he says, he noted the rats. Observing that they were field, not house, animals, he watched until he found that they were entering and leaving the cell through abandoned pipes. Using thread from his stockings, he attached a note and a ten-dollar bill to a rat and frightened it back through the pipe to the other end, where it emerged in a field outside the prison walls. The boy who found the bill and note took them, as instructed, to Hatch, who cooperated for the sake of the sensational news story. Hatch returned to the ground outside the prison, found the pipe, and attached a wire, which The Thinking Machine drew back into his cell. From then on, the wire provided a means for sending items of all kinds back and forth. It was in the process of testing the pipe as a speaking tube that Van Dusen inadvertently terrified the convict in the cell above. To inhibit the warden's zeal, The Thinking Machine stuffed a dead rat in the pipe's mouth, and, through the lining of his shirt, which he retained, and ink made of shoe polish, he produced the notes that distracted the warden from the actual escape method. At the last, Van Dusen cut the feed wire to the arc lamp with an acid-tipped wire. The final deception, disguising Hatch and Van Dusen among the electricians, was arranged by Hatch, whose father manages the electric company.