When I read the account of the murder – the knife-stabbing! – bah! Don't I know enough of English crime not to be certain at once that no Englishman, be he ruffian from the gutter or be he Duke's son, ever stabs his victim in the back. Italians, French, Spaniards do it, if you will, and women of most nations. An Englishman's instinct is to strike and not to stab. George Higgins or Lord Arthur Skelmerton would have knocked their victim down; the woman only would lie in wait till the enemy's back was turned. She knows her weakness, and she does not mean to miss.

"Think it over. There is not one flaw in my argument, but the Police never thought the matter out – perhaps in this case it was as well."

He had gone and left Miss Polly Burton still staring at the photograph of a pretty, gentle-looking woman, with a decided willful curve round the mouth, and a strange unaccountable look in the large pathetic eyes; and the little journalist felt quite thankful that in this case the murder of Charles Lavender the bookmaker – cowardly, wicked as it was – had remained a mystery to the police and the public.

THE GREAT AUTO MYSTERY

(Detective: The Thinking Machine)

Jacques Futrelle

The Thinking Machine, AKA Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, Ph.D., LL. D., F. R. S., M. D., is perhaps Sherlock Holmes’ only superior at the art of ratiocination. Created by Jacques Futrelle (1875-1912), whose career was cut short at the age of thirty-seven when he went down on the Titanic, The Thinking Machine debuted in 1906, when he appeared at the end of a mystery novel, The Chase of the Golden Plate, to provide a solution to the crime. Tragically, The Thinking Machine's farewell performance was two short years later in 1908 – his career as abbreviated, and its end as untimely, as that of his creator. The first and most famous Thinking Machine tale was "The Problem of Cell 13," which has been rightly described as one of the most anthologized detective stories of all time.



21 из 175