"All things that start must go somewhere."
Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, Ph.D., LL.D., F.R.S., M.D., M.D.S. also known as the “thinking machine’ (nicknamed so because of his ability to solve problems by the remorseless application of logic after his winning of a match against the fictional chess champion of the day, Tschaikowsky, in a demonstration to show the power of applying pure logic) He featured in a series of detective short stories and two novels by Jacques Futrelle all of which are collected in these volumes.
‘The problem of Cell 13’ –the story that introduced the thinking machine attained cult status with its impossible escape challenge, in a variation of the locked door mystery. Accompany Professor Van Dusen in these gripping stories as he solves a variety of different mysteries with his friend and companion, Hutchinson Hatch, reporter of a fictional newspaper called The Daily New Yorker as he justifies his cold thinking and aphorisms like "Two and two always equal four," "Nothing is impossible" and "All things that start must go somewhere.".