The Problem of Dressing Room A | Page 2

latter's modest apartments on Beacon Hill. He left there with a sadly
puzzled face. That afternoon Professor Van Dusen met the Russian
champion. The newspapers had said a great deal about the affair, and
hundreds were present to witness the game.
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 queen's gambit. At his fifth move, made without the slightest
hesitation, the smile left the Russian's face. At the tenth the master's
grew tensely eager. The Russian champion was playing for honor now.
Professor Van Dusen's fourteenth move was king's castle to queen'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."
"It's a child'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 Russian'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
scientist'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."
"She is unmarried, and as far as anyone knows, had