1 00:00:00,120 --> 00:00:05,280 Speaker 1: My first experience with a great logician by Jacques Foutrelle. 2 00:00:06,440 --> 00:00:09,720 It was once my good fortune to meet in person 3 00:00:09,880 --> 00:00:16,920 Professor Augustus s. F X Van Duson, pH D, L D, 4 00:00:17,760 --> 00:00:23,079 frs M, D, et cetera. The meeting came about through 5 00:00:23,120 --> 00:00:26,920 a singular happening which was as mystifying as it was 6 00:00:27,160 --> 00:00:32,159 dangerous to me. He saved my life in fact, and 7 00:00:32,320 --> 00:00:36,479 in process of hauling me back from eternity, the edge 8 00:00:36,520 --> 00:00:41,240 of that appalling mist which separates life and death, I 9 00:00:41,359 --> 00:00:46,359 had full opportunity of witnessing the workings of that marvelously keen, 10 00:00:46,920 --> 00:00:51,399 cold brain which has made him the most distinguished scientist 11 00:00:51,719 --> 00:00:55,920 and logician of his day. It was some time afterward, however, 12 00:00:56,000 --> 00:00:59,079 that Professor Van Dusson was identified in my mind with 13 00:00:59,200 --> 00:01:02,799 the thinking machine. I had dined at the Hotel Teutonic, 14 00:01:03,079 --> 00:01:06,319 taken a cigar from my pocket, lighted it, and started 15 00:01:06,359 --> 00:01:10,439 for a stroll across Boston Common. It was after eight 16 00:01:10,480 --> 00:01:13,760 o'clock on one of those clear, nippy evenings of winter. 17 00:01:14,519 --> 00:01:16,719 I was near the center of the Common, on one 18 00:01:16,760 --> 00:01:20,760 of the many little bipaths which lead toward Beacon Hill, 19 00:01:20,879 --> 00:01:24,560 when I became conscious of an acute pain in my chest, 20 00:01:25,359 --> 00:01:29,120 a sudden fluttering of my heart, and a constriction in 21 00:01:29,159 --> 00:01:33,239 my throat. The lights in the distance began to waver 22 00:01:33,560 --> 00:01:37,840 and grow dim. Perspiration broke out all over me from 23 00:01:37,879 --> 00:01:42,439 an inward, gnawing agony, which grew more intense each moment. 24 00:01:43,359 --> 00:01:47,359 I felt myself reeling. My cigar dropped from my fingers, 25 00:01:47,359 --> 00:01:51,319 and I clutched at a seat to steady myself. There 26 00:01:51,359 --> 00:01:54,680 was no one near me. I tried to call. Then 27 00:01:54,920 --> 00:01:58,159 everything grew dark and I sank down on the ground. 28 00:01:59,280 --> 00:02:03,239 My last recollection was of a figure approaching me. The 29 00:02:03,319 --> 00:02:08,560 last words I heard were a petulant, irritable dear me. 30 00:02:09,800 --> 00:02:14,240 Then I was lost to consciousness. When I recovered consciousness, 31 00:02:14,240 --> 00:02:17,120 I lay on a couch in a strange room. My 32 00:02:17,240 --> 00:02:21,439 eyes wandered weakly about and lingered with a certain childish 33 00:02:21,520 --> 00:02:26,120 interest on half a dozen spots which reflected glitteringly the 34 00:02:26,240 --> 00:02:29,879 light of an electric bulb sat high up on one side. 35 00:02:30,960 --> 00:02:34,439 These bright spots, I came to realize after a moment, 36 00:02:34,960 --> 00:02:39,680 were metal parts of various instruments of a laboratory. For 37 00:02:39,759 --> 00:02:45,039 a time, I lay helpless, listless, with trembling pulse and 38 00:02:45,159 --> 00:02:49,639 ear drums thumping. Then I heard steps approaching, and someone 39 00:02:49,840 --> 00:02:54,120 bent over and peered into my face. It was a man, 40 00:02:54,199 --> 00:02:57,159 but such a man as I had never seen before. 41 00:02:57,960 --> 00:03:01,639 A great shock of straw yellow hair tumbled about a broad, 42 00:03:02,120 --> 00:03:07,919 high forehead, a small, wrinkled, querulous face, the face of 43 00:03:07,960 --> 00:03:12,599 an aged child, a pair of watery blue eyes squinting 44 00:03:12,639 --> 00:03:17,759 aggressively through thicked spectacles, and a thin lipped mouth as 45 00:03:17,840 --> 00:03:20,960 straight as the mark of a surgeon's knife, save for 46 00:03:21,039 --> 00:03:24,719 the drooping corners. My impression then was that it was 47 00:03:24,800 --> 00:03:29,319 some sort of hallucination, the distorted vagary of a disordered brain. 48 00:03:30,280 --> 00:03:34,280 But gradually my vision cleared, and the grip of slender 49 00:03:34,400 --> 00:03:38,240 fingers on my pulse made me realize the actuality of 50 00:03:38,879 --> 00:03:43,800 the apparition. How do you feel? The thin lips had 51 00:03:43,879 --> 00:03:47,400 opened just enough to let out the question. The tone 52 00:03:47,520 --> 00:03:52,680 was curt and belligerent, and the voice rasped unpleasantly. At 53 00:03:52,680 --> 00:03:55,439 the same time, the squint eyes were focused on mine 54 00:03:55,520 --> 00:04:00,000 with a steady, piercing glare that made me uneasy. I tried, 55 00:04:00,039 --> 00:04:02,719 I had to answer, but my tongue refused to move. 56 00:04:03,360 --> 00:04:06,719 The gaze continued for an instant. Then the man the 57 00:04:06,759 --> 00:04:12,719 thinking machine, turned away and prepared a particularly vile smelling concoction, 58 00:04:13,479 --> 00:04:17,480 which he poured into me. Then I was lost again. 59 00:04:18,279 --> 00:04:21,800 After a time it might have been minutes or hours, 60 00:04:22,399 --> 00:04:25,439 I felt again the hand on my pulse, and again 61 00:04:25,759 --> 00:04:29,959 the thinking machine favored me with a glare. An hour later, 62 00:04:30,000 --> 00:04:32,800 I was sitting up on the couch with unclouded brain 63 00:04:33,160 --> 00:04:36,720 and a heartbeat which was nearly normal. It was then 64 00:04:36,759 --> 00:04:40,600 I learned why Professor van Dusen, an eminent man of 65 00:04:40,639 --> 00:04:45,199 the sciences, had been dubbed the thinking machine. I understood 66 00:04:45,240 --> 00:04:51,360 firsthand how material muddles were so unfailingly dissipated by unadulterated, 67 00:04:51,680 --> 00:04:56,040 infallible logic. Remember that I had gone into that room, 68 00:04:56,160 --> 00:05:02,000 an inanimate thing, inert, unconscious, mentally and physically dead to 69 00:05:02,120 --> 00:05:05,199 all practical intents, beyond the point where I might have 70 00:05:05,319 --> 00:05:10,360 babbled any elucidating fact, and remembered, too please that I 71 00:05:10,439 --> 00:05:14,279 didn't know, had not the faintest idea what had happened 72 00:05:14,279 --> 00:05:17,319 to me beyond the fact that I had fallen unconscious. 73 00:05:17,519 --> 00:05:21,439 The thinking machine didn't ask questions, yet he supplied all 74 00:05:21,439 --> 00:05:25,800 the missing details, together with a host of personal, intimate 75 00:05:25,920 --> 00:05:28,759 things of which he could personally have had no knowledge. 76 00:05:29,160 --> 00:05:32,480 In other words, I was an abtruse problem. And he 77 00:05:32,639 --> 00:05:35,759 solved me. With head tilted back against the cushion of 78 00:05:35,800 --> 00:05:40,680 the chair, and such a head with eyes unwaveringly turned upward, 79 00:05:41,160 --> 00:05:45,519 and fingertips pressed idly together. He sat there, a strange, 80 00:05:45,720 --> 00:05:50,079 grotesque little figure in the midst of his laboratory apparatus. 81 00:05:50,680 --> 00:05:53,439 Not for a moment did he display the slightest interest 82 00:05:53,519 --> 00:05:57,199 in me personally. It was all as if I had 83 00:05:57,199 --> 00:05:59,959 been written down on a slate to be wiped off 84 00:06:00,240 --> 00:06:03,720 when I was solved. Did this ever happen to you before? 85 00:06:04,040 --> 00:06:08,160 He asked abruptly, No, I replied, What was it? You 86 00:06:08,160 --> 00:06:11,600 were poisoned? He said. The poison was a deadly one, 87 00:06:11,839 --> 00:06:16,680 corrosive's subliment, or by chloride or mercury. The shock was 88 00:06:16,839 --> 00:06:21,319 very severe. But you'll be all right in poisoned, I exclaimed, 89 00:06:21,360 --> 00:06:27,120 aghast who poisoned me? Why you poisoned yourself? He replied testily, 90 00:06:27,639 --> 00:06:31,000 It was your own carelessness. Nine out of ten persons 91 00:06:31,040 --> 00:06:33,639 handle poison as if it were candy, and you are 92 00:06:33,879 --> 00:06:38,120 like all the rest. But I couldn't have poisoned myself, 93 00:06:38,319 --> 00:06:42,199 I protested, Why I've had no occasion to handle poisons, 94 00:06:42,279 --> 00:06:45,720 not for I don't know how long. I do know, 95 00:06:45,920 --> 00:06:48,639 he said, it was nearly a year ago when you 96 00:06:48,720 --> 00:06:53,920 handled this. The corrosive sublement is always dangerous. The tone 97 00:06:53,959 --> 00:06:58,800 irritated me. The impassive arrogance of the little man inflamed 98 00:06:58,879 --> 00:07:02,279 my reeling brain. And I'm not sure that I did 99 00:07:02,279 --> 00:07:06,040 not shake my finger in his face. If I was poisoned, 100 00:07:06,279 --> 00:07:09,600 I declared, with some heat, it was not my fault. 101 00:07:09,879 --> 00:07:14,360 Somebody gave it to me, somebody tried to You poisoned yourself, 102 00:07:14,759 --> 00:07:19,279 said the thinking machine again, impatiently. You talk like a child. 103 00:07:19,399 --> 00:07:22,360 How do you know I poisoned myself? How do you 104 00:07:22,399 --> 00:07:25,279 know I ever handled it poisoned? And how do you 105 00:07:25,399 --> 00:07:28,680 know it was a year ago? If I did? The 106 00:07:28,879 --> 00:07:32,759 Thinking Machine regarded me coldly for an instant, and then 107 00:07:32,800 --> 00:07:36,360 those strange eyes of his wandered upward again. I know 108 00:07:36,560 --> 00:07:41,079 those things, he said, just as I know your name, address, 109 00:07:41,240 --> 00:07:44,959 and profession from cards I found in your pockets, Just 110 00:07:45,000 --> 00:07:47,720 as I know you smoke from half a dozen cigars 111 00:07:47,759 --> 00:07:50,319 on you, just as I know that you're wearing those 112 00:07:50,399 --> 00:07:53,639 clothes for the first time this winter, Just as I 113 00:07:53,759 --> 00:07:56,839 know you lost your wife within a few months that 114 00:07:56,920 --> 00:08:00,000 you kept house then, and that your house was an 115 00:08:00,000 --> 00:08:04,480 infested with insects. I know, just as I know everything else, 116 00:08:04,959 --> 00:08:08,800 by the rules of inevitable logic. My head was whirling. 117 00:08:09,480 --> 00:08:13,600 I stared at him in blank astonishment. But how do 118 00:08:13,639 --> 00:08:17,920 you know those things? I insisted in bewilderment. The average 119 00:08:18,000 --> 00:08:22,519 person of today replied, the scientist knows nothing unless it 120 00:08:22,600 --> 00:08:26,399 is written down and thrust under his nose. I happened 121 00:08:26,399 --> 00:08:29,279 to be a physician. I saw you fall and went 122 00:08:29,399 --> 00:08:33,399 to you, my first thought being of heart trouble. Your 123 00:08:33,480 --> 00:08:37,000 pulse showed it was not that, and it was obviously 124 00:08:37,159 --> 00:08:41,600 not apoplexy. Now there was no visible reason why you 125 00:08:41,720 --> 00:08:44,919 should have collapsed like that. There had been no shot, 126 00:08:45,399 --> 00:08:50,919 There was no wound, therefore poisoned. An examination confirmed this 127 00:08:51,080 --> 00:08:56,039 first hypothesis. Your symptoms showed that the poison was by 128 00:08:56,120 --> 00:08:59,440 chloride of mercury. I put you in a cab and 129 00:08:59,480 --> 00:09:02,879 brought you here. From the fact you were not dead, 130 00:09:03,039 --> 00:09:06,960 then I knew that your system had absorbed only a 131 00:09:07,000 --> 00:09:11,440 minute quantity of poison, a quantity so small that it 132 00:09:11,559 --> 00:09:16,440 demonstrated instantly that there had been no suicidal intent, and 133 00:09:16,600 --> 00:09:20,360 was indicated too that no one else had administered it. 134 00:09:20,919 --> 00:09:24,240 If that was true, I knew. I didn't guess. I 135 00:09:24,399 --> 00:09:30,799 knew that the poisoning was accidental. How accidental. My first surmise, naturally, 136 00:09:31,279 --> 00:09:33,639 was that the poison had been absorbed through the mouth. 137 00:09:34,279 --> 00:09:37,559 I searched your pockets. The only thing I found that 138 00:09:37,600 --> 00:09:40,679 you would put in your mouth were the cigars where 139 00:09:40,720 --> 00:09:44,200 they poisoned. A test showed they were all of them 140 00:09:44,840 --> 00:09:49,399 with intent to kill. No, not enough poison was used. 141 00:09:50,320 --> 00:09:52,879 Was the poison a part of the gum used to 142 00:09:52,919 --> 00:09:58,480 bind the cigar? Possible, of course, but not probable. Then 143 00:09:58,559 --> 00:10:04,240 what his eyes and squinted at me suddenly aggressively, I 144 00:10:04,360 --> 00:10:08,159 shook my head, and as an afterthought, I closed my 145 00:10:08,279 --> 00:10:12,679 gaping mouth. Perhaps you carried corrosive supplement in your pocket. 146 00:10:13,320 --> 00:10:16,399 I didn't find any, but perhaps you once carried it. 147 00:10:16,919 --> 00:10:19,279 I tore out the coat pocket in which I found 148 00:10:19,320 --> 00:10:23,320 the cigars and subjected it to the test. At some 149 00:10:23,600 --> 00:10:28,279 time there had been corrosive supplement in the form of 150 00:10:28,399 --> 00:10:32,080 powder or crystals in the pocket, and in some manner, 151 00:10:32,519 --> 00:10:36,960 perhaps because of an imperfection in the package, a minute 152 00:10:37,039 --> 00:10:41,159 quantity was loose in your pocket. Here was an answer 153 00:10:41,200 --> 00:10:45,240 to every question, and more, Here was how the cigars 154 00:10:45,240 --> 00:10:49,200 were poisoned, and in combination with a tailor's tag inside 155 00:10:49,200 --> 00:10:53,399 your pocket, a short history of your life. Briefly, it 156 00:10:53,600 --> 00:10:57,799 was like this. Once you had corrosive supplement in your pocket. 157 00:10:58,559 --> 00:11:03,159 For what purpose? First thought, to rid your home of insects? 158 00:11:03,759 --> 00:11:08,600 Second thought, if you were boarding, married or unmarried, the 159 00:11:08,639 --> 00:11:11,000 task of getting rid of the insects would have been 160 00:11:11,080 --> 00:11:14,279 left to the servant. This would possibly have been the 161 00:11:14,360 --> 00:11:17,159 case if you had been living at home. So I 162 00:11:17,240 --> 00:11:20,759 assumed for the instant that you were keeping house, And 163 00:11:20,840 --> 00:11:24,639 if keeping house you were married, you bought the poison 164 00:11:24,759 --> 00:11:29,440 for use in your own house. Now without an effort, naturally, 165 00:11:29,559 --> 00:11:34,320 I had you married and keeping house. Then what the 166 00:11:34,399 --> 00:11:37,919 tailor's tag with your name and the date your clothing 167 00:11:38,080 --> 00:11:42,120 was made one year and three months ago. It is 168 00:11:42,200 --> 00:11:45,399 winter clothing. If you had worn it since the poison 169 00:11:45,519 --> 00:11:48,080 was loose in your pocket, the thing that happened to 170 00:11:48,120 --> 00:11:51,519 you to night would have happened to you before. But 171 00:11:51,639 --> 00:11:55,480 it never happened before. Therefore, I assumed that you had 172 00:11:55,519 --> 00:12:00,000 the poison early last spring, when insects began to be troublesome, 173 00:12:00,480 --> 00:12:04,000 and immediately after that you laid away the suit until 174 00:12:04,080 --> 00:12:07,240 this winter. I know you are wearing the suit for 175 00:12:07,279 --> 00:12:10,960 the first time this winter, because again, this thing has 176 00:12:11,120 --> 00:12:15,120 not happened before, and because two of the faint odor 177 00:12:15,200 --> 00:12:19,279 of mothballs, a band of crape on your hat, the 178 00:12:19,320 --> 00:12:21,919 picture of a young woman in your watch, and the 179 00:12:22,000 --> 00:12:24,879 fact you are now living at your club as your 180 00:12:24,879 --> 00:12:28,840 bill for last month's shows established beyond doubt that you 181 00:12:28,960 --> 00:12:35,639 are a widower. It's perfectly miraculous, I exclaimed. Logic. Logic, Logic, 182 00:12:35,759 --> 00:12:39,759 snapped the irritable little scientist. You are a lawyer. You 183 00:12:39,840 --> 00:12:43,200 ought to know the correlation of facts. You ought to 184 00:12:43,279 --> 00:12:48,159 know that two and two make four, not sometimes, but 185 00:12:48,519 --> 00:12:53,960 all the time. End of my first experience with the 186 00:12:54,000 --> 00:12:54,840 great logician.