The Problem of Cell 13

A professor bets two colleagues that he can escape a condemned cell in a week using nothing but his head, and is locked in under conditions he does not choose. Futrelle's Thinking Machine solves by pure reasoning and contempt for the obvious; this is the most famous of the stories. Futrelle drowned with the Titanic at thirty-seven, having put his wife in a lifeboat. Fifty-seven plates of prison interiors and shadowed figures by Piranesi and Whistler accompany the tale, matching its architecture of confinement and escape.