YMMV / The Thinking Machine

• Harsher in Hindsight: It's a lot sadder to read the lighthearted description of Herbert Conway's voyage aboard the Romanic from England to America in "The Missing Necklace", knowing that just six years after writing the story, Jacques Futrelle died in the sinking of the Titanic.
• Magnificent Bastard: In "The Missing Necklace", Bradlee Cunnyngham Leighton is a bold and clever Gentleman Thief, stealing priceless jewels literally under their owners' noses. The police are never able to arrest him due to constant lack of evidence, prompting them to admire him enormously. With an elastic cord hidden in his sleeve, Leighton steals Lady Varron's pearl necklace when she stumbles during a dance, and is the first one to call attention to the disappearance and to suggest a search. He smuggles the pearls to America, hiding them in the ship's drain pipe, and later uses his accomplice's homing pigeons to carry them from the ship to his hiding place. All the time, he is friendly and companionable with the investigator sent to track him and the customs officers, pleasantly allowing them to search him and his cabin as many times as they want. Even after his trick is figured out and the pearls are recovered, Leighton escapes after lightly wounding the investigator. The last line of the story states that "Leighton has not yet been caught".