LARGELY, IF INEXPLICABLY, forgotten today, the Infallible Godahl may well be the greatest criminal in the history of mystery fiction. Unlike such better-known thieves as A. J. Raffles, Arsène Lupin, and Simon Templar (the Saint), who rely on their wit, charm, intuition, and good luck to pull off a caper, Godahl has a purely scientific approach to jobs. His computer-like mind assesses every possibility in terms of logic and probabilities; his successes are triumphs of pure reason—the inevitable victory of superior intellect. As a result of his infallibility, he has never even been suspected of a crime, much less caught.
The exploits of Godahl are the product of one of America’s most underrated mystery writers, Frederick Irving Anderson (1877–1947), who also created the only slightly better-known jewel thief, Sophie Lang. The pretty young woman’s adventures are recounted in The Notorious Sophie Lang (1925) and further immortalized in three films: The Notorious Sophie Lang (1934), The Return of Sophie Lang (1936), and Sophie Lang Goes West (1937); all were produced by Paramount and starred Gertrude Michael.
Born in Aurora, Illinois, Anderson moved east and became a star reporter for the New York World from 1898 to 1908 and then became a successful and highly paid fiction writer for the top American and English magazines, notably The Saturday Evening Post, in which most of his mystery stories, and all six of his Godahl stories, were first published. Anderson’s only other volume of mystery fiction was The Book of Murder (1930), selected by Ellery Queen as one of the 106 greatest collections of mystery stories ever published.
“The Fifth Tube” was first collected in The Adventures of the Infallible Godahl (New York, Crowell, 1914).