Suppose you were locked into one of the most secure prisons in America at the turn of the twentieth century. You've been put into solitary confinement, with periodic inspections by the warden, whom you'd informed that you would escape in less than a week. How would you communicate with the outside, how would you smuggle in tools and weapons, and how would you finally break out?
This was the situation confronting Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van...