He worked for the Atlanta Journal, where he began their sports section, the New York Herald, the Boston Post and the Boston American, where, in 1905, his Thinking Machine character appeared in a serialized version of the short story, "The Problem of Cell 13".

He had a harbor-view house built in Scituate, Massachusetts, which he called "Stepping Stones", and spent most of his time there until his death in 1912.

[1] Returning from Europe aboard the RMS Titanic, Futrelle, a first-class passenger, refused to board a lifeboat, insisting Lily do so instead, to the point of forcing her in.

She remembered the last she saw of him: he was smoking a cigarette on deck with John Jacob Astor IV.

In this literary experiment, The Thinking Machine provides a rational solution to the seemingly impossible and supernatural events of a ghost story written by Mrs.