The Man of Last Resort & The Strange Schemes of Randolph Mason

Book excerpt: Randolph Mason is a brusque New York lawyer who is highly skilled at turning legal loopholes and technicalities to his clients' advantage. He is depicted as an utterly amoral character who advises criminals how to commit wrongdoings without breaking the letter of the law. The best-known of these stories is "The Corpus Delicti", in which Mason's client murders a blackmailing lover and dissolves her dismembered corpse in acid. Despite circumstantial evidence, Mason secures his client's acquittal on the grounds that nobody has been found and there are no eyewitnesses to the woman's death, as required by New York law at the time. Post deflected criticism of such sensational stories by affirming that he was publicly exposing weaknesses in the law that needed to be rectified. Melville Davisson Post (1869-1930) was an American author, born in West Virginia. Table of Contents: The Strange Schemes of Randolph Mason The Corpus Delicti Two Plungers of Manhattan Woodford's Partner The Error of William Van Broom The Men of the Jimmy The Sheriff of Gullmore The Animus Furandi The Man of Last Resort (The Clients of Randolph Mason) The Governor's Machine Mrs. Van Barton Once in Jeopardy The Grazier The Rule Against Carper