The Strange Schemes of Randolph Mason

In Short

Melville Davisson Post’s 1896 collection follows Randolph Mason, a brilliant, cynical New York lawyer of unusual power who diagnoses the fatal flaws in criminal plots. Rather than planning conventional crimes or defending the innocent, Mason exposes the technical loopholes in statutes and the narrow definitions of jurisprudence, showing desperate men how to achieve their ends without technically violating the law. Through a series of dark episodes involving finance, land, and betrayal, the book investigates the rigid mechanics of the legal system, exploring how the letter of the law can be weaponized against justice itself. Its enduring fascination lies in its cold-eyed critique of legal formalism and the labyrinthine loopholes of nineteenth-century jurisprudence.

The Story

The collection opens with a meditation on the nature of storytelling and the modern hunger for intricate, high-stakes problems. We are introduced to Samuel Walcott, a man caught in a semi-tragic situation involving Miss Virginia St. Clair, whose old-fashioned honesty is deeply threatened. Walcott seeks out Randolph Mason, a weary, exhausted attorney with restless inky eyes and a heavy square jaw. Mason bluntly informs Walcott that master plotters fail because they provide no escape from the punisher; true safety requires an escape ipso jure.

The narrative shifts through various desperate figures seeking Mason’s counsel to escape financial ruin or criminal charges. In one case, Victor Ancona is accused of murdering Nina San Croix, whose body has completely vanished. When brought to trial, Mason moves for a directed verdict of not guilty on the grounds that the corpus delicti has not been proven, successfully exploiting the absence of a corpse. In another episode, the Montcure brothers, Sidney and Gordon, face utter financial collapse in a stock market corner. They are directed by a melancholy stranger to Mason’s Wall Street office, where a plot is hatched to remove the presiding judge via a bogus telegram, paralyzing the legal process and thwarting Barton Woodlas's foreclosure rights.

Other desperate actors follow. Carper Harris finds himself facing disgrace, only for his sturdy cattle-man brother William to step in with a scheme involving a partnership agreement and a drove of export cattle purchased from old Ralph Izzard, leading to an extradition attempt that collapses because the affidavit fails to support a charge of felony. Camden Gerard charms a jeweller named William Van Broom and purchases a twenty-five-dollar ring, setting in motion an elaborate entanglement. Later, Mason is lured to a bare, dirty room by an underground gang unable to crack a high combination; he analyzes their predicament with chilling precision. When Barker is prosecuted for obtaining money under false pretenses regarding a missing child, Mason files a remarkable brief demonstrating that criminal charges require a false representation of an existing or past fact rather than a promissory statement about the future.

The episodes continue with Colonel Moseby Allen, a smooth politician who maneuvers the naive new sheriff, Jacob Wade, into letting him settle county funds, only for the indictment for embezzlement to collapse because the statute's technical elements are not met. William Walson, a coal company manager carrying twenty thousand dollars, is mistakenly handcuffed by a highwayman who believes he is "Red Lead Jim," illustrating how clumsy interference can accidentally evade the animus furandi. Finally, after various detectives and officers are baffled by the inability of the courts to touch these maneuvers, a weary Police Chief and District Attorney concede that there is no power to alter established legal decrees. The book closes as an emaciated, rigid Randolph Mason boards an ocean liner bound for France, instantly plotting how the million-dollar ship might be wrested from its owners with no crime committed.

How It Unfolds

The cynical diagnostician Randolph Mason is introduced in his club office as a tired, exhausted man with burning red eyes whose piercing intellect cuts straight to the fatal flaws of criminal plots. He instructs clients that master criminals fail not because they bungle the crime, but because they ignore the third element: escaping the punisher ipso jure.

The vanishing corpse Victor Ancona screams in terror upon arrest for a murder where a bloody dress and a Mexican knife are recovered, yet no body can be found. Mason stuns the courtroom by securing an immediate acquittal solely because the corpus delicti has not been proven.

The manipulated judiciary Gordon and Sidney Montcure, facing financial ruin, consult Mason and utilize a bogus telegram to lure away a resident judge. This absence paralyzes the court, leaving an aggrieved property owner helpless because the adversary is technically exercising a legal right.

The promissory loophole Barker and other underworld figures seek Mason's help to bypass criminal charges for extortion and fraud. Mason's brilliant brief establishes that the law only punishes false representations of past or existing facts, completely exempting unfulfilled promises from criminal liability.

The technicality of embezzlement Colonel Moseby Allen charms a gullible new sheriff into letting him manage county settlements, pocketing funds with impunity. When authorities attempt prosecution, they discover that strict statutory definitions of embezzlement render the indictment legally impotent.

The final voyage After a series of administrative and criminal subversions leaves police and district attorneys utterly defeated by technicalities, Mason boards a steamship to France. Even while physically worn out, his tireless, wolf-trap mind immediately fasts upon how to wrest the million-dollar vessel from its owners without committing a crime.

The People

Randolph Mason is the chilling intellectual center of the book. Worn down physically but possessed of a restless, razor-sharp mind, he views human desperation through a purely mechanical lens, wanting only to test the absolute limits of legal subversion for clients who approach him in secret.

Samuel Walcott is a hopeful, trusting man utterly devoted to Virginia St. Clair, whose old-fashioned honesty contrasts sharply with the ruthless legal machinery swirling around him. Walcott is broken and passive, entirely dependent on Mason's cold guidance to survive his impending crisis.

Gordon and Sidney Montcure are desperate speculators facing complete ruin in the stock market. Driven by a desperate gamble to break a Chicago corner, they represent the frantic, high-stakes energy of Wall Street that forces ordinary men into moral compromises.

Carper Harris and his brother William represent the familial bonds tested by commercial panic. While Carper is brought to the brink of despair by a disastrous business entanglement, William steps in with fierce, bulldog tenacity and a practical mind to shield his brother from ruin.

Colonel Moseby Allen is a slick, experienced politician who flatters the ego of the new sheriff, Jacob Wade. Allen uses his mastery of county administration and political charm to manipulate official channels for his own enrichment, remaining entirely untouchable by statutory definitions of crime.

In Its Own Voice

The teller of strange tales is not the least among benefactors of men.

As the book opens, the narrator defends the essential value of imaginative storytelling against its sternest critics.

He was a man apparently in the middle forties; tall and reasonably broad across the shoulders; muscular without being either stout or lean.

This passage introduces the imposing, exhausted physical presence of Randolph Mason during his initial appearance at the club.

In every crime, especially in the great ones, there exists a third element, pre-eminently vital.

Mason outlines his foundational philosophy to a desperate client, explaining why traditional criminal masterminds invariably fail.

What It's Really About

The book interrogates the wide chasm between moral culpability and legal liability. Post argues that the legal system is not an instrument of divine justice, but a rigid machine governed strictly by literal definitions, ancient precedents, and statutory gaps. By showing how clever actors can exploit the technicalities of corporate law, property rights, and criminal definitions, the stories ask an unsettling question: if the law fails to punish intentional wrongs because of a misplaced comma or a narrow definition of past fact, what protection does society actually have? The text exposes the vulnerability of formal institutions to those who treat jurisprudence not as a moral framework, but as a puzzle box to be solved.

Why Read It Today

Readers who love intellectual cat-and-mouse games, early American legal history, and cynical proto-hardboiled detective fiction will find a fascinating ancestor to modern legal thrillers here. Reading it feels like sitting in a drafty, gas-lit New York office listening to a misanthropic legal scholar dissect the machinery of human error with clinical detachment.

Modern readers should be prepared for some period artifacts: the pacing relies heavily on nineteenth-century expository dialogue, and the social attitudes reflect the insular financial and legal worlds of the Gilded Age. Furthermore, the prose can occasionally feel dense with period legalisms and formal rhetoric. Yet what stays with you is the haunting, singular figure of Mason himself—a man who uses the law not to uphold order, but to prove how easily order can be legally dismantled.