The Strange Schemes of Randolph Mason was written by Melville Davisson Post, as were its two sequels, The Man of Last Resort; or, the Clients of Randolph Mason (1897) and The Corrector of Destinies, Being tales of Randolph Mason as related by his private secretary, Courtland Parks (1908). Melville Davisson Post (1871-1930) was a West Virginian who worked as a lawyer and politician before he began writing full-time. By the time of his death he was one of the highest-paid American magazine writers. He is best remembered for two characters: Uncle Abner, a Bible-wielding, justice-dealing West Virginian cattle rancher, and Randolph Mason.

The Randolph Mason stories are strange and memorable, like Mason himself. Mason was originally from Virginia, but moved to New York and began his legal practice:

He soon became famous for his powerful and ingenious defences. He found holes in the law through which his clients escaped, holes that by the profession at large were not suspected to exist, and that frequently astonished the judges. His ability caught the attention of the great corporations. They tested him and found in him learning and unlimited resources. He pointed out methods by which they could evade obnoxious statutes, by which they could comply with the apparent letter of the law and yet violate its spirit, and advised them well in that most important of all things, just how far they could bend the law without breaking it.¹

But a broken love affair sent him to Paris, and governmental “treachery” in France led to the loss of his personal fortune, so he returned to New York and resumed his practice.

The stories begin there. In the first two collections the stories follow the same pattern: Mason is hired by a client who is in desperate trouble, facing severe punishment by the law. Mason finds a loophole in the law, and by the story’s end Mason’s client is a free man or woman. In the first Mason story, “Corpus Delicti,” a man is being blackmailed for murder by a former lover. Mason tells his client to kill the woman, but in such a way that her body is destroyed. The man dissolves the woman’s body in sulphuric acid. The police arrest him, and although there is overwhelming circumstantial evidence there is no corpus delicti, and therefore under New York state law Mason’s client cannot be convicted. In another story Mason is lured to a country house and taken prisoner by a gang of thieves. One of their members is in jail, and the gang needs to bribe his guards so that he can escape. But the thieves have no money, so they want Mason to tell them how to raise the money legally. A child has recently been kidnapped and is being held for ransom, so Mason tells the thieves to demand the ransom money from the child’s parents. The thieves get the money and free their associate but are eventually caught by the police. However, as Mason intended, because the thieves were not involved in the kidnapping, they cannot be convicted under the law. The district attorney is appalled by this, but the trial judge says, “This is not a matter of sentiment; it is not a matter of morality; it is not even a matter of right. It is purely and simply a matter of law, and there is no law."²

When The Strange Schemes of Randolph Mason debuted Post became notorious, because the legal flaws and loopholes he used in the stories actually existed. Law enforcement officials and opinion-makers were infuriated, claiming that criminals could use Post’s stories to evade the law. Post’s response was that the Randolph Mason stories were intended to provide object lessons in how the legal system could be improved. Some of the loopholes which Post pointed out were closed in response to the Randolph Mason stories, but others remained, and Post followed The Strange Schemes of Randolph Mason with a sequel the following year. The stories in the second collection followed the same pattern as in the first, but throughout the stories Mason’s physical and mental condition deteriorates, and the last story in the collection implies that Mason has died. The third collection of stories, published ten years later, portray Mason as having had an epiphany. He no longer works to shield criminals, but is now devoted to finding “within the law a means by which to even up and correct every manner of injustice. He would consider no case which did not contain this element, a wrong for which the law in its regular course offers no redress.”³

While the stories in the second Mason collection are not of good quality, are badly-constructed, and are reliant on the gimmicky premise, and the stories in the third collection are travesties, the stories in the first Mason collection retain their harsh charm. Although occasionally overly long, they are generally well-plotted and slickly told, and they are bracing in their unblinking and defiant social Darwinism. Mason is deliberately amoral and cares nothing for right or wrong or good and evil, only innocence and guilt as the law defines them. His philosophy is:

No man who has followed my advice has ever committed a crime. Crime is a technical word. It is the law's term for certain acts which it is pleased to define and punish with a penalty…what the law permits is right, else it would prohibit it. What the law prohibits is wrong, because it punishes it…the word moral is a purely metaphysical symbol.⁴

Mason does not care who he victimizes with his actions, as long as it is not his clients. In most of the stories the person who is victimized is worse than Mason’s client, but Mason’s clients are bad enough, and Mason always succeeds in freeing them.

Print: Melville Davisson Post, The Strange Schemes of Randolph Mason. Cirencester, UK: Echo Library, 2016.

Patricia J. Brown, “The Image of the Attorney: The Character of Attorney Randolph Mason in three books by Melville Davisson Post.” Express0 (2010). Accessed Feb. 3, 2019. https://works.bepress.com/patricia_brown/1/

Francis M. Nevins, “From Darwinian to Biblical Lawyering: The Stories of Melville Davisson Post,” Legal Studies Forum 18, no. 177 (1994): 182-185.

¹ Melville Davisson Post, The Strange Schemes of Randolph Mason (New York: Arno Press, 1976), 16.

² Post, Strange Schemes, 196.

³ Melville Davisson Post, “My Friend at Bridge,” in Pearson’s Magazine (US) (Feb, 1907): 210.

⁴ Melville Davisson Post, The Man of Last Resort; or, The Clients of Randolph Mason (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1897), 252-253.