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...