This is the field into which the author
has ventured, and he believes it to be new and full of interest.
It may be objected that the writer has prepared here a text-book
for the shrewd knave. To this it is answered that, if he instructs
the enemies, he also warns the friends of law and order; and that
Evil has never yet been stronger because the sun shone on it.
[See Lord Hale's Rule, Russell on Crimes. For the law in New York
see 18th N. Y. Reports, 179; also N. Y. Reports, 49, page 137. The
doctrine there laid down obtains in almost every State, with the
possible exception of a few Western States, where the decisions are
muddy.]
The Corpus Delicti
I
"That man Mason," said Samuel Walcott, "is the mysterious member of
this club. He is more than that; he is the mysterious man of New
York."
"I was much surprised to see him," answered his companion, Marshall
St. Clair, of the great law firm of Seward, St. Clair & De Muth.
"I had lost track of him since he went to Paris as counsel for the
American stockholders of the Canal Company. When did he come back
to the States?"
"He turned up suddenly in his ancient haunts about four months
ago," said Walcott, "as grand, gloomy, and peculiar as Napoleon
ever was in his palmiest days.
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