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. The younger members of the club
call him 'Zanona Redivivus.' He wanders through the house usually
late at night, apparently without noticing anything or anybody.
His mind seems to be deeply and busily at work, leaving his bodily
self to wander as it may happen. Naturally, strange stories are
told of him; indeed, his individuality and his habit of doing some
unexpected thing, and doing it in such a marvelously original
manner that men who are experts at it look on in wonder, cannot
fail to make him an object of interest.