We are prone to forget that the law is no perfect structure, that it is simply the result of human labor and human genius, and that whatever laws human ingenuity can create for the protection of men, those same laws human ingenuity can evade. The Spirit of Evil is no dwarf; he has developed equally with the Spirit of Good. All wrongs are not crimes. Indeed only those wrongs are crimes in which certain technical elements are present. The law provides a Procrustean standard for all crimes. Thus a wrong, to become criminal, must fit exactly into the measure laid down by the law, else it is no crime; if it varies never so little from the legal measure, the law must, and will, refuse to regard it as criminal, no matter how injurious a wrong it may be. There is no measure of morality, or equity, or common right that can be applied to the individual case. The gauge of the law is iron-bound. The wrong measured by this gauge is either a crime or it is not. There is no middle ground. Hence is it, that if one knows well the technicalities of the law, one may commit horrible wrongs that will yield all the gain and all the resulting effect of the highest crimes, and yet the wrongs perpetrated will constitute no one of the crimes described by the law. Thus the highest crimes, even murder, may be committed in such manner that although the criminal is known and the law holds him in custody, yet it cannot punish him. So it happens that in this year of our Lord of the nineteenth century, the skilful attorney marvels at the stupidity of the rogue who, committing crimes by the ordinary methods, subjects himself to unnecessary peril, when the result which he seeks can easily be attained by other methods, equally expeditious and without danger of liability in any criminal tribunal This is the field into which the author has ventured, and he believes it to be new and full of interest. In order to develop these legal problems the author appreciated the need for a central figure. This central figure must of necessity be a lawyer of shrewdness and ability. Here a grave difficulty presented itself. No attorney, unless he were a superlative knave, could be presumed to suggest the committing of wrongs entailing grievous injury upon innocent men. On the other hand, no knave vicious enough to resort to such wrongs could be presumed to have learning enough to plan them, else he would not be driven to such straits. Hence the necessity for a character who should be without moral sense and yet should possess all the requisite legal acumen. Such a character is Randolph Mason, and while he may seem strange he is not impossible.