Melville Davisson Post
The technical skill that Melville Davisson Post (1869-1930) brought to his short stories helped make him the most commercially successful magazine writer of his time. Born in West Virginia, he practiced criminal and corporate law for eleven years before devoting himself to writing fulltime. He died at the age of sixty-one after falling from a horse. He played an important role in the development of the detective story and, while his name may be familiar only to devoted readers of detective fiction, he was regarded as the best American mystery short story writer of the early twentieth-century by no less an authority than Ellery Queen.
It is difficult to create a memorable character but Post succeeded in doing it twice. The more likely to be remembered today is Uncle Abner, the backwoods protector of the innocent in what is now West Virginia during Thomas Jefferson’s presidency. Abner, known for his integrity and sense of justice, believed that evil would be defeated due to the omnipresence of God. His cases were collected in Uncle Abner: Master of Mysteries (1918).
A more conventional figure and undoubtedly of greater significance is Randolph Mason, a brilliant but utterly unscrupulous lawyer. Born in Virginia but practicing in New York, Mason recognizes that there is not always a strong correlation between justice and the law. In the past, criminals had tried to avoid capture but, in the Mason stories, the paramount concern is the avoidance of punishment. These stories were often based on genuine legal loopholes, eventually bringing about numerous changes to criminal procedure. There were three collections based on the character, beginning with The Strange Schemes of Randolph Mason (1896).
Both Uncle Abner: Master of Mysteries and The Strange Schemes of Randolph Mason were selected for Queen’s Quorum as being among the 106 most important collections of detective short stories in history.
Post’s deep familiarity with the law is evident in “The Witness in the Metal Box,” which was originally published in the November 1929 edition of The American Magazine; it was first published in book form in Best American Mystery Stories of the Year, edited by Carolyn Wells (New York, John Day, 1931).
The Witness in the Metal Box
Melville Davisson Post
I shall always remember this famous case.
To me there were romance and mystery and wonder in it. It stands out Homeric in my youthful fancy.
It was tried, as the lawyers say, before Judge Edmond Lewis and a jury, but it was tried, also, before Virginia. For the county came into that trial. The people filled the courtroom to the doors, crowded the county seat, and overran the taverns.
Old Edmond Lewis and his court, and the litigants and their attorneys, were, for the term of that trial, famous. They passed from the tavern to the courtroom through a lane of excited faces. Those who could not force a standing in the courtroom were at least determined to see the actors in the drama, even if they could not see the drama staged.
In this respect I had a great advantage.
My grandfather was a relative of Judge Edmond Lewis and I went in with him. I was a small boy, holding to my grandfather’s hand. But I was old enough to understand the great event, and I missed nothing of its drama. We had a chair inside the court’s railing by the judge’s bench, where the lawyers and the officials were assembled.
There were famous men of Virginia in that courtroom.
Judge Edmond Lewis was a large figure in this portion of the commonwealth west of the mountains. There was something big and undisturbed about him, something almost Oriental in its immobility. He filled the huge armchair behind the judge’s bench, and his very presence gave the proceedings in his court a serenity as of some majestic justice above the affairs of men, and of which he was, here, merely the vice regent.
And the litigants were romantic figures:
One could not look at Blackmer Harrington and at once withdraw the eye. The man held one’s attention, he was so markedly the desperate adventurer; a tall, hawk-faced man in the maturity of life, with a cruel, relentless face that mirrored a will determined to go its way against any barrier. It was a face moving through adventure tales that are read in storybooks, sprawling by the fire; a face to sack a city, or to run a pirate ship in a boiling sea under the Jolly Roger!
It held me with a dreadful fascination.
And the other! One fell back on the storybooks in vain, to equal her. She came like a fairy thing from the city of Zeus, bringing the wonder of that city with her. For she had, in fact, come overseas from France to defend her inheritance in this court, and she brought into this frontier of Virginia the dress and the manner of that far-off, vaguely imagined land of elegant demeanor. This seems overdrawn for the truth, and I write it here with some misgivings. But it was the profound impression of my youthful fancy, and one cannot disentangle actuality from that golden glamour.
The case I knew thoroughly in detail, for I had heard it discussed in every direction before it came up in the court. It was the most important litigation of the time. There was a great estate to turn on the issue of it, and there was something more than that bare decision to stimulate one’s interest. The facts about the case were not involved:
The suit in itself was over the will of Alexander Harrington. It was supposed at the time that he had died intestate, leaving his great properties to pass by operation of law to his daughter, for he had no other child. This daughter had been sent for her education to France, and was there when her father died. But to the amazement of the county, this younger brother of Alexander came forward with a will leaving the estate to him, with some minor provisions for the daughter.
It was a brief will on a single sheet of paper, written by the dead man, and signed after his manner, “A. Harrington,” with an immense, intricate flourish under the signature. It was this signature that stamped it as authentic. That big arabesque of a scrawl could not be imitated. It was known to everybody. The deeds and contracts executed by the dead man and lodged about in the courts all bore that distinguishing evidence of the signature. There was no living man who could duplicate that scrawl.
Mr. Dabney Mason, the clerk of the circuit court, and an authority, held the thing impossible, and this was also the certain opinion of every scrivener in Virginia; that free-hand, intricate flourish, entangling itself below the name, was the sole artistry of the dead man. There could be no two opinions on that point. It was the signature of Alexander Harrington at the foot of this testament, and as it was thus a holograph will, it required no witnesses.
Harrington had endured no long illness at his death. He had been stricken in the fields at harvest, and had got down from his horse in the shade of an oak tree; from there, unconscious, he had been carried into his house. As the daughter was in France and there was no near relative but this younger brother, word of the illness was sent over the mountains and the man arrived. Alexander Harrington remained for some time in life, but only in periods of fitful consciousness.
It was not known what talk the two men may have had together after the brother arrived, but this was hardly an important feature, as the will was of an earlier date. If it had been of this date, it would scarcely have stood before a jury: the incapacity of the testator was too apparent.
But the question did not come up. After Harrington’s death, the brother called in some of the representative men of the county, and this will was found among the dead man’s papers. It came, therefore, into the court with all the safeguards of the law about it and the required formalities to make it legal: a holograph will found among the important papers of the testator, in his possession, at his death.
It seemed no intricate case to try.
There was only the validity of the will to prove, and, after that, to meet whatever attack the contestant might bring up. And no one could see any firm ground for an attack. The stock ones in such cases could hardly be seriously urged: senility in the testator or undue influence. But who could be found to say that Alexander Harrington had any weakness of the mind? He was not advanced in age, and there was no abler man of business. And how could undue influence in this brother be even vaguely shadowed? He lived at a distance over the mountains, or went adventuring about the world, and the testator was here upon his estates.
There seemed no possible point of entry against the testament.
This was the consensus. But here was Colonel Braxton appearing for the daughter, and the experts about the courtroom wagged their heads. One never knew the issue when this eccentric lawyer was involved—a gold eagle from the mint, assailed by him, would be in doubt!
It was not the case, it was the man behind it that perplexed the experts.
I remember my grandfather and old Edmond Lewis talking in the judge’s room in the crowded tavern. They could see nothing here but the formalities of a trial. What could Braxton do, or any other lawyer? A jury might be moved in its emotions to the daughter’s aid. But clearly there was no issue for a jury. There must be some evidence against the will for the jury to consider, exclusive of innuendoes and vague doubts.
Braxton knew this. But he was an enigma, even to the judges. What did the man have up his sleeve?
It was anterior to the time when judges were considered such feeble creatures that the facts of a case could not be talked of before them, and I have heard Judge Lewis state the facts in more than one involved matter, for my grandfather’s comment. He cleared the brush out, as old Edmond used to say.
To me, on the morning of this trial, the scene was a thrilling thing.
The whole country was present, as though the hills and valleys had emptied themselves into the county seat. The crowd seemed to press in on the courthouse. Long before the court convened, the room was crowded. It was difficult for the sheriff to make a way for the court and the litigants to enter. I sat on a step of the judge’s bench, beside my grandfather’s chair, with a feeling of immense importance, as though I, too, were a part of this tremendous drama.
I overlooked no detail of that scene: the vast sea of faces, the jury in their chairs, the big, placid body of the judge leaning forward on the bench, and below him the clerk, Mr. Dabney Mason, dressed like a Bond Street print, in his English clothes. And the litigants and their attorneys! It was like a romance of Arthur. Who would win when they presently shocked together in this arena—this adventurer or this damsel in distress?
I cannot tell you how the thing thrilled me. There was a fascination about this Black-Sheep Harrington, as they used to call him, with his hawk face and his adventure legends; and his counsel, young Pennington Carlisle, was a model held up for us all; a brilliant, rising lawyer who filled the courthouse when he spoke. He had no equal before a jury, or before the people, when in a political campaign he took the stump in Virginia.
I had a sinking of the heart when I turned to the other lawyer’s table.
What could this Colonel Braxton do for the lovely creature who sat beside him? A big man, like the judge, filling his chair, a handkerchief spread over his shirt front to screen it from the ash of his cigar; his eyes half closed, his body relaxed and inert, as thought it rested at ease after some exertion.
The man required to be awakened!
This was no time to drowse idly in a chair. I thought Destiny had mixed her figures. The adventurer with his ruthless face should have come in with this attorney, and the brilliant Carlisle should have championed the girl. This Colonel Braxton was no knight-errant for romance, unless—and I got a thrill with the idea—unless he were a magician appearing for a fairy princess. I hugged the notion with a consuming joy. That was it—a magician! And, in truth, to saner minds the absurd conception had a sort of color.
The lawyer had a small metal box on his table. And it was the only thing he had. Paper and law books cluttered the table before young Pennington Carlisle; cases from Virginia and the English courts, to refute every possible point that could be made against him, and he had witnesses waiting to be sworn: to establish the legal formalities about the will and to prove the signature of the testator.
But this Colonel Braxton had only his metal box!
The amazement in the thing reached beyond one small boy seated on a step of the judge’s bench. It extended to the sea of faces; to the very officers of the court. What had this mysterious thing to do with the case at issue, this circular metal box sitting on a lawyer’s table?
The thing became more conspicuous when the clerk called the witnesses to be sworn. The adventurer stood up with the reputable citizens that Pennington Carlisle had called to establish the legal formalities about the will. They took the oath, and the judge turned to Colonel Braxton.
“Call your witnesses!” he said.
The lawyer took the smoldering cigar out of his mouth and laid it down carefully on the table. He looked vaguely about the courtroom as though it had, but now, come to his attention.
“I have no witnesses, Your Honor,” he replied, “except the witness in this box . . . and I fear it cannot stand up to be sworn.”
He put out his hand, touched the mysterious object beside him, and was silent.
That was all he said, and that was all we knew about his case.
I know that old Edmond Lewis, like every other man in that courtroom, was profoundly puzzled. He spoke of it with my grandfather. What was Braxton about with this confounded mystery? But my grandfather was equally in the dark.
I had a sense of a superior understanding of this thing.
I had got a light flashed on it in the drama of the courtroom: This Colonel Braxton was the magician out of a storybook. He would not be breaking lances with young Pennington Carlisle. He would entrap him with some enchantment. He had come in with his metal box to restore to the fairy princess her houses and her lands; and presently we should see the working of his sorcery. I could hardly wait for the time to pass.
I alone understood the thing. And in a certain fashion I was right!
I watched the case move forward, from my place on the step of the judge’s bench. And it was the opinion of the experts that Pennington Carlisle managed the thing with skill. He established the legal requirements about the will, to cover any attack on it from the point of its holograph requirements; the testament, itself, was already before the court. He proved the signature by the most reliable persons in the community. And then he put Blackmer Harrington on the stand.
His purpose, behind the legal pretension, was, in fact, to show the confidence of the testator in his brother, and to exclude any wonder at the bequest of the estate to him rather than to the daughter. He brought forward the fact that the claimant had for some years acted as the trusted agent of the dead man in the sale of wild lands east of the mountains.
Such lands were the principal subject of speculation at this time in Virginia. They were purchased in great surveys for a trifling sum and peddled out in small tracts to the settlers. Blackmer Harrington handled this business for his brother; had, in fact, exclusive control of it and—as Carlisle skillfully drew out—the complete confidence of the dead man, as shown by the options and power of attorney in blank sent to him to use as the requirements of these transactions demanded. The confidence of the testator in his brother was, in consequence, evident beyond question.
The motive for the testament was more difficult to disclose. It was not Carlisle’s intention to bring it out. He was too clever to do that. He would shadow it out vaguely, and let it lie, confident in the gossip and the imagination of the jury to supply what the lure of the idea required to fill it. His diplomatic instincts were sound here. But the horse he rode bolted.
The witness, once on the way, could not be pulled up. He elaborated the great aspect of his adventure; the lure that had won his brother to him; the plan to seize some islands in the West Indies and add them to the Republic. This estate was to be used to that magnificent end. That was the motive for the devise to him. Again and again he had laid the plans before his brother, and finally in the end had won him. It was a vast, splendid dream, that required, for reality, only funds and a man of courage.
Once seized, the American Government would annex the territory, and by that much the Republic would be advanced on its manifest destiny. As he warmed to his subject he grew more voluble. And the manner and the declaration of the man reached a certain element in the courtroom, and got a visible reaction. A vast empire extending itself into the sea fired their fancy. It had been a dream of the early men and it remained vaguely in their descendants.
And yet one could see Pennington Carlisle uneasy in his chair.
But he could not stop the thing that he had unwittingly set going. Finally he did break in to ask if the witness knew that the will had been executed. Harrington replied that he did not know it, until the will was found among his brother’s papers after his death. He had convinced the dead man; but he did not know of that success until the testament was found.
And so Carlisle finally got his witness silenced.
My grandfather and Judge Lewis talked together gravely in the chamber behind the courtroom at the noon recess.
“Edmond,” my grandfather said, “it will never do for Harrington to win this case. The wild fool will involve the country in a war, with some filibuster into the South or some piracy on the sea.”
Judge Lewis stroked his big face with his hand.
“But what can I do?” he replied. “This intention is not an issue here. The sole issue is the validity of this will. What the prevailing litigant does with the estate he gains is not before me.”
But my grandfather was not to be thus silenced.
“The welfare of the nation is before us all,” he said. “What did Marshall do, or the great Virginia judges, when a doctrine of law threatened the whole people? The courts take their authority from the people, and in the ultimate exercise of that authority they must protect them.”
“Yes,” said Lewis, “ ‘in the ultimate exercise of that authority.’ But this is a trial court and not a court of last resort. If this feature of the case is to be considered, it is for the Supreme Court of Virginia to consider it. I cannot consider it.”
“And they cannot consider it,” replied my grandfather. “It will not be in the record, and so this dangerous fool will go out into the grainfields with his torch.”
He stood up before the window, a tall, imperious old man with a grave, deep-lined face.
“In my father’s house,” he said, “there used to be a little circular glass window on which three names had been scratched with the diamond setting of a ring; ‘Aaron Burr,’ ‘Harman Blennerhassett,’ and ‘Daniel Davisson.’ It was a meeting of conspirators; but my father, Daniel Davisson, was not one of them. Burr was a relative and a guest, but he told him the truth. ‘You’re an infernal fool,’ he said, ‘and Tom Jefferson will hang you!’ ”
He turned about to Judge Lewis.
“And here, Edmond, is another infernal fool that you ought to hang, instead of giving the creature a treasure chest and a letter of marque.”
I understood even then, in my early youth, the magnitude of this discussion.
My grandfather saw the welfare of the whole country in this case and Judge Edmond Lewis saw the exact limitations of the law in it. Both were right, and even at this day I do not know which opinion should have prevailed. Here was the law as Judge Lewis saw it, confined to a single issue. It could not go beyond that issue. It was better to look hardship in the face than to break down the rules of law—he saw that as clearly as Lord Eldon saw it.
They went back into the courtroom.
The same scene remained. But the case had now a larger meaning. What my grandfather had said to Judge Edmond Lewis had moved the whole drama up out of the mere adjustments of romance.
It had now a sort of national aspect.
I do not mean that the impending wrong, to the girl, sitting by her attorney, tugged any the less desperately at my heart. She was as entrancing as a dream, as a painted picture, and she was helpless before this blind stride of the law . . . unless the magician with his magic box could save her. . . .
What was in that box?
When Carlisle, for the will, finished with his case, Judge Lewis asked Colonel Braxton if he wished to cross-examine Harrington.
The big lawyer did not at once reply. He sat for some moments looking at the floor, as in reflection, idle and irrelevant to the matter at hand. Then he turned toward young Pennington Carlisle.
“I might ask him a question,” he said.
The tone was gentle and apologetic, as though he were seeking a favor.
Carlisle laughed. “You have my permission, Colonel,” he said.
“Thank you, Pennington. It’s just a little thing I wanted to know.”
Carlisle thought he saw an opening for a checkmate, and he stepped into it.
“About the signature to the will, Colonel?”
Colonel Braxton looked up with wide-open eyes, as in utter astonishment.
“Oh, no,” he said, “it’s the dead man’s signature.”
“Undue influence then?”
“Oh, no!” Colonel Braxton’s astonishment seemed to increase. “There was no undue influence about the making of this testament . . . no undue influence, Pennington.”
“Incapacity in the testator?”
“Oh, no!” The words whined like a refrain in some absurd opera. “You couldn’t believe that, Pennington; nobody could believe that . . . I couldn’t make the jury believe that.”
An aspect of victory enveloped Carlisle. He had, by the clever trick of drawing these admissions, covered his case to the wall; cut from under his opponent all the possible supports that could be set up in such a case. He had nothing more to fear!
“It’s just a little thing I wanted to ask the witness—for my own information, Pennington,” the big lawyer added.
Carlisle made a courteous, ironic gesture of assent. “I would waive almost any rule of evidence,” he said, “in order to add to the information of this bar.”
There was a ripple of suppressed laughter. And Carlisle took his tribute with a triumphant smile. How could he know, in the arrogance of his visible victory, that he was trifling with disaster!
Colonel Braxton seemed not to realize the innuendo. “Thank you, Pennington,” he said, and he turned to Harrington.
The adventurer, like his counsel, was in that pleasant mood of victory when one bears, in a genial fashion, with an irrelevant annoyance.
“I wanted to ask you,” Colonel Braxton went on, “if you had ever seen a sodded field plowed?”
Everybody was astonished. What had the plowing of a sodded field to do with the issues of this case?
Carlisle’s eyebrows lifted, and the witness smiled. “Why, yes, Colonel,” Harrington replied; “when I was a boy on my father’s estate, I have seen the negroes plow the pasture land.”
“Then,” continued the lawyer, “you can tell me what happens when the plow crosses a small, narrow, sodded ditch.”
The witness replied that if the ditch were small and narrow the plow would jump it, leaving the sod at the bottom of the ditch undisturbed.
Colonel Braxton nodded in assent.
“Ah, yes,” he said. “I thought that would be true. . . . I’m not much of a farmer. . . . I wanted to be certain.”
That courtroom was full of persons who were very much farmers, and they were beyond doubt certain. The witness was precisely correct.
“Then,” the lawyer went on, “it is always possible to tell whether such a small, narrow ditch or depression was present in the sodded field before it was plowed, or made after it was plowed?”
The witness replied that this was surely true, because, if it were made after the plowing, it would be in the broken ground, but if it existed before the plowing, the plow would jump it, and the undisturbed sod would remain at the bottom of the ditch or depression across the entire field.
“Ah . . . yes,” Colonel Braxton reflected in his gentle drawl. “But I’m not much of a farmer . . . and I wanted to be certain.”
He sat down.
We were all certain. But what had this simple illustration of the plow to do with the contestant’s case?
Old Edmond Lewis was no less puzzled than the lad on the step of his bench below him. I think he would have ruled out this irrelevant inquiry if Carlisle had asked it. But to Carlisle, in his security, this idle discussion of husbandry was of no importance. And, so far as we could see, he was clearly right.
The whole courtroom was astonished.
It was incredible. . . . It was beyond belief; but the case was ended. Here was Harrington leaving the witness chair. Here was Colonel Braxton gone back to his chair. Here was Carlisle on his feet, making his motion to exclude the evidence and direct a verdict.
The case was ended!
It was a rout . . . a debacle!
Judge Lewis turned to Colonel Braxton. He seemed to move heavily, like a man under pressure. And when he spoke, his voice was harsh:
“Do you wish to be heard on this motion?”
“No.” The big lawyer was now standing up.
“Then you admit the validity of the will?”
“The will,” replied Colonel Braxton, “is a forgery.”
The tension on everybody in that courtroom was tremendous.
“A forgery!” exclaimed the judge. “You have introduced no evidence of forgery.”
“The evidence,” replied Colonel Braxton, “is on the face of the paper itself. But it takes a good eye to see it, and, in consequence, I have sent to Baltimore for the best eye that could be purchased.”
The man had changed. The leisure aspect had vanished; the stoop of the shoulders; the drawl in the voice.
He opened the metal box on his table and took out a big lens.
He got the will from the clerk.
“The signature is genuine,” he said, “but the writing above the signature is forged. The signature was on this paper before the writing was added, and one does not sign his name first, and then after that, write his will above it.
“Look, Your Honor.” He carried the papers and the lens across to the judge’s bench and put them down before him. “This paper has been folded a number of times. These folds are across the signature, and extend from it under the body of this writing. And look, Your Honor, how the illustration of the plow on the sodded field parallels the pen on the field of this sheet of paper. When the sheet of paper was flat and unbroken by the folds, the pen ran smooth with no break in its furrow, as in the lettering and the scroll of this signature. But in the body of this writing above the signature, wherever the pen came to a crease of the fold, it jumped it, precisely as the plow jumps a narrow ditch, and it left the paper unmarked at the bottom of the fold precisely as the plow left the sod untouched at the bottom of the ditch. This signature was written when the sheet of paper was flat, and the writing above it after the sheet was folded.”
Judge Edmond Lewis stooped over the paper with the lens in his big hand. Then he beckoned to my grandfather, went down to Carlisle’s table, and called the jury.
The whole court crowded around him.
And there, under the magnification of the lens, lay the story of the forgery, so clear that the simplest man could see it. Carlisle saw it, and he was appalled. His client had taken one of the powers of attorney sent him, signed in blank by his brother, for it was folded like a letter, and above that signature he had traced this will, and lodged it among the dying man’s papers when he came to attend him at his death. It was all there, standing out on the white field under the magnification of the lens.
It was tremendous.
The whole sea of faces packed into the courtroom was alight with victory. But there was no sound.
I stood up with a wild beating of the heart.
The magician had won for the fairy princess! And I looked to see the big figure of the lawyer vanish in some shattering wonder that would split the courtroom.