Red Powder

Summary

In the crucible of a smoke-choked laboratory, Charles Keil, a taciturn alchemist of the modern age, distills a vermillion dust so volatile it seems to inhale the light around it; his test-tube galaxies collapse, however, when Joseph Reimer—colleague, parasite, human blotting-paper—steals the scrawled hieroglyphs that cradle the secret. Demonstrations blaze across amphitheatres of tuxedoed capitalists, but a fleck of grit, a spark, a heartbeat of inattention, detonates the vaulted room into a Bosch canvas of flame and shrapnel. Pulverised beams pin both men; Keil, lungs lacquered with ash, expires in a white ward, whispering the missing cipher—never written—into the ear of Lucy, his grief-gilded fiancée. Reimer, scarred yet swaggering, weds a banker’s porcelain daughter and parades the crimson phoenix-dust as his own brain-child until Lucy’s accusation ricochets off mahogany board-tables, dismissed as the keening of a love-addled girl. When the last grain of the original powder sighs into smoke, Reimer’s counterfeit batches fizzle; share-prices plummet, factories implode into idleness, and a city of clerks and riveters finds itself chained to payday that never arrives. A lone detective, hired by Lucy, infiltrates the thief’s sanctum, glimpses the pilfered notebook via a mirror’s wink, and wires the bank—too late. Crowds ignite; cobblestones become gallows. Reimer, cradling wife and infant, escapes beneath a swinging derrick over rivers of fire only to be hunted, cornered, and broken. In the same hospital air that once cupped Keil’s final breath, Reimer begs absolution, dies, and leaves Lucy holding nothing but the echo of a formula that could have remade the world.

Synopsis

Charles Keil, a young chemist, discovers an explosive composition of such tremendous power that it gives promise of revolutionizing many industries. During his explorative work, Dr. Joseph Reimer, a laboratory colleague, jealous of Keil's success, abstracts his formulae from Keil's notebook. After a number of demonstrations that prove the value of the discovery, a moment's carelessness causes an explosion that wrecks the laboratory and buries both men in the burning debris. They are rescued by firemen and taken to a hospital, where Keil dies, but not until he had imparted a mystic message to his fiancée, Lucy, the final ingredient of the precious "Red Powder," which had never been included in any formulae he had entrusted to writing. Dr. Reimer, in possession of what he believes to be the complete formula, also secures the limited existing supply of "Red Powder" and claiming the discovery as his own, proceeds to give a series of demonstrations that result in a large bank becoming interested in its promotion. Angered by this injustice, Lucy appears before the bank directors and charges Dr. Reimer with the theft, but she is regarded as having been crazed by the death of her sweetheart, and Reimer, who has married the daughter of one of the bank directors, is hailed as a great discoverer. Further experiments on land and sea increase Reimer's fame, and result in another accident through a premature explosion, but Reimer escapes death again. Nemesis is on his trail, however, in the form of a detective retained by Lucy. The detective secures employment in Reimer's laboratory, and soon when the original supply of "Red Powder' gives out, watches Reimer endeavoring to create a new supply. The thief cannot understand his failure to get results. Not knowing his stolen formula is incomplete, he surreptitiously consults it again and again, until the detective watching him through the agency of a mirror, discerns the dead chemist's writing. He immediately telegraphs the bank that Reimer is a fraud, but it is too late. The failure of the explosive made by Reimer to fulfill its function has embarrassed several big concerns that depended upon it; the bank in turn totters and collapses, and the community is in a state of frenzy with thousands out of employment, when word reaches the angry crowd that Reimer's treachery is responsible for the widespread ruin. Riots follow; Reimer's home is stoned and a flying missile overturns a lamp, starting a fire. With his wife and little child, Dr. Reimer flees for his life. Just as the frenzied mob is about to seize him. Dr. Reimer clutches the chain of a huge derrick and with his wife and child clinging to him, is swung far over the heads of the rioters and in safety over the spreading fire to the approaching police reserves. Accusation pursues him even there. A search is made and the incriminating writing is found. Dr. Reimer is arrested, but escapes. After an exciting chase, he breaks down. His death follows at the hospital where he is taken, but not before he has sought forgiveness from Lucy and his family.