Summary
In the soot-choked kilns of an unnamed pottery town, Grinde—sharp-eyed junior partner—covets a glaze so incandescent it promises to gild the entire industry. Benjamin Lord, a stooped alchemist of porcelain, distills the secret in a vial that glows like fox-fire; his grandson David, all earnest trust, ferries the elixir to Grinde’s desk. The promise of consideration curdles into conspiracy: foreman Mole, a man whose silhouette seems cut from chimney smoke, is dispatched to pilfer the formula. Instead of thievery, he delivers murder—Benjamin’s skull cracked against a kiln brick, the workshop torched to mimic catastrophe. When David recoils from selling his birthright, the partners imprison him and his beloved in a brass-lined vault, flooding it with verdigris-tinged gas. Yet greed metastasizes: Grinde turns on Mole, blade flashing under gaslight, while a boardroom of geriatric shareholders drone over balance sheets, unaware that their empire is about to be usurped by a man whose soul already bears the craze lines of cracked crockery.
Synopsis
Grinde is a junior partner of a pottery firm. An old chemist, Benjamin Lord, discovers a formula for glazing pottery that is designed to revolutionize the industry. The chemist's grandson, David, takes a sample of the new process to Grinde, who says he will give it consideration. He delegates his foreman, Mole, to steal the formula. Mole kills the chemist, and he and Grinde frame an explosion to conceal the crime. After David refuses to sell the formula, Grinde and Mole lock him and his sweetheart in a vault with poisonous gas. Grinde then tries to kill Mole, who knows too much, and take over the firm from his elderly partner at a directors' meeting.
