 Walter Sills, a struggling New York consulting chemist, is developing a method of plating metal with pure ammonium, which would be cheaper than using traditional plating metals such as nickel or chromium.Despite not having properly tested the plating process, he obtains some publicity for his discovery, which leads him into all sorts of problems with gangsters who want to steal his formula and crooked politicians who seek to exploit him.He hopes to sell the process to a steel magnate, but discovers at the last moment that the process generates an extremely foul smell which lasts almost indefinitely, making it commercially unviable.