Scientific Sprague

In the high desert of Nevada, a government chemist named Calvin Sprague must decode a web of sabotage, high finance, and technological terror threatening to destroy a railroad empire. When a false telegram about a wrecked passenger train sends panic through the Nevada Short Line, superintendent Maxwell calls in his friend Sprague an expert in matters where science meets crime. A shadowy saboteur known as the Wire-Devil has been systematically attacking the railroad's infrastructure, using the tools of industry against itself: electrified rails, dynamited tunnels, and manipulated financial systems. As Sprague digs deeper, he discovers the attacks are merely the visible surface of a darker conspiracy rooted in the brutal economics of Western railroad expansion. This 1912 novel stands as a remarkably early example of the scientific detective story, predating many of the genre's conventions by decades. Its chemist-hero applies laboratory rigor to the untamed landscape of industrial warfare.