When he climbed into the Buick, the red sedan was nowhere in sight. “He turned off a few blocks up,” said Lois. “He’s probably going up Reid Street. We can pick him up again.”
The moss factory was near sixteenth street close beside the colored section of town. It was a prosperous plant which collected, dried, and cured the abundant Spanish Moss which festooned the Florida trees. Dried and cured, the moss turned a deep brownish black and formed a servicable stuffing for fine furniture. It was highly inflammable in the drying stage. Stan knew that, once started, a fire in the moss factory would be far beyond control before help could possibly arrive.
He pulled the Buick into the curb and said, “You better get out here, Lois. This may not be much fun!”
“Hurry!” she commanded. “I know how they work. I’m going along.”
He started the pursuit again without arguing. The moss factory loomed up a couple of blocks away, a square smudge in the dark. There was no sight of the red sedan. Stan turned the Buick off the road into a vacant lot, put out the lights, and climbed out. Wordlessly, Lois followed.
The negro section of the town spread out to their right, flat and treeless. An occasional light showed dimly among the scattered unpainted houses. Beyond, the factory lay on low irregular terrain.
They circled and stole up on the unadorned squareness of the factory from the rear. Stan led the way around it, keeping close to the wall. His searching fingers found the knob of the office door, but when he started to turn it, he discovered the door was slightly ajar.
It was all too pat, too delightfully careless to be real. He held Lois back with a restraining arm, stood to one side and pushed the door wide with his toe. It creaked slightly, sending a magnified rasp into the pitchy interior of the office. Minutes later he stepped inside, closed the door behind him, and clicked his five-cell torch into brightness.
Shadows of desk and files grew large on the walls and collapsed again as the light moved on. Led by its ray, Stan and Lois explored a baling room to their right, probed behind presses, and bales of moss stacked high along the sides. Satisfied that the baling room was empty, Stan paused before a red fireproof door which barred the way to the back part of the factory. The door was locked, secured by a heavy Yale padlock.
“No one went through there,” Stan whispered. “Do you know what’s on the other side?”
“It’s the drying room.” Lois’ lips moved close to his ear. “Wentworth will try to start his fire in there.”
“There must be another way to get in.”
He clicked off the light. For a moment there was no sound except Lois’s excited breathing. Finally she said, “I believe there’s a chute from the roof where they send the moss down. If it’s open—”
Stan turned on the light again, swung it toward a narrow staircase in the corner and said, “Let’s go.”
A trap-door barred their way at the top. He pushed it up, climbed through and stood under the stars. The breeze against his face was cold, free of the dank pungency which permeated the baling room below. He took a few steps before he turned. The upper half of Lois’s body showed above the opening in the roof, motionless, as though some clever magician were bringing her into existence with his trick half finished.
She pointed to his left, raising her arm slowly. A rectangle of black showed at his feet close to the edge. His torch glinted dully on a wooden chute worn smooth and shiny from the scratch of sliding moss.
The violent shove which sent him inside, clutching at air, came without the faintest noise which might have warned him. He realized afterward that the entrance to the slide was guarded with twelve inch boards set on edge around the opening. The man he was seeking must have been lying pressed flat to one side of the rectangle, skillfully merged with the shadows.
Stan plunged swiftly down, grabbing helplessly at the hard glassy slide. The breathless descent stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Clinging tendrils of moss were all about him, trailing across his face and eyes, brushing at his groping hands.
His torch was gone. He lay back, quietly watching the stars through the opening above him. Even as he looked they disappeared and he knew the opening to the roof had been covered with a heavy door.
The moss was soft and yielding, odorous with the acid of decomposition. He sneezed and shifted his weight as he felt himself sinking down. The moss followed, persistent with its repugnant caresses.
He lay rigidly, spreading wide his arms and legs as a man might do in clutching sands. Life came into the tendrils surrounding him, slow creeping life. Silently they moved against his flesh, furtive as crawling insects in the dark. He sneezed again, and gleefully they closed in, cloaking his mouth and nose with smothering strands.
Panic threatened him, exhausting his strength and numbing his senses at the imminence of drowning in thirty feet of dank dry sea. He began to fight, flailing his arms and kicking his feet with the frenzy of a choking swimmer. The moss closed in, stealthy as a lustful harpy seeking to strangle a weakening lover in the thick strong strands of her hair.
Twice he called, muffled ineffectual yells which reached nowhere. Then icy calmness stilled his dangerous struggles. Fiercely, watching his direction by instinct, hoarding his breath, using his powerful muscles to the greatest advantage, he began to fight his way down and through. A locked fire door was his goal, but it was the single chance which would bring him out alive. Acrid smoke was already stinging his nostrils. The moss plant was aflame!
The blackness was cut by licking fire. Unexpectedly Stan found he was free of the deadly, yielding moss pile. He had come out of the sloping heap at one side. Straight before him, illuminated waveringly by a green, unearthly flare, the thick fire door barred his way.
Blinded by streaming sweat, he stood swaying slightly, listening to the wail of a siren drawing near. Flame rolled slowly down the side of the moss pile pushing a cloud of choking smoke before it, driving Stan closer against the wall. Desperately he grasped one end of the door and shook it with an insane frenzy. It moved ponderously half an inch out from the wall and settled into place again.
He stepped back, dashed perspiration from his eyes, and studied the door through a haze of scalding tears. It was a matter of minutes, he knew. Fumes were already tearing at his lungs, turning each breath into agony. The flicker of the burning pile changed from green to crimson. With the brighter light he saw that the sliding door was hung at the top from two grooved rollers which allowed it to move along an iron bar.
Weakly he leaned against the wall to think, knowing that one man, no matter how strong, could never lift it free. Close beside him something toppled over, slid scrapingly along the wall, and struck the cement floor with a dull metallic clang. Stan dropped to his knees, gratefully sucked in a gulp of the slightly cooler air, and found he was staring at a long-handled spade.
He acted mechanically from then on, his shadow dancing against the wall with the grotesque humor of a demonish stoker engaged in some infernal scene. The door hung two inches from the floor. With the full weight of his body behind the stroke, he jammed the sturdy handle of the spade beneath the door, working from the front end toward the rear. Two feet of the handle disappeared, shoved underneath, parallel to the wall.
The first time it slipped. He swore, tried again, found leverage, and with every back muscle called into play, began to raise. The ash snapped threateningly, then held until one of the rollers on top of the door was raised above the bar. Bracing the crushing weight of the shovel against his hip, Stan released his hands and pulled the heavy door inward until the roller was free. One more lunge, which approached sheer madness, dragged the loose end of the door two feet into the blazing room. An instant later he squeezed through and dropped inertly to the baling room floor, drinking in fresh air.