John Ames - Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Vol. 128, No. 5. Whole No. 783, November 2006

It was past sundown and Colonel Grandpere greeted him on the dimly lit porch. “I’ve been waiting for you, Snow. I think our man is on the move.”

“Tonight?”

“Right now! One of my neighbors telephoned that he saw someone with a sack crossing his field at sundown. I’ve got Rubin, our hostler, along, too. We’ll ride out and catch him in the act. Got your pistol?”

“I’m never without it. I went around to a few places that sell dynamite and made a list of their customers. You might want to look it over.”

“Later,” the colonel said, folding the paper and slipping it into the breast pocket of his jacket.

Rubin Danials was mounted and waiting back near the horse barn. “Hello, Ben. Good night for hunting, eh?”

Ben glanced up at the moon, barely visible thorough the scattered clouds. “Good night for blowing up tracks, too. Do we know where this guy is?”

“There’s a bend in the river brings it within a few miles of Pontchartrain. The colonel thinks he’s there.”

They rode out into the darkness, guided only by the occasional moonlight. Danials, who seemed to know the route best, led the way, with Ben and the colonel behind. “Keep your gun ready,” the colonel told Ben. “If we find him, he could be dangerous.”

Soon they reached the sugar-train track, running along the side of a field and heading northwest away from the city and toward the refinery. They traveled faster now, following a path along the railroad. Presently Ben spotted the flare of a match up ahead. “There!” he pointed.

They rode up fast and Ben was off his horse before the others. A long fuse was burning toward a single stick of dynamite under one of the rails. As he yanked it out a slender figure with a double-barreled shotgun appeared from behind a tree. It was Matty’s friend, Tommy Franz. He fired a blast at Rubin Danials, blowing him off his horse, and then aimed a second barrel at the colonel. “Get him, Snow!” Grandpere shouted in the same instant the second barrel was fired. The old man fell back, clinging to his reins, just as Ben put two quick bullets into the killer’s chest.

Franz stumbled back, dropping the shotgun, as Ben rushed to the aid of the wounded men. He saw at once that Rubin Danials was beyond saving, and turned his attention to the colonel, lowering him to the ground as he stripped away the bloodied jacket and shirt. His chest was peppered with a dozen or more shotgun pellets, causing a bit of bleeding, but there was none of the massive damage that had ended the hostler’s life.

“Did you get him?” the colonel managed to gasp.

“I got him. He’s dead. But so is Danials, I’m afraid.”

“Can you get me back to the house?”

“You haven’t lost much blood,” Ben said. “But we’d better head for the nearest house. Where is it?” He checked over the colonel’s horse, which seemed unharmed, and tied his employer onto the saddle so he wouldn’t fall.

“The — the Crabtree place, through these woods.”

Ben led the colonel’s horse in the direction indicated, and presently a large farmhouse came into view beneath the moon. After some pounding on the door, Ben was rewarded by the appearance of one of the Crabtrees. “What’s going on?” the man wanted to know.

“Colonel Grandpere’s been wounded and there are two dead men back by the railroad tracks. Do you have a telephone here?”

“Well — yes, we do. These farms are connected and we have a line running into the city. What happened?”

“Another attempt to sabotage the sugar train, but that’s over now. Call Inspector Withers and let me speak with him.”

Withers wasn’t at police headquarters that late, but they contacted him and he rode out in his buggy shortly after other officers had arrived on the scene. The colonel was already on his way to the hospital, and Withers had only the bloodstained shirt and jacket Ben had stripped from the old man. “He was lucky.” Feeling around in the perforated jacket, he came upon the paper Ben had given the colonel with the names of the local dynamite customers. “What’s this?”

Ben held the paper up to the lantern light and explained that he’d been trying to determine if there’d been any dynamite sales to individuals. “None of these places made individual sales, as you can see.” The inspector took the list to examine Ben’s notations. The paper was so thick no light passed through it. “Of course, the dynamite could have come from upriver or almost anywhere.”

Withers uncovered the dead man, his chest torn open by the buckshot blast. “Rubin Danials,” he muttered, “a good man with horses.” He walked over to the second body, the man with the shotgun. “Do you know him?” the inspector asked Ben.

“Not really, but I think his name is Tommy Franz. I saw him at a bar in the French Quarter with Grandpere’s daughter.”

“Matty? I’m sorry to hear she’s involved in this.”

“We don’t know that she is.”

Withers sighed. “I’d better have her picked up for questioning.”

Ben slept only a few hours that night. Though the shooting of Tommy Franz had been more than justified, he wondered at Matty Grandpere’s involvement in the case. Was her alienation from her father so severe that she would enlist a man like Franz to sabotage the sugar train?

By morning Matty had been located and brought in for questioning. Since he had fired the shots fatal to Tommy Franz, the inspector wanted Ben present, too. “I have to get to the bottom of this,” he told them both.

“How is my father?” Matty asked. Her face was drawn and pale, and Ben wondered if it was the colonel’s wounding or Franz’s death that upset her most.

“His wounds aren’t serious,” Withers told her. “The doctors picked about a dozen bits of buckshot off his skin. None of them penetrated very deep. He’ll be out of the hospital in a day or two.”

She shifted her gaze to Ben. “You were the one who killed that man?”

“I had no choice. He fired his double-barrel at Danials and your father.”

“Miss Grandpere — Matty — what was your relationship with Tommy Franz?” Withers asked.

“There was no relationship. I barely knew him. I started having lunch at that cafe when I took the job at La Belle Fleur. He talked to me one day and after that he often came over to my table. I never saw him outside the cafe.”

“Did he ever mention your father, or the sugar train?”

“Never. I doubt if he knew who my father was.”

Withers looked doubtful. “Grandpere isn’t a common name. I’m sure he knew.”

“But what did he hope to accomplish by attacking the railroad?”

The detective made a few quick notes before he replied. “At some point he may have been planning to extort money from your father in exchange for stopping the attacks. We may never know.” He picked up Ben’s list of dynamite suppliers. “I’ll check these out and try to discover where he bought the stuff, not that it makes much difference now.”

“Do you need me any longer?” Matty asked.

“Not right now. Maybe you should go see your father at the hospital.”

“If you want to, I’ll go with you,” Ben offered.

“Oh, all right,” she agreed, hardly concealing her reluctance.

Colonel Grandpere had been taken to the Tulane University Hospital, one of the city’s oldest. They found him in a private room being attended by his own nurse. “Daddy,” Matty said softly, entering the room with some hesitation.

He lifted his head and peered at her. “You’ve come back, my darlin’ daughter.”

“Not for good, just to see you. How do you feel?”

“Pretty good for someone my age who took a load of buckshot in his chest. Lucky you were there, Snow, or he’d have finished me off.”