Ezra Emmett's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

Ezra climbed out of the cellar an hour after Alex left. The street above was quiet. He walked back to his rented room with his satchel under his coat and sat on the edge of the bed. Alex was gone toward the magistrate's house. Ezra had no way to reach him. If the break-in went wrong, Ezra would learn about it from a bell or a shout, and by then it would be too late to help. He needed a signal. He needed it tonight. He thought through the people he knew. Most would ask questions he could not answer. Then he thought of the girl who swept the porch two doors down from the magistrate. Ruby Meadows. Nine years old, red hair, always outside because her mother sent her out. He had bought her a sugar twist once for pointing out a loose board. She noticed things. She did not know why she noticed them, which made her safer than most grown people. He found her on the step of the log home with the white fence at the end of the mill road, three doors down from the one Alex meant to open. She was counting pebbles into her lap. Ezra crouched by the fence and kept his voice low. He told her he would pay her a copper to sit on that step until the town bell struck ten. If she saw a lamp move inside the magistrate's front window, or a man run from the porch, she was to walk to the boarded chandler's shop and knock four times on the side door. Nothing else. Not a word to anyone. She repeated it back to him without blinking and held out her hand for the copper. Ezra went to the cellar and waited by the stairs. The press stood cold behind him. He kept the door cracked so he could hear the side knock. His hands shook against his knees. He counted the bell. Eight. Nine. At a quarter past nine, four knocks came on the side door. Ezra was up the stairs before he had decided to move. Ruby stood in the alley with her arms crossed against the cold. She said a lamp had gone across the front window twice, fast, and a big man had come out onto the porch with a stick. She said the man in black had gone over the back fence into the woods, not out the front. Then she asked for another copper because she had run. Ezra gave her two and sent her home by the long way. He stood in the alley and understood two things at once. Alex was not caught, or Ruby would have said so. And the ledger was not in his hands, or Alex would already be at the side door beside her. The house had turned him back. Ezra had built his signal in time to hear the bad news, and now he had to decide what to print with only a name and no proof.