The Shadow Tycoon
Copyright© 2026 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 3
A few minutes later, one of Mr. Fox’s assistants brought in two newspapers, one from four months ago, the other from this week.
A finance house like Mr. Fox’s naturally kept a close eye on the financial currents of the whole nation, even the wider international order. They dealt with money every day, and they knew perfectly well what those things meant.
Beyond that, they also watched shifts in the shape of society, employment rates, unemployment rates, public order, matters of that kind.
If unemployment kept rising, they would cut interest rates while reducing large loans to lower their exposure, and that in turn would make their business more attractive.
When the national economy showed obvious signs of recovery, they would raise rates somewhat and at the same time encourage people to borrow more, because people could afford to pay it back.
Every day, Mr. Fox’s assistant had to read through a great stack of newspapers, analyze where the country might be headed next, then decide whether certain pieces of business ought to be called in early, or conveniently forgotten for the time being.
This was absolutely not a simple trade, nor a straightforward one. Men of lesser calibre could not scale it, and could not keep at it for long. Only someone like Mr. Fox could run this sort of operation over the long term.
That was also why he had spent good money to hire a university student to help him. He treated this as an enterprise, not a quick racket.
After opening the papers, William spent some time reading through them, around ten minutes or so. Mr. Fox did not disturb him once. He even had coffee and cigarettes brought over.
Somewhere in his heart, a quiet expectation had begun to stir. This ordinary fellow named William was going to give him a surprise.
It was not a groundless guess. It was something he had observed.
An ordinary nobody like William should not have been able to stay calm after being invited here, much less hold his gaze after he had deliberately let his killing intent show.
He was not an ordinary boy, and from Mr. Fox’s standpoint, William really was only a boy. He was just twenty.
After a dozen minutes or so, William used the pen in his hand to mark a few lines, then set both newspapers in front of Mr. Fox at once. “I underlined the parts you need to read. This way you can see them more clearly.”
Mr. Fox and his assistant both studied them in earnest. They read back and forth several times, but still found no clue at all. It was all property rental information. They saw nothing there.
Mr. Fox frowned slightly. “I don’t know what any of this is supposed to mean. Is there some special significance to it?”
William was not irritated in the slightest. He remained patient. Faced with an excellent client and the money in his pocket, anyone who needed money could become patient.
He walked over to Mr. Fox’s side. One of the bodyguards moved to stop him, but Mr. Fox raised a hand and checked the man. That meant William had earned Mr. Fox’s trust, at least for the moment.
If he could deliver on what he had claimed earlier, that trust would last a very long time.
“This paper carries rental listings for two street-facing apartments. The rent on this one is...,” William said, pointing to the line he had marked, then stopped there.
Mr. Fox answered instinctively, “One hundred and thirty-five dollars.”
William nodded in approval. “That’s right. One hundred and thirty-five dollars. Now let’s ignore everything else and look at how much the place next to it costs...”
Mr. Fox cooperatively shifted his gaze to the underlined listing in the other paper and, with equal cooperation, continued, “One hundred and seventy-two dollars!”
“These two apartments stand on opposite sides of the street, and the straight-line distance between them is less than a hundred meters. From the change in those prices, Mr. Fox, what do you notice?”
After a brief silence, Mr. Fox had already begun to think in earnest. “The monthly rent went up by thirty-seven dollars.”
In the mature and successful cases of William’s past life, he had always believed one thing, let the participants involve themselves more deeply in the problem, and it would save a great deal of time while preventing certain blind spots people never even realized they had.
They would persuade themselves, and firmly believe that the conclusion they reached was correct. This was especially obvious with mathematics.
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