The Shadow Tycoon
Copyright© 2026 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 71
The two children, spending money at an open-air roadside café for the first time, were visibly restrained. Before sitting down, they dusted off their clothes more than once to make sure they would not dirty the seats.
William did not stop them. He simply watched in silence. A person’s awe before the world did not vanish in a single instant. If someone could lose all awe for all things in one moment, that person would soon be destroyed as well.
The arrogant who understood no reverence never lived long. They were destroyed either by others or by themselves.
Watching them sit so carefully, so cautiously, with their heads slightly lowered, he knew there was still some awe in their hearts, even though they had done something many grown men would not dare do, kill.
When the waiter brought over three cups of coffee and three thin pancakes, then sincerely wished the three of them a perfect afternoon tea, William began speaking about the work he could offer them.
“I recently established an auction house. At the moment, no one is working for me, and over the next period of time I’ll have far too much to do. I can’t lock myself up there entirely. I need some people to do things for me.”
The two children, who had been communicating by glances, immediately straightened their backs. William gave a noncommittal nod. Holding the saucer in one hand and the coffee cup in the other, he took a small sip. “The first job, I need someone to go every day to all the trade markets in Sabine City and ask about the daily prices of certain goods, including raw materials. It’s a simple job, but also a meticulous one. I need people who can ask questions, recognize some words, and write some words.”
Mr. Fox still had not realized the sort of trouble those debt-settlement mortgage agreements, the ones that stood in for financial contracts, were going to bring him. A huge amount of miscellaneous goods would soon pile up in his warehouse, and unlike gold or jewelry, those things could not be disposed of easily.
If people truly had gold or jewelry, they would never bring them to Mr. Fox in the first place. They would take them straight to an antique shop or some similar place to sell them off. Very often, another name for an antique shop was pawnshop.
What came to Mr. Fox, by its very nature, was stuff tied closely to everyday life, things that could not be turned over immediately.
They could not be sold off quickly, yet no one could bear to throw them away. They occupied a great deal of time and energy. Then William would take them over at a discount based on the value listed in the mortgage agreements, contracting for them at a lower price.
Looked at that way, he was effectively making money twice on a single transaction, and the second profit might well be even larger. But that did not matter, because the two were not directly linked. In fact, it was Mr. Fox himself who had asked William to handle those goods.
Market prices fluctuated. Figuring out how much each thing ought to sell for required proper budgeting. William could already clearly feel the atmosphere that came before a storm.
Economic contraction was changing the way more ordinary people thought about consumption. They were beginning to try buying second-hand goods to reduce unnecessary expenses in life, and pricing would become an art in itself.
As for raw materials, sometimes the market produced bewildering situations, cases where the price of an item fell below the value of its raw materials once broken apart. The most common example was second-hand cars.
Sometimes an old car could only be sold for two or three dollars, but if it was dismantled into raw materials, or even certain parts, it could fetch far more.
In the past, people may have avoided that approach because labor costs were too high and for other similar reasons. But economic depression was coming quickly. Labor would become cheap, and people would fight over work they once would not even have looked at.
For the capitalists who were already prepared and already had ideas, this would be a feast, because in past operations labor costs had made up the largest portion of total costs.