The Shadow Tycoon
Copyright© 2026 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 74
The two of them walked through the Warehouse District, where goods were piled like mountains. Looking at all those things filling every available space, Mr. Fox was both pleased and somewhat troubled.
These things could not be stacked together. They were not made to a single specification. If they were to be stacked, supports would have to be built first, meaning an outer frame for each item, to ensure it would not be crushed under weight.
That would require no small sum of money, followed by labor costs, equipment costs, and once everything was stacked together, taking one item out from among them would become another enormous undertaking.
In the end, they could only be spread out flat across the vast warehouse space as they were now. At most, some small things could be placed atop items sturdy enough to bear weight.
From tables and chairs to certain artworks, oil paintings and the like, the things here covered almost everything an ordinary person might need over a lifetime. William even saw a set of combined silver tableware.
The smooth white ivory handles, paired with pure silver frames, six complete sets of knives, forks, plates, and bowls arranged inside a large box, gave a very pleasing impression.
Perhaps noticing William’s gaze, Mr. Fox smiled and said, “That was brought in by an old woman. She said it was a gift from her son when she retired, but this year her son’s business ran into some trouble and urgently needed money, so...”
William nodded. Not because he understood, but because he knew everyone who came here was now desperately short of money. No matter what reasons they gave, their purpose in coming here was the same.
“I gave her seventeen hundred dollars for this tableware. If you like it, you can take it home...” He could tell William seemed rather taken with the set. Since one or two thousand dollars did not matter much to him anyway, he made a rare gesture of generosity.
William shook his head. “You offered too much. Ivory isn’t valuable. Silver isn’t valuable either. Put two worthless things together, and they still won’t become valuable.”
The landmass of this world was broader, and there were still many uninhabited regions untouched by mankind and technology, places where nature retained its most primitive face.
Ivory, something whose transport and sale were strictly forbidden in another world, might here simply be a common material among the middle and high classes. It did not count as scarce.
Mr. Fox did not quite understand. He had seen similar ivory and pure silver tableware in certain shops, priced casually at two or three thousand dollars, even three to five thousand, enough to make one click one’s tongue. For a six-set ivory and silver service like this, he had already felt faintly guilty offering only a little over a thousand dollars. He had not expected William to think he had offered too much.
“That old woman you mentioned must have gone to an antique shop first, before she came to you...” William lifted his foot and continued walking. As he walked, he said, “Mr. Fox, I don’t know whether you have any other views about your work, but to me, work is work. Personal sentiment is a private matter. The two cannot be mixed.”
“You have the right to sympathize with others, to pity them. But we cannot convert that sympathy and pity into a priced amount and then use it as economic value to fill our business. That will make many people bear trouble because of it!”
Many people in higher positions were not mature enough when they first climbed upward. Their conduct still carried a certain childishness. They could not distinguish what was acceptable to express and what was not.
For Mr. Fox, perhaps he had merely pitied an old woman and overvalued the collateral she brought in. But that mortgage agreement might fail bank approval as a result, thereby cutting off a one-thousand-dollar loan, and in turn affecting roughly one hundred and fifty to two hundred dollars of William’s income.
If that money were then rolled forward, the loss would be even greater. At the same time, Mr. Fox himself would lose a great deal of money. And the cause of all that would be nothing more than one overflow of sympathy.
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