The Almighty Dominance novel Chapter 845

Old fraud. Senile fool.

The words hung in the candlelight. Nobody in that ballroom had ever heard them said out loud about Master Gregory. Most of them had never dared even to think them.

Four hundred faces turned to the last row.

Alex sat with one leg crossed over the other, his paddle still raised, as calm as a man ordering coffee.

The banker's wife froze with her paddle halfway under her chair. The fat man who had bought five charms forgot to close his mouth. In the front row, Tyler Hunt twisted right round in his seat, and slowly his grin came back. Here it was. The idiot was going to drown himself in front of everyone.

The auctioneer's hammer stopped in mid-air. "Ten… ten million dollars, in the last row."

Master Gregory did not move. For three long seconds he only looked at the boy in the plain dark jacket, the way a man looks at a fly that has landed in his soup.

"Senile," he said at last, very gently, as if he were tasting the word. "I have sat at the tables of dukes. Princes have thanked me with their own hands. And a boy in a borrowed seat calls me a fool, in front of every family on this coast." He tilted his head. "Do you understand what you have just done?"

"I bid on a clam," said Alex. "Isn't that what the paddles are for?"

He put his paddle down across his knee.

"Even if I were a prince myself. Even if I'd met the emperor. So what? Could I stand up and tell this whole room, please, nobody bid against me, I'm a prince?" He shook his head. "Come on. I'm not as shameless as you."

Then he snapped his fingers, as if it had only just come to him.

"Ah, right. I know. You must be poor. That's why you dare to say a thing like that, even though we both know how shameless it is."

Somebody near the windows choked on a laugh and turned it into a cough.

"I asked this room for face," said the master. "Every family here gave it to me."

"I heard you," said Alex. "I've been thinking about it. Do I even know you?"

This time the laugh got out. Half the room swallowed it at once, frightened, but it had been heard.

The master's smile stayed exactly where it was. Only his eyes changed.

"You will know me," he said. "Everybody on this coast knows me. Even the queen waits a month to drink tea with me. A boy who polished shoes in this very room should be careful whose face he steps on." He turned his head to the auctioneer, without taking his eyes off Alex. "Fifteen."

"Twenty," said Alex.

"Thirty." The master's voice did not rise. It only went colder. "I advise you not to be so arrogant, young man. That card in your pocket is not yours. When the old man finds out what you have done with it, you will be the one who suffers. Not I."

"He's right, idiot!" Tyler was half out of his seat. "Sit down before you get Mr. Wolfe thrown in the poorhouse!"

A murmur ran along the rows, and this time it was not laughing. The room was turning. Alex could feel it, four hundred people deciding what he was. A thief. A shoeshine boy with a dying man's card, throwing his money into the sea in front of the whole coast.

Let them think what they liked.

"Do you know what you look like to me?" he said to the master, quite pleasantly. "A man selling folded paper in a very good coat. Your favour is worth nothing to me. And your face is worth less."

He raised his paddle again.

"Fifty million."

Nobody breathed.

"Is he mad?" whispered the banker's wife.

"It's the Wolfe card," her husband whispered back. "He's not mad. He's rich for one night."

"Then he's the most dangerous man in the room. A fool with no bottom to his pocket."

Master Gregory's hand tightened on his cane until the green rings bit into his knuckles. His lips parted. He was going to bid again. Then he looked at the black card on the girl's silver tray and did the sum every man in the room had already done. Nobody on this coast could follow the Wolfe fortune. Not even him.

"Fifty million," said the auctioneer faintly. "Going once. Going twice."

The master sat down.

Nobody in that ballroom had ever seen him sit down before.

The hammer fell. "Sold. To the guest of Mr. Wolfe. Fifty million dollars."

The room did not clap. It did not dare. One clap now, and Master Gregory would remember the hands that made it.

So it sat in the candlelight and stared at the last row, and in the front row Tyler Hunt sat with his mouth slightly open, like a boy who has just watched a dog do sums.

On his way out, Alex passed the master's chair.

"Enjoy your shell," said Master Gregory, without turning his head. His voice was very soft. "I do not think you will live to open it. And I do not think the old man will live to thank you."

Alex stopped.

He stood there for a moment, close enough to smell the cedar smoke in the master's beard. Then he bent down, just a little.

"Mr. Wolfe," he said quietly, "is going to outlive you. You'll go first."

He straightened up.

"I'll send you a picture of the shell. Something to remember it by."

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