Chapter 1493: Chapter 1493

To Jenkins's eyes, the old man's life force had dwindled to almost nothing. He wouldn't have been surprised if the man's voice suddenly trailed off and he died right there in the middle of a sentence.

"This is the mirror."

The viscount painstakingly pushed the box across the desk. The wooden lid was closed, but the mirror was undoubtedly inside.

"Make your offers. Whoever pays the most takes it away."

He gasped for another breath or two.

"I only want cash. No trades. It doesn't matter who you work for. The highest bidder takes it."

The gentleman from the auction house called out first, his quickness perhaps a product of his profession.

"Fifteen pounds. I was sent by Count Paramont."

"Twenty pounds. I may not have deep pockets, but if there's a chance, I'm willing to take it."

the history professor remarked. Of everyone present, he seemed the most nonchalant about whether he'd get the mirror.

"Thirty pounds. Meow~"

Jenkins didn't add anything else. The meow had come from Chocolate, but its proximity to his own words made it easy to misinterpret.

Jenkins suspected the cat was deliberately toying with him.

He raised the price by another ten pounds, hoping to make the others back down. But all four of them had come with a purpose, and a mere ten-pound jump wasn't enough to deter anyone.

the man with the mustache shot back, casting a defiant glance at Jenkins.

"One hundred pounds."

The history professor offered, raising his right hand.

the count's servant asked in astonishment. The mirror alone was certainly not worth that much. In Jenkins's own appraisal, if the mirror possessed no supernatural qualities, its reasonable price as an antique should fall between forty and sixty pounds.

"One hundred and twenty!"

The servant, realizing the bidding wasn't over, immediately raised the price.

Jenkins and the man from the auction house both turned to look at him, their expressions mirroring the one the servant had just given the professor.

"One hundred and thirty!"

Though it was only a ten-pound increase, the gentleman from the auction house was clearly making a statement: a price like that wasn't going to scare him off. The source of thɪs content is N0v3l.Fiɾe.net

"You're not all in this together, are you? Trying to set a trap to make me overpay?"

Jenkins said this deliberately, pausing for a beat before calling out his own price:

"One hundred and fifty pounds!"

He hadn't raised it by much, but it was enough to show he wouldn't be scared off by a three-figure price. This seemed to displease the cat on his shoulder. It knew exactly how much one hundred and fifty pounds could buy, and from its perspective, Jenkins was squandering the family's money on something utterly useless.

"It seems you are all more determined than I anticipated,"

Viscount Gurus rasped, his voice a low groan. His words brought the increasingly heated bidding to a temporary halt.

"I don't know what brought each of you here, but I must remind you of one thing: I am only forty-one years old."

This plunged the room into silence for a long moment. Viscount Gurus—who looked to be at death's door, his face a canvas of liver spots and wrinkles deep enough to trap a fly—was claiming to be only forty-one.

"Half a week ago, before I acquired this mirror, I was as handsome as this gentleman here."

He pointed to Jenkins, who had serious doubts about the viscount's overconfidence.

"After I came into possession of this mirror, it took only three days for me to become... this. If you truly wish to buy it, you must be certain. Now, continue. The last bid was one hundred and fifty pounds."

He said no more. The other four men in the study glanced at one another, but none of them saw a hint of surrender on anyone's face.

"One hundred and sixty!"

"Two hundred and forty!"

The one who finally declared this number, steeling himself, was the self-proclaimed history professor. Now, however, everyone was questioning his identity. Even if a university had special funding for his department, it was inconceivable that they would spend such a sum on an antique mirror. Whether in Nolan or Bel Diran, three hundred pounds was a fortune that the vast majority of citizens could never produce at once.

"Let me remind you all again, once you possess this mirror, letting it go is not a simple matter."

the viscount wheezed, extending a right index finger so long and pale it looked like a bare bone, and pointing it toward the wooden box.

"It took me an hour upstairs just to come down, because I couldn't bring myself to sell it. But I understand now. If I continue to succumb to its temptation, tomorrow may very well be my last day. I don't wish to bring any of you to harm, so please, consider your decision carefully."

The viscount was a decent man, it seemed, just weak-willed. Jenkins suspected his current state had something to do with looking at the back of the mirror too often.

"Three hundred and twenty!"

"Three hundred and fifty."

"I doubt you even have that much money! You're trying to force us out. There's no way an auction house would grant a field agent discretionary power over such a large sum!"

The man claiming to be the count's servant leveled a sharp accusation at the gentleman from the auction house. The latter simply shrugged and casually pulled a thick bundle of banknotes, secured with a white paper band, from an inner pocket of his overcoat.

"You're the one who should be under suspicion. I may not know this Count Paramont, but I find it hard to believe he would allow a mere servant to carry so much cash."

the man from the auction house retorted.

"I have the count's utmost trust. My loyalty is beyond your comprehension. Shouldn't we be more suspicious of the man over there who claims to be a professor?"

He gestured with the banknotes in his own pocket as he redirected the suspicion toward the history professor.

the professor replied calmly, then turned to look at Jenkins, as if intending to drag him into the fray as well. But of the four introductions, Jenkins's identity was ironically the most credible.

"I am Baron Jenkins Williams. I imagine you may have heard of me. I've written two bestselling books..."

he offered, proving his financial standing was not in question.

"Two thousand pounds. This is all the cash I have on me. Since everyone is so confident, let's just see who brought the most."

the man from the auction house announced, pulling out all the cash he had on him. One-hundred-pound notes were a rarity in public circulation, typically reserved for settling major commercial transactions. He produced exactly twenty of them, a denomination even Jenkins had seldom seen.

Jenkins understood now. The motives of the four buyers present were far from simple.