His friend Tico leaned close to his ear. Tico was round-faced and almost always laughing, the kind of man who found everything funny except the moments when things went wrong for him personally. He whispered that he had seen an old beggar outside the gate on the way in. The man was sitting against the wall with a cardboard sign. Tico thought it would be funny to bring him inside and seat him at a table just to watch the reaction of the other guests.
Baron went still, the way he always did when an idea genuinely interested him.
He lifted his wine glass and turned it slowly between his fingers. Then his lips curved into something that was almost a smile. He told Tico to bring the man inside—not to feed him at the door, not to hand him money and send him away, but to clean him up slightly, seat him at table seven near the back of the hall, and tell absolutely no one why he was there.
He wanted to watch. He wanted to see with his own eyes how his guests would treat a man with nothing.
He thought it would tell him something true.
