Aeon House,
121-125 Mercer Avenue,
New York,
NY

Mr William Hamilton-Hunter,
Mountain Hold House,
Mountain Hold Airfield,
Green Mountain,
California

March 3rd, 1924

Dear Mr Hamilton-Hunter,

May I extend once again my congratulations to you and your associates, Mr Zachariah van Oort and Ms Li Mi, on your success in the matter of the kidnapping of Ms Sarah Coombes. I would also like to extend the thanks of those members of the law enforcement community who have been able to use the information which you gained to put a stop to associated slavery operations within their jurisdiction.

I know that the majority of our members take a keen interest in the follow-up work done by other Aeon Society members and our associates, contacts and allies across the world in response to a case that they were responsible for breaking. With this in mind, I am writing to keep you abreast of the latest developments arising from your actions.

As I am sure you know, there are few crimes considered so abominable by the Society as that of slavery, and I am delighted to be able to inform you that the information contained in the ledgers which you recovered from the premises of the Red Lotus Gentlemen's Club (I shudder to think that our own Society uses a similar descriptor as such a vile institution) have proven invaluable in the Society's efforts to bring a halt to the slave trade in Asia and beyond.

It seems that, initially at least, the Tong of the Black Scorpion have assumed the ledgers destroyed, offering us a unique advantage. In the month since you crippled their organisation, we have been able to track five of the listed buyers, and in concert with local law enforcement, have struck a major blow against slaving operations in China, India and South Africa,and identified and closed down two further contact houses - similar in function and management to the Jade Dragon restaurant - in the United States.

Perhaps most importantly, a further twenty-nine girls have to date been recovered, liberated and returned to their families, and we have promising leads on the locations of at least thirty-five more. Primarily these girls have come from San Francisco or Hong Kong, either through the Red Lotus or through similar organisations. The use of Mr van Oort's family's facilities in China has been a great boon to these operations, giving our agents and friends a base of operations, as well as a place to bring these girls where they can feel comfortable and safe.

Sadly, I must also inform you that we have uncovered positive evidence that at least fourteen of the young women listed in the sales ledgers have since met an untimely demise. We are working of course to bring those responsible to justice, but this is poor comfort for the families who have waited so long without word of their daughters, only to receive such bitter tidings from us. As Mr Mercer has often said, we must face the hard truth that our chosen purpose does not always lead us to a happily ever after, and that having chosen to try and bring light to the world, we must sometimes walk in darkness.

We shall of course keep you informed of all further developments, and I enclose a number of personal thank you letters, from the rescued women and their families, which I am sure that you and your associates will enjoy reading. It is after all this evidence of the good we do that makes our work most rewarding.

In addition, the investigations of our primary Peking contact, Miss Chang Lei-An, and the members of the Society's honorary Hong Kong house, under the capable guidance of Mr Arthur Sullivan, have uncovered what we believe to be the identities of the two Americans incapacitated by yourselves and killed in the fire which consumed the Red Lotus auction house, and badly damaged the club and warehouse. If you felt any remorse over the deaths of these two men, you need not let it trouble you further. While the Society, as always, does not condone the use of lethal force as anything but a last resort, in the case of these two 'gentlemen', the most sceptical judge in the world would hardly consider that your actions went beyond the reasonable.

The first of these men was Michael Wessinger, of Romana Falls, Virginia, a dealer in Chinese Opium and African slaves. The Society have been watching the man for some time, but had never managed to obtain the evidence to put an end to his dealings. He has never been known to import or export white slaves, and the ledgers you recover show that he has attended only six Black Scorpion slave auctions. On each occasion he purchased a single girl, who turned up dead a few days later. He was a slaver, a rapist and a murderer, and although we would have preferred to bring him to justice, the world is undeniably better off without him.

His 'associate' was a mercenary named Albert James; known to his professional contacts as 'Mad Bert'. A gunman of some skill and experience, 'Mad Bert' James spent the last eighteen years of his life a few steps ahead of the law. He was a suspect in a number of rape-homicide cases involving Oriental women, as well as numerous killings related to the sin trades.

Both men are known from Miss Chang's inquiries to have been in Peking at the time in question, and no record of their departure from the city exists. The descriptions which you provided match those of these two unsavoury individuals. The police arson investigation located two corpses in the warehouse which were clearly not Chinese, and I hope that we can conclude that neither man escaped the blaze. Certainly, without Wessinger's direction, his operatives seem to have become panicked and careless, allowing the Society and its allies to close down seven facilities used in his slavery ring, and make more than fifty related arrests.

As yet, our efforts to trace the other buyers have met with only mixed success. Most are not named directly in the ledger, but coupled with your descriptions, and with the aid of our friends in the international police community, we are making progress. I have enclosed a summary of reports from Society members on the successes we have had in this area to date.

In respect of other matters relating to this case, I understand that the police have made substantial inroads into the operations of the Black Scorpion and other triad gangs in San Francisco with the assistance of testimony from Miss Lin, and Captain Willis. This is of course a good thing, although I am certain that you know that it only takes a few bad apples on the force to turn a police operation of this nature into a racist crusade, and create a major source of unrest among the targeted racial minority group. We hope that this will not happen in San Francisco of course, and are monitoring the situation via contacts in the Attorney General's office and the Federal Bureau of Investigations. I know that we can count on you to keep an eye on matters in your home area as well.

Of course, despite all these accomplishments, we have not yet come close to putting a permanent stop to the obscene trade in human flesh, but every success is progress, and even if those responsible vanish into the wind, a life or several saved can not be overvalued.

Once again, thank you all for your actions in this matter. You are a credit to the Society.

Best regards,

Abigail Wright (Miss)
Secretary of the Aeon Society for Gentlemen

cc. Maxwell Mercer
Aeon Society File \#478}