Dear Sirs,
For some time now, I have watched the growth of your organization with interest. You have expanded your operations, first to the shady, then the immoral, and more recently to the outright illegal. In the past four years, you have begun providing tchotchkes of the most unusual kind to those interested. In exchange for your services as procurers of the unusual, you have been rewarded handsomely and your club has begun to gain a reputation as place for those seeking the strange and exotic. You now stand at the cusp of something far greater than you can understand.
Foolish, short-sighted men, among whom I hope you do not number, consider exchange to be something wholly devised by man. "It is the market," they crow, "the sum of all goods and services, that determines my day's labor is the price of a quart of wheat, three quarts of barley."
Marginally wiser men have declared that the market has a mind of its own, and casts down man and empire alike at a whim, the build-up to which is obvious only long after the fact.
The simple fact is this: exchange, of goods and services, both concrete and abstract, is the eternal, and we are the media through which they are conducted. I learned this fact well in earlier years.
Since then, I have devoted my time to understanding the nature of this beast, from whence all meaning ultimately originates. I have made numerous break-throughs, and day by day grow closer to the single truth.
I hope that you will forgive my philosophical ramblings. It has been some time now since I have had the opportunity to communicate with others in such a direct fashion.
I wrote to you not to waste your time with my ruminations, but because I have a proposition, one to which I am confident you will find yourselves amenable.
For a period longer than I care to recall, I have been in a singularly unique situation, the specifics of which need not concern you. Suffice it to say, my ability to effect immediate change in the worlds is rather diminished.
At the same time, I find myself in a position of knowledge unavailable to any other. This knowledge concerns, along with much else, future developments which will be relevant to your business and personal interests, and the location of certain items you may see fit to procure.
I will provide you with relevant information at times I judge to be appropriate. I will share this information in any manner I see fit. In exchange, I will ask you and your organization to perform certain actions on my behalf.
You will perform these actions without complaint or question. Furthermore, a third of all profits deriving from information provided by me will be deposited under the name Mr. Johann Dark in a bank of my choosing.
Any attempt to trace or retrieve these funds will result in immediate and irreversible cessation of my communication. I will also become a full, named partner in your organization.
If you find these conditions agreeable, simply pen a letter and address it to me. Do not worry about postage; it will find its way to me.
With wealth, men may do many things. They may gain status. They may buy love, art, even happiness. They may change the currents of the world.
And, for the right price, they can purchase something of true wonder. It is my hope that our club may one day provide for these men.
Cordially Yours,
Dark
P.S. As a show of my good faith, go to the Limehouse district. There you may find a deaf-mute beggar people call "Adam." Ask him about whether the sparrow's call is sweet. I am sure you will be pleased with the results.
