I don't know if I am to be held responsible for the disastrous turn of events which led to the incident at Crystal Palace. I can't help but feeling that I am the one to blame above everyone else.
Surely I had doubts about the success of the mission. Surely it would have been rather silly of me to think that all those I had chosen could be trusted. I knew that traitors were more than probable, even more, the cynicals would say, even more than honnest men.
Still, I feel guilty of planning this improbably risky mission to murder the Empress of India and Queen of England.
But it is certainly easy to feel remorse, now that I know for certain that the resultst were tragic.
_____
From the newspaper ''The London Clock'', 1st May 1889
Yesterday, agents of Scotland Yard and officers of the Royal Guard gathered around a grotesque scene giving evidence of the extent of the tragedy of the night.
[...]
The airship The Charles Babbage crashed in the back gardens of the Palace, at eleven in the evening after refusing to obey the orders of the soldiers present.
[...]
The officers refused to explain themselves as to why exactly they decided not to enter Crystal Palace until morning and gave no answer at all to explain their behaviour of the night, but they are believed to have followed orders coming from the highest levels of power and are therefore immune against all forms of investigation.
[...]
Three bodies discovered in the hall and Royal Balcony
[...]
Various injuries, but no blood found around the body at all.
[...]
policemen confused about the presence of what seems to be a very sophisticated mechanism, or even automaton, partly destroyed by an explosion.
[...] Saw that the balcony had collapsed. Lying on it, a corpse wearing a uniform similar in all points to that of the Red Coats, except for its colour (a light blue) and an embroidened sentence on the chest : ''We serve the Queen''.
[...]
The Policemen have been asked to remain silent about the scene inside the Palace, but your humble servant has been able to gather these informations by a series of actions that some people would not hesitate to qualify of ingenious, but to which I will, if you permit it, substitute the more accurate term of ''risky and relying on pure chance''.
W. Thomes Stead
_____
Journal, 19th May 1889 -evening
I can't see how such a complicated automaton could possibly have been created, especially one so alike Queen Victoria. We - and when I say ''we'', I mean not only myself and our organization, but also the gentlemen I sent on that mission – have been duped, fool, and we had no way of foreseeing what was about to happen, for the trap was so greatly set, with such care that we couldn't help but be defeited.
But I am brought to believe that everything is not lost.
I have been led to think that the westerner might have been saved by that blue-coated man, whose body was found lying in a pond of blood, head destroyed by a single bullet.
The other corpses display even more curious singularities. I strongly believe that they were dead bodies reanimated by the use of black magic of some kind. And what a powerful kind of magic it would be.
If some of the people I sent on the mission are still alive today, I hope that they never face that magic again, for they would surely not be able to survive it twice.
_____
Journal, 18th May 1889
I don't know if I am to be held responsible for the disastrous turn of events which led to the incident at Crystal Palace. I can't help but feeling that I am the one to blame above everyone else.
Surely I had doubts about the success of the mission. Surely it would have been rather silly of me to think that all those I had chosen could be trusted. I knew that traitors were more than probable, even more, the cynicals would say, even more than honnest men.
Still, I feel guilty of planning this improbably risky mission to murder the Empress of India and Queen of England.
But it is certainly easy to feel remorse, now that I know for certain that the resultst were tragic.
_____
From the newspaper ''The London Clock'', 1st May 1889
Yesterday, agents of Scotland Yard and officers of the Royal Guard gathered around a grotesque scene giving evidence of the extent of the tragedy of the night.
[...]
The airship The Charles Babbage crashed in the back gardens of the Palace, at eleven in the evening after refusing to obey the orders of the soldiers present.
[...]
The officers refused to explain themselves as to why exactly they decided not to enter Crystal Palace until morning and gave no answer at all to explain their behaviour of the night, but they are believed to have followed orders coming from the highest levels of power and are therefore immune against all forms of investigation.
[...]
Three bodies discovered in the hall and Royal Balcony
[...]
Various injuries, but no blood found around the body at all.
[...]
policemen confused about the presence of what seems to be a very sophisticated mechanism, or even automaton, partly destroyed by an explosion.
[...] Saw that the balcony had collapsed. Lying on it, a corpse wearing a uniform similar in all points to that of the Red Coats, except for its colour (a light blue) and an embroidened sentence on the chest : ''We serve the Queen''.
[...]
The Policemen have been asked to remain silent about the scene inside the Palace, but your humble servant has been able to gather these informations by a series of actions that some people would not hesitate to qualify of ingenious, but to which I will, if you permit it, substitute the more accurate term of ''risky and relying on pure chance''.
W. Thomes Stead
_____
Journal, 19th May 1889 -evening
I can't see how such a complicated automaton could possibly have been created, especially one so alike Queen Victoria. We - and when I say ''we'', I mean not only myself and our organization, but also the gentlemen I sent on that mission – have been duped, fool, and we had no way of foreseeing what was about to happen, for the trap was so greatly set, with such care that we couldn't help but be defeited.
But I am brought to believe that everything is not lost.
I have been led to think that the westerner might have been saved by that blue-coated man, whose body was found lying in a pond of blood, head destroyed by a single bullet.
The other corpses display even more curious singularities. I strongly believe that they were dead bodies reanimated by the use of black magic of some kind. And what a powerful kind of magic it would be.
If some of the people I sent on the mission are still alive today, I hope that they never face that magic again, for they would surely not be able to survive it twice.