Hōtei Shūkai

The Comrades of the Red Hand are a revolutionary organization whose interventions connect the earlier overthrow of Herzoslovakia’s monarchy to the later struggle over its restoration. Their offer to recruit Angèle Mory, her decision to pursue the crown instead, and the organization’s suspected role in subsequent violence make them a force whose political aims repeatedly become entangled with private ambition and competing criminal schemes.

Origins and Political Aim

During preparations for King Nicholas IV’s visit to Paris, the French Sûreté was instructed to monitor the Comrades of the Red Hand. The organization approached Angèle Mory, an actress at the Folies Bergères, and offered her a large sum to help its plan: she was to captivate the young king and draw him to a place where the revolutionaries could reach him. Mory accepted the offer, but the plan did not unfold as the organization intended. She won the king’s love, received jewels from him, and conceived the ambition of becoming queen rather than merely serving as his mistress.

Mory was subsequently presented in Herzoslovakia as Countess Varaga Popoleffsky, supposedly a Romanov descendant, and became Queen Varaga. The organization regarded this as a betrayal. Its members twice attempted to kill her, according to M. Lemoine’s account; later, revolutionary unrest culminated in an uprising that killed the king and queen and proclaimed a republic. The Comrades’ attempted recruitment thus forms part of the history behind the monarchy’s destruction, although the narrative does not reduce the uprising to a single cause.

The Memoirs and the Restoration Crisis

Years later, the Comrades enter the plot again through the struggle over Count Stylptitch’s memoirs. The manuscript was sent to James McGrath, a Canadian then in Africa, and its anticipated publication threatens negotiations to restore the monarchy. The proposed settlement would offer the crown to Prince Michael, supported by the British government, while he would grant concessions to Isaacstein and Co. in return for a loan of about a million pounds. The memoirs’ possible political consequences make them a prize for forces seeking to influence the succession, not merely a private document.

Superintendent Battle later suspects that the organization employed Giuseppe Manelli to steal the memoirs. In Battle’s reconstruction, Manelli obtained Virginia Revel’s letters instead, recognized an opportunity to blackmail her, and acted on his own without understanding the papers’ real significance. The Comrades, Battle believes, learned of Manelli’s conduct and treated it as a betrayal, leading them to decree his death. This remains a proposed explanation rather than a fully established account of the organization’s internal decision-making.

Methods, Suspicions, and Limits of the Evidence

The organization is described as having considerable money and power but comparatively little tactical subtlety. Battle contrasts its habitual use of the Red Hand sign, intended to intimidate potential traitors, with the more carefully contrived attempt to implicate Virginia in Manelli’s murder. He therefore suspects that King Victor intervened in that framing, while allowing that the Comrades and Victor might be working together. The distinction matters: the organization is a plausible source of political violence and pressure, but not every crime associated with its interests can confidently be assigned to it.

The characters themselves initially treat the organization’s responsibility for Prince Michael’s murder as an open question. Anthony Cade considers it possible, observing that pointless killing would fit the Comrades’ reputation, but he does not claim proof. The uncertainty persists across the plot: the organization’s known hostility to the former queen and its suspected involvement in Manelli’s fate establish a pattern of ruthless action, while the particular authorship of individual crimes remains disputed.

Narrative and Political Significance

The Comrades of the Red Hand link revolutionary history, the endangered restoration scheme, and the investigations surrounding the memoirs and murders. Their failed attempt to use Mory helped produce an outcome contrary to their plan: the would-be instrument of their plot became queen, and the monarchy they opposed fell only later amid wider revolt. In the contemporary intrigue, their suspected pursuit of the manuscript and punishment of a supposed traitor make the organization an important source of danger, but the competing involvement of King Victor prevents it from serving as a simple explanation for every act of violence.