In this, the third volume of my collected stories, I have made a somewhat different arrangement from that which I have made in the others. In those I put the stories I wrote in which the scene was laid in Malaya. These are so long that I thought it would give the reader a rest if I interspersed them with short ones set in other parts of the world, so I divided them in each volume into groups. But I wrote a batch of stories dealing with the adventures of an agent in the.Intelligence Department during the First World War. ...

The third volume of Somerset Maugham's Collected Short Stories,introduced by the author, contains the celebrated series about Ashenden,a secret service agent in World War I.Based on Maugham's own experiences with the British Intelligence Service in Switzerland, the stories arc vignettes in which he dramatists both the romance and absurdity of espionage as well as its ruthlessness and brutality.

Accountable only to 'R', Ashcndcn travels 'all over the Continent on assignments which entangle him with such characters as the traitor Grantley Caypor, the passionate Guilia Lazzari,and the sinister 'hairless Mexican'.

Preface vii

Miss King i

The Hairless Mexican 40

Giulia Lazzari 83

The Traitor 126

His Excellency 168

Mr Harrington's washing 206

Sanatorium 252