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Maugham observed that the work of an agent was ‘on the whole extremely monotonous’. Much of it was ‘uncommonly useless’ and, since the material it offered for stories was ‘scrappy and pointless’, the author himself had ‘to make it coherent, dramatic and probable’.50 One unsympathetic reviewer, Orlo Williams (a clerk of the House of Commons with some intelligence experience), wanly thought Maugham had undoubtedly captured the monotony of the work. He noted that Ashenden ‘was not a spy, but an agent, and nobody who read agents’ reports during the War will be surprised that his work was as dreary as these reports’. Maugham had ‘done something’ to ‘get what excitement there might have been out of such experiences’, but the result was ‘only moderately entertaining’.51

Sir Paul Dukes, an enthusiastic self-publicist, in part supported himself through lecturing and journalism, much of which recycled the same basic material. In 1922, describing himself on the title page as ‘Formerly Chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service in Soviet Russia’, his first book of Russian reminiscences, Red Dusk and the Morrow: Adventures and Investigations in Soviet Russia, was published. Despite accusations from the Soviet government that he had plotted to overthrow it, Dukes claimed that he ‘went to Russia not to conspire but to inquire’. In the book he recounted how he had been recruited by the Secret Service, but was careful to disguise some details of MI1(c). Taken to a building ‘in a side street in the vicinity of Trafalgar Square’, he had been ‘whisked’ in an ‘elevator’ to ‘the top floor, above which additional superstructures had been built for war-emergency offices’ - a description which more or less fitted Cumming’s wartime Head Office at Whitehall Court. He described being taken to see the Chief, but dramatically broke off his narrative as he entered Cumming’s office. ‘There are still things’, he wrote, ‘I may not divulge.’ By 1930, when the Tatler published an eight-part ‘thrilling series of experiences’ about ‘Secret Service in Red Russia’ by Dukes, he divulged a little more. Again he recounted being ‘whisked in a lift to a pile of offices built on top of the roof ’. There, ‘in a dark office with a low ceiling, the light behind him, sat an officer in admiral’s uniform’. Thus promoting Cumming to the rank of his successor, Dukes added that ‘the Chief was known to those who knew him by the cryptic sign of a single letter of the alphabet’.52 Although Vivian thought Dukes’s articles ‘appear to be sailing pretty near the wind’, no action was taken about his revelations.

In May 1937, when Dukes was ‘writing further reminiscences of the year 1919’, he told Vivian that ‘in 1920 and 1921’ Cumming had allowed him ‘to consult the files of my reports from Russia of that year for articles’ he was ‘writing at the time’. Now he wanted to ‘consult them again’ as it ‘would be a great convenience . . . in establishing certain events and dates’. Illustrating what would be a continuing problem for historians of SIS, Vivian told him that a search had been made for the documents, ‘but without any result I am afraid. All records prior to the year 1920 have, as I think you know, been destroyed, and, as regards those of 1920 and 1921 relating to your case, I am told that either they have been summarised and destroyed or that they are so lost in general files that it is impossible to dig them out.’

Dukes’s reassembled and expanded reminiscences were published in The Story of ‘ST 25’, dedicated (in 1938) ‘To the memory of the Chief ’. Again, he recounted being taken by lift to a ‘roof-labyrinth’ to meet Cumming, and, though he still did not name him, he lifted the veil of secrecy yet a little further than before. ‘To his subordinates and associates,’ he wrote, ‘he was invariably known and signed himself by a single letter of the alphabet in ink of a particular hue’. Cumming, asserted Dukes, had ‘read and approved of these pages’, including all the information ‘here related about him and the roof-labyrinth, but I never received permission to mention his