Entering their suite, he also encounters her new admirer, fellow hotel guest Robert Marvin, who is only slightly deterred by the arrival of her husband (and continues to flirt with Elsa).

As the moment approaches, Ashenden finds he is unable to commit cold-blooded murder, but the General has no such qualms and pushes the unsuspecting Caypor off a cliff.

Meanwhile, the other two bribe a worker at a chocolate factory (the secret "German spy post office") to show them a very important message received the day before.

Variety called the film "good spy entertainment," adding that Hitchcock had "done well at blending the tale's grim theme with deftly fashioned humor, appropriate romantic interplay and some swell outdoor photography.

"[4] B. R. Crisler of The New York Times disliked the film, praising Peter Lorre for his performance as "one of the most amusing and somehow one of the most wistfully appealing trigger men since Victor Moore," but criticizing technical aspects such as "inexpert camera technique" and "strangely uneven sound recording."

[5] Writing for The Spectator in 1936, Graham Greene gave the film a poor review, characterizing it as a despoilment of Maugham's Ashenden and dismissing it as "a series of small 'amusing' melodramatic situations".

According to Greene, these "melodramatic situations" are built perfunctorily "paying no attention on the way to inconsistencies, loose ends, psychological absurdities(,) and then drop(ped:) they mean nothing: they lead to nothing".

[7] It currently has a 87% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with Geoff Andrew of Time Out writing, "This thriller may not be one of Hitchcock's best English films, but it is full of startling set pieces and quirky characterisation".