The Colonel asks Ashenden a good many questions and then suggested that he had particular qualifications for the Secret Service. Ashenden knew several European languages and the fact that he was a writer provided excellent cover: on the pretext that he was writing a book he could, without attracting attention, visit any neutral country.    It was while they were discussing this point that the Colonel said, "You know you might get material that would be very useful to you in your work. I'll tell you an incident that occurred only recently. Very dramatic. A foreign government minister went down to a Mediterranean resort to recover from a cold and he had some very important documents with him that he kept in a dispatch case . A day or two after he arrived, he picked up a beautiful blonde at some restaurant or other, and he got very friendly with her. He took her back to his hotel, and when he came to himself in the morning, the lady and the dispatch-case had disappeared. They had one or two drinks up in his room and his theory is that when his back was turned the woman slipped a drug in his glass.    "Do you mean to say that happened the other day?" said Ashenden.    "The week before last."    "Impossible," cried Ashenden. "Why! We've been putting that incident on the stage for sixty years, we've written it in a thousand novels. Do you mean to say that life has only just caught up with us?"    "Well, I can guarantee the truth of the story." said the Colonel, "And believe me, the government has been put to no end of trouble by the loss of the documents."    "Well sir, if you can't do better than that in the Secret Service," sighed Ashenden, " I'm afraid that as a source of inspiration to the writer of fiction, it's washout." According to the Colonel the incident happened   _   .
a few days before a few weeks before two weeks before sixty years before