Somerset Maugham Short Stories Red And 18 Others

"Red", Neilson, a Swedish former academic, living on a Pacific island for his health, meets a portly, uncivilized American trader, captain of an ageing schooner, who has business on the island. Neilson invites him to his house and tells him the story of a handsome young American, known as Red for his flaming hair, a sailor who has deserted his ship; Red falls in love with a native girl whom he calls Sally, and they live an idyllic life at a creek near where Neilson now lives. One day Red takes some local produce to trade with a ship, and never returns; the ship's captain has kidnapped him to become one of their crew. Sally is grief-stricken. Neilson later meets her, and falls in love. Sally consents to live with him, although she still waits for Red to return. Now, years later, she has become old and dull; when she comes into the room she and the portly American trader, whom Red has now become, do not recognize each other.

"The Letter" A Singapore-based lawyer, Joyce, is called on to defend Leslie Crosbie, a planter's wife who is arrested after shooting Geoffrey Hammond, a neighbor, in her home in Malaya while her husband is away on business. Her initial claim to have acted in self-defense to prevent Hammond from raping her falls under suspicion after Ong Chi Seng, a junior clerk in Joyce's law office, comes to Joyce with the information that a letter is in existence showing that Hammond had come to Leslie Crosbie's house that night at her invitation.
It emerges that the letter is in the possession of Hammond's Chinese mistress. Using Ong Chi Seng as a go-between, she blackmails the husband, Robert Crosbie, into purchasing the letter at an exorbitant price. Having paid dearly to save his wife from a possible death sentence for murder or at least a period of some years in prison for manslaughter, Robert Crosbie reads the letter and is confronted with the fact of his wife's infidelity – it turns out that she and Hammond had been lovers for years and that she had shot him not to prevent rape, but in a jealous rage when Hammond rejected her and declared his love for his Chinese mistress.
The story is based on the real case of Mrs. Ethel Mabel Proudlock, who shot the manager of a tin mine, William Crozier Steward, on the veranda of her house in Kuala Lumpur in 1911.

"Winter Cruise" The Friedrich Weber, a German freighter which carries a few passengers as well as freight, is in the Caribbean, and Miss Reid, an English teashop owner, is the only passenger. The crew find her an intolerable bore, and, deciding that she needs a lover, they choose the radio-operator: he delivers a message to her saying he loves her. Miss Reid is thoughtful and quiet for the rest of the cruise.

"The Outstation" A story of brinksmanship follows two incompatible rivals, the precisely disciplined Resident officer, Mr Warburton, and his newly arrived, uncouth assistant, Mr Cooper. In a battle of class differences, the feisty Cooper, despite his competence in his job, manages to repel his more refined boss and to make enemies of the native helpers. Each man is extremely lonely for the company of another white, but their mutual dislike is such that each wishes the other dead.

"The Kite" Herbert Sunbury, a young man living in a London suburb with his parents, likes to fly a kite on a Saturday afternoon. He marries Betty and they live in rented rooms. She disapproves of his kite-flying and tells him to go; he moves back to his parents, but continues to pay for her support. When she smashes his kite, which is a new, expensive model, he refuses to continue the regular payments, and so is sent to prison. (This was one of the stories by Maugham dramatized in the film Quartet).