SINCLAIR, SIR HUGH• 491one of the other employees. He wrote a single letter to a German
cover address in Lisbon and, apart from seducing his landlady, made
no attempt to engage in espionage, even when he was encouraged to
do so by an MI5agent provocateur. Simoes was arrested, ques-
tioned at Luton police station, and then interrogated byToma ́s Har-
risof B1(g) atCamp 020, where he remained until September 1945
when he was deported to Portugal to be reunited with his wife and
daughter. He escaped prosecution only because of the unsuccessful
use of the agent provocateur, but gave a detailed confession, ac-
knowledging that he had been supplied with the ingredients for mak-
ing secret ink, concealed in cotton wool stitched into the lining of his
overcoat, and had been instructed to report on the arrival of American
troops in Britain, the movement of troops, and anything else of inter-
est. However, he insisted that he had never intended to engage in es-
pionage and simply wanted to earn good wages in England, a country
he could not have reached without German assistance.SINCLAIR, SIR HUGH.Chief of theSecret Intelligence Service
(SIS) from 1923 to 1939, Admiral ‘‘Quex’’ Sinclair (so called after
‘‘the wickedest man in London’’ in Sir Arthur Pinero’s playThe Gay
Lord Quex) was appointed Chief upon the death of Sir Mansfield
Smith-Cumming. who had been at SIS’s helm for more than 13
years—a period marked by the continuing financial pressure from the
Treasury and a crisis inherited from Smith-Cumming’s anti-Bolshe-
vik adventures.
Despite a difficult private life and a divorce in 1920, Sinclair had
enjoyed an exceptional career in the Royal Navy, beginning in 1886
when he first went to sea. In 1919, as AdmiralReginald Hall’s dep-
uty, Sinclair was appointeddirector of naval intelligence, and in
1923 he was named chief of the Submarine Service, a post he held
only briefly because of Smith-Cumming’s death. According to his
entry inWho’s Who, he went onto the retired list in 1926, whereas in
fact he had been appointed ‘‘C’’ two years earlier.
SIS’s battle with the Treasury ended in the closure of the stations
in Madrid, Lisbon, Zurich, and Luxembourg and staff reductions at
Rome and The Hague, but having at least established the right to an
independent existence, albeit under the Foreign Office’ssecret vote
and with an annual budget of just £90,000, reduced from £240,000
in 1919.