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China’. Steptoe found a temporary local replacement, though Sinclair still warned that he ‘should not leave for home’ until he was ‘satisfied that the existing Chinese agents will work for him, as it is most important that there is no decrease of information during your absence’. It is clear from this signal that Steptoe was producing intelligence which at SIS headquarters, at least, was considered sufficiently useful for the prospect of a diminished flow to be viewed with concern. The following year Steptoe assisted with the intelligence exploitation of a vast haul of Comintern documents recovered by the Shanghai Municipal Police after the arrest of Hilaire Noulens of the Comintern’s clandestine Far East Bureau in June 1931. Although Noulens’s capture was a worldwide sensation, Vivian in London cautiously concluded that it did ‘little more than administer a temporary and partial check to Communist-inspired centres of revolt or disaffection’.16

During 1931, however, things began to go wrong. Steptoe, always rather a difficult character, became more opinionated and started, dangerously, to luxuriate in his secret service role. One sympathetic observer described him in September 1931 as ‘an interesting and quite pleasant sort of fellow’, but one who had struck him as ‘being afflicted with a weakness that I have noticed in so many other “hush hush” men. He loves to weave a veil of mystery over his doings and whisper strange warnings. No doubt he has to be careful of what he does and says, but this pose is apt to defeat its purpose.’17 He also began to offend British diplomats in China. When he accused the editor of the English-language North China Daily News of being ‘rather too subservient to the wishes of the legation’, the offended editor complained to Sir Miles Lampson (later Lord Killearn), the British minister. In December 1931 Lampson wrote to Vansittart at the Foreign Office suggesting that Steptoe (and hence SIS) was a waste of resources: ‘In these days of strict economy are Steptoe’s elaborate telegraphic reports justified?. . . Much that he sends is to my mind unnecessary. Indeed we could abolish him altogether so far as Legation is concerned without impairment of efficiency of our Service.’ Steptoe defended himself to Sinclair, but, once again, his health was breaking down. ‘It appears’, he wrote alarmingly in January 1932, ‘that the whole of my internal mechanism is functioning at a high rate of speed: no digestion takes place but merely fermentation with all its attendant discomfort.’ He was again advised to take sick leave.

Sinclair was sympathetic, telling Steptoe that Vansittart had ‘just expressed his appreciation of your work during crisis’ (the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in September 1931, during which Steptoe had been posted to Peking ‘on special duty’). But he was also very concerned about the Service’s work in what he rightly regarded as a vitally important theatre. ‘There is no intention of replacing you’, he cabled in February 1932, ‘as long as you can stand the strain, but you must realise the serious danger of your organisation breaking down if there is no-one trained and immediately available to take your place if your health gives way. Understudy will take months to train and must be found, as Far East will be of paramount importance for years.’ The breakdown of relations with the British mission, exacerbated by Steptoe’s overstepping of the mark, and the way in which he had evidently begun to report widely on political matters (admittedly following the pattern set by Denham), highlighted a perennial tension between diplomats and secret intelligence personnel. The former, whose legitimate role was to report on the situation in their host country, were often apprehensive about the presence of the latter, whose rather more specialised function of supplying secret intelligence secretly acquired could, if discovered, at the least cause diplomatic embarrassment and, at the worst, a serious international incident. Some ambassadors and ministers, too, were especially jealous of their position and