three o'clock
She might have been born yesterday for all she knew about it . For my part , I had a strong desire to talk to the girl myself and put a few questions which had come into my head while we were waiting ; but the police would have none of this , and the most they would permit me to do was to look at her from the far end of the ward , which I did for a long time , watching her face very closely , and wondering how beautiful it was . When they sent me away at last I returned to the garage down West , and so to my bed , but not to sleep . It must have been three o'clock of the morning by this time , and I lay until I heard some noisy church-clock striking seven , when I determined to stop there tossing about no longer , but to get up and read the morning papers . Few of them , however , had more than a brief paragraph announcing the fact , and we had to wait for the `` evenings '' to discover the real sensation . My word , how thick they laid it on -- and what a hero they made of me . I must have been interviewed a dozen times that day , and when the following morning 's papers came , I read for the first time that a reward of five hundred pounds had been offered for the capture of the perpetrators of this outrage , and that it would be paid by the Editor of the _ Daily Herald _ on the day that the mystery was solved .