midnight
By a process of elimination suspicion finally rested upon one Adolf Hertz , a young Hungarian scholar who spoke and wrote all the mongrel languages of the Balkans ; who for years , as a copying clerk and translator , had been employed by the Foreign Office , and who now by it had been lent to the conference . For the reason that when he lived in Budapest he was a correspondent of the Times , the police , in seeking for the leak , centred their attention upon Hertz . But , though every moment he was watched , and though Hertz knew he was watched , no present link between him and the Times had been established -- and this in spite of the fact that the hours during which it was necessary to keep him under closest observation were few . Those were the hours between the closing of the conference , and midnight , when the provincial edition of the Times went to press . For the remainder of the day , so far as the police cared , Hertz could go to the devil ! But for those hours , except when on his return from the conference he locked himself in his lodgings in Jermyn Street , detectives were always at his elbow . It was supposed that it was during this brief period when he was locked in his room that he wrote his report ; but how , later , he conveyed it to the Times no one could discover .