"
The Professor regarded the inscription with profound disfavour.
"How do you suppose this was done?" he asked gloomily.
"I will show you," said Thorndyke. "I have prepared a piece of paper to
demonstrate the process to Dr. Jervis. It is exceedingly simple."
He fetched from the office a small plate of glass, and a photographic
dish in which a piece of thin notepaper was soaking in water.
"This paper," said Thorndyke, lifting it out and laying it on the glass,
"has been soaking all night, and is now quite pulpy."
He spread a dry sheet of paper over the wet one, and on the former wrote
heavily with a hard pencil, "Moakey is a bliter." On lifting the upper
sheet, the writing was seen to be transferred in a deep grey to the wet
paper, and when the latter was held up to the light the inscription
stood out clear and transparent as if written with oil.
"When this dries," said Thorndyke, "the writing will completely
disappear, but it will reappear whenever the paper is again wetted."
The Professor nodded.
"Very ingenious," said he--"a sort of artificial palimpsest, in fact.
But I do not understand how that illiterate man could have written in
the difficult Moabite script.
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