The cypher expert, who had been at work on Feist's diary, had now completed his key and brought Logotheti the translation.

He was a rather shabby little man, a penman employed to do occasional odd jobs about the Foreign Office, such as engrossing documents and the like, by which he earned from eighteenpence to half-a-crown an hour, according to the style of penmanship required, and he was well known in the criminal courts as an expert on handwriting in forgery cases.
He brought his work to Logotheti, who at once asked for the long entry concerning the night of the explosion.

The expert turned to it and read it aloud.

It was a statement of the circumstances to which Feist was prepared to swear, and which have been summed up in a previous chapter.

Van Torp was not mentioned by name in the diary, but was referred to as 'he'; the other entries in the journal, however, fully proved that Van Torp was meant, even if Logotheti had felt any doubt of it.
The expert informed him, however, that the entry was not the original one, which had apparently been much shorter, and had been obliterated in the ordinary way with a solution of chloride of lime.