Sinclair scrutinized this carefully and then looked up to Avery. "He was operated on recently?"
"It was some operation on the gall-bladder."
He watched Sinclair more closely as he continued his examination; the surgeon had glanced quickly at the face on the pillow and seemed about to question Avery again; but instead he laid the pajama jacket over the body and drew up the sheet and blanket. Connery touched the surgeon on the arm. "What must be done, Doctor? And where and when do you want to do it?"
Sinclair, however, it appeared, had not yet finished his examination. "Will you pull down the window-curtains?" he directed.
As Connery, reaching across the body, complied, the surgeon took a matchbox from his pocket, and glancing about at the three others as though to select from them the one most likely to be an efficient aid, he handed it to Eaton. "Will you help me, please?"
"Strike a light and hold it as I direct--then draw it away slowly."
He lifted the partly closed eyelid from one of the eyes of the unconscious man and nodded to Eaton: "Hold the light in front of the pupil."
Eaton obeyed, drawing the light slowly away as Sinclair had directed, and the surgeon dropped the eyelid and exposed the other pupil.
"I was trying to determine the seriousness of the injury to the brain. I was looking to see whether light could cause the pupil to contract."
Avery started to speak, checked himself--and then he said: "There could be no reaction, I believe, Dr. Sinclair."
"Blind!" Sinclair ejaculated. "Blind, and operated upon within two years by Kuno Garrt!" Kuno Garrt operated only upon the all-rich and -powerful or upon the completely powerless and poor; the unconscious man in the berth could belong only to the first class of Garrt's clientele. The surgeon's gaze again searched the features in the berth; then it shifted to the men gathered about him in the aisle.
"Who did you say this was?" he demanded of Avery.
"I said his name was Nathan Dorne," Avery evaded.
"No, no!" Sinclair jerked out impatiently. "Isn't this--" He hesitated, and finished in a voice suddenly lowered: "Isn't this Basil Santoine?"
Avery, if he still wished to do so, found it impossible to deny.
To the conductor alone, among the four men standing by the berth, the name seemed to have come with the sharp shock of a surprise; with it had come an added sense of responsibility and horror over what had happened to the passenger who had been confided to his care, which made him whiten as he once more repeated the name to himself and stared down at the man in the berth.