Frankly, we’re surprised at how many eagle-eyed readers have noticed this. No, you didn’t miss anything: that is the only reference to said eyes in the novel. And it only appears in the paperback version, not the hardcover version.

What you have discovered is the seed of a new sub-plot, or complication perhaps, that was developed after the hardcover was published and that will affect Agent Pendergast’s life to one degree or another in future books. There are other, equally brief, allusions to all this in Still Life With Crows. This subplot only truly begins to develop in the novels that follow: the 'Pendergast trilogy' consisting of Brimstone, Dance of Death, and The Book of the Dead.

We can understand your wanting to know more. But realize that in so doing you run the very real risk of spoiling your own surprise!

• If your curiosity is satisfied by the above; if you feel better knowing you didn’t miss anything; and if it’s enough for you to know that more will eventually be explained in future books, click here to return to the main Cabinet page.
  
  
• If you would like to be directed toward some additional hints that can be found in the pages of Cabinet itself, click here.
  
  
• If you want the whole story, spoilers and all, and don’t mind having everything baldly laid out for you, click here.
  
  Note that this will reveal ALL — even more than may be explicitly revealed in future stories. You have been warned!