Paul Drake tapped lightly on the panels of the corridor door, and Della Street let him in. Drake crossed over to slide into the big overstuffed leather chair, and said, “What’s on your mind, Perry?”
“Simply this,” Mason said. “That doctor out at the hospital was a little too self-satisfied, a little too positive, a little too definite in his diagnosis.”
“What do you mean?”
“That traumatic amnesia business,” Mason said. “The man had been in an accident. He had amnesia. Immediately the doctor decided it was traumatic amnesia. Nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand, it would have been. But then the patient wouldn’t have left the hospital and had a return attack. Now then, Paul, suppose that it wasn’t traumatic amnesia, but was a case of chronic amnesia? Suppose it was amnesia which leaves a man on the border-line of normalcy?”
“Is there an amnesia like that?”
“I don’t know. I’m not trying to study medicine, I’m trying to list causes and get results. I want to add figures and get the answer.
“Now I’ve never had amnesia myself, but I’ve forgotten names that I wanted to remember lots of times, and I suppose a man who forgets his own identity has just about the same symptoms as someone who forgets the identity of another person. In other words, he has spells during which he can almost get it. The name does everything but pop into his mind, but vanishes again just as soon as he tries to concentrate on it.”
“I know what you mean,” Drake said. “Go on from there.”
“If that’s the case,” Mason said, “this man Packard leads sort of an intermittent life. He wakes up in the morning, or has a shock of some sort, and can’t remember who he is. He starts groping with the problem. He can almost remember, but not quite. He thinks he’s Carl Packard of Altaville. He goes under that name for a while. Then something happens and he forgets it. A man gently reminds him of Altaville, and the association of ideas brings the name Packard back to his mind. For a moment he thinks he’s Packard, but just as soon as the effect of suggestion is withdrawn, he can’t remember who he is.”
Drake said, “What you mean is that the man’s name may be something like Packard, and he probably does come from Altaville.”