“It’s quite all right,” Dr. Denair said, “provided that it’s definitely understood that I’m here consulting you in a professional capacity and that everything I say must be held in the strictest confidence. I know that I can trust you, I know that I can trust your secretary. I am in a position where I don’t know what to do. I need advice.”
Mason indicated the walls of the room in a sweeping gesture. “You’re within the four walls of a lawyer’s office, Bert. Anything you say will be treated as confidential.”
“Suppose,” Dr. Denair said, “that you should find there are some technical limitations of the law safe-guarding confidential communications. Suppose that something I might say to you would be within one of the exceptions and—”
Mason said, “The law lays down a definition of what professional communications are confidential, Bert. That’s one branch of the law that I don’t bother to study. As far as I’m concerned anything a client tells me is confidential.”
“Thank you,” Dr. Denair said, his frosty blue eyes twinkling with cold humor. “Now then, I want to know about that law.”
“What law?”
“The law of confidential communications.”
“What about it?”
“I have been treating a young female patient who seemed to be suffering from a guilt complex. She is definitely in a state that I can best describe in common, everyday language as emotional unrest with the possibility of what we might call a psychic deterioration.
“I tried to reach her by ordinary means and failed. I had the feeling that she was withholding something. That frequently happens with young, unmarried women. I suggested that she take a so-called truth serum test. She consented. I administered that test this—”
“Just how effective are they?” Mason asked.
“It depends on what you’re looking for and what you get,” Dr. Denair said. “From an experimental laboratory standpoint they’re effective just about a hundred per cent of the time, as far as specific information in regard to certain acts is concerned. In other words, you can take a bunch of students, have them commit synthetic crimes, and they’ll promptly tell you all about what they have done when you put them under the influence of one of the so-called truth serum drugs — scopolamine, sodium pentothal, sodium amytal — or any of the others, provided, of course, the proper technique is used.
“On the other hand, you take the hardened criminal who has been denying guilt of one crime and another over a period of years, who has been subjected to all sorts of third-degrees and examinations under pressure, and you don’t know what you are getting. Neither does anyone else. Frequently we’ll get protestations of innocence concerning a crime where you have pretty definite assurance that the man is guilty, and it often happens that while he is denying the crime under investigation, which may have been merely a burglary, he will casually let his guard down and talk freely about some murder he has committed and for which he has as yet gone unpunished.
“In dealing with people who are suffering from a sense of guilt, and where you feel there is some significant fact which is being withheld, the truth serum treatment, so-called, is effective. Once you can learn the thing the patient has been afraid to tell you, you can rapidly gain the complete confidence of the patient. This is particularly true in the case of women.
“In this case I was dealing with a young woman, quiet, refined, appealing, and emotionally disturbed. I felt certain that under the influence of the drug she would confess to some indiscretion, perhaps an interrupted pregnancy — instead of which she confessed to what apparently is a murder.”
Mason’s eyes narrowed.
“You say apparently?”
“Apparently.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I don’t know at the moment how to evaluate the results.”
“Can you repeat exactly what she said?” Mason asked. “Do you take notes or—?”
“I can do better than that,” Dr. Denair said. “I take down everything that is said on a tape recorder. You will, of course, have some difficulty understanding some of the words. A patient frequently mumbles and talks with the slurring accents of someone talking during sleep. That’s the beauty of using a tape recorder. We can play back a patient’s words over and over until gradually we can begin to decipher most of what is said. However, this young woman, while she was very definitely within the limits where truth is to be expected, spoke quite clearly.”
“What drug did you use?” Mason asked.
“A combination of drugs. I prepare the patient with premedication. Then I use a combination of drugs and let the patient become completely unconscious. Then as the patient begins to come out of it I use a dilute solution of sodium pentothal, and at the same time use a mental stimulant to bring about a desire to talk. The higher cortical cells are, so to speak, in conflict. There is a physical lethargy and yet a certain desire to talk. It is a nicely balanced condition which exists in an ideal state for perhaps only a few minutes. Sometimes it lasts much longer. It depends upon the individual.”
Dr. Denair took the cover from the tape recorder, plugged the cord into an outlet, and turned the switch.
“I want you to listen carefully and closely,” he said.
Perry Mason and Della Street listened to the recorded conversation.
When the tape had unwound to the point where there was no further sound, Dr. Denair snapped the machine into the rewind position, rewound the tape and shut off the machine. After he had replaced the cover on the tape recorder, he looked up at Mason and said, “Well, what’s the answer?”
“What answer do you want?” Mason asked.
“I want to know my legal rights.”
“Why?”
“So I’ll know what to do.”
“If I tell you that the law requires you to disclose this information to the authorities will you do it?”
Dr. Denair thought for a moment, then said, “No.”
“Why not?”
“I have my own conscience, my own code of ethics. Our laws regarding confidential communications were made before the days of psychiatry. In order to treat patients today a physician must learn the deeply embedded secrets in a patient’s mind. My life is dedicated to the art of healing.”
“All right,” Mason said, “you know what you intend to do. The law doesn’t enter into it. So why did you come here?”
Dr. Denair stroked his jaw. “I’m afraid I came here to pass the buck. I wanted to be able to say I had consulted an attorney.”
“In other words,” Mason said, “if I had told you that under the law you were entitled to respect the confidence of your client and that you didn’t need to pass the information you had received on to the police, you would then have been in a position to defend yourself by stating that you had gone to a lawyer and had followed his advice?”
“Exactly,” Dr. Denair said.
“If, on the other hand,” Mason said, “I should advise you that under the law you had no alternative but to report to the authorities what you had discovered, you would refuse to follow my advice.”
“That’s right.”
“In which event,” Mason told him, “you would place yourself in a thoroughly untenable position. You would not only withhold information from the law but you would have done it under such circumstances that you would have known you were violating the law. In other words, you would have become what the law calls an accessory after the fact.”
“That,” Dr. Denair said, “puts a somewhat different light on it. I acted on impulse in coming here and I can appreciate that there are complications.”
“There are,” Mason said. “Now let me ask you this. What are the chances that this young woman was telling the truth?”