The Mad Doctor of London

A Great Mouse Detective Pastiche

By E. Grimes

In Part II: The story goes back to Dr. Heinrich Von Seyss’ childhood, recalling his father’s death and his mother’s second marriage to Professor Adolf Reichmann, a stern Vienna schoolteacher who treats the young Von Seyss brutally.

One night, after being beaten and humiliated at school, Heinrich prepares to run away from home, but ends up in a vicious fight with his stepfather. A fall down a staircase results in Reichmann’s death and Heinrich suffering a head injury. He survives, but his mind is no longer the same.

As Von Seyss enters manhood, his sanity goes steadily downhill---taking his moral character with it.

By the time Heinrich Von Seyss turned eighteen, he had become well advanced in his studies, so much that he was sometimes asked to assist some of the students at the University. He rather enjoyed doing this, partly because he loved the authority and welcomed any chance to show off his knowledge.

Von Seyss had also become even more fascinated with the study of plants and herbal medicine. He had developed a rather odd hobby of experimenting with plant extracts, testing their effects in various ways. Occasionally he would even test them on himself---making sure to avoid the poisonous plants, of course. This made for some embarrassing and nearly dangerous mishaps at times.

For instance, there was the time he had licked just a bit of juice from an herbal extract he had brewed in his room. The result was that he had to excuse himself from class every few minutes to hurry off to the privy.

Then there was a certain imported plant that Von Seyss and a fellow classmate sampled one night, only to suffer (if suffer was quite the word) weird and euphoric effects that left them giggling like idiots and with ravenous appetites. They were found in their dormitory room the next morning---asleep on the floor, and surrounded by cheese rinds and empty biscuit boxes. Fortunately, the faculty never found out what they’d done, and so neither of the young men were disciplined.

Although Heinrich had his friends and admirers at the University, he unfortunately had his enemies as well. One in particular was Wolfgang Vogler, who was not one of the better pupils; and so he hated and envied Heinrich for his genius and popularity among the students and faculty---not to mention that girls often clustered around Heinrich whenever he was in town, attracted by his handsome face and charming manner.

Vogler could never resist tormenting "Herr Professor", as he sneeringly called Von Seyss---who told him openly that it was a crying shame that such an idiot as Vogler shared his first name with Mozart.

Although he was no coward, Heinrich preferred to stay away from Wolfgang (or "Wolfy", as the students called him), having promised his mother to try to stop fighting at school. But of course, Wolfy saw that quite a different way.

One day, during the morning recess, Heinrich was assembling his books and papers, preparing for his next class, when Wolfy---obviously in the mood for trouble---stuck his foot out and tripped him, making the young Von Seyss fall over and skin his nose. Fuming, Heinrich glared up to see his tormentor laughing.

"Why don’t you watch where you’re going, Herr Professor?" sneered Wolfy.

Heinrich picked his books up silently, brushed himself off, and with a glare at Wolfy, started to walk away, but the bully grabbed his arm and jerked him around.

"I’m not scared of you, Vogler," snarled Von Seyss, glowering at him dangerously. "But I don’t want to fight you---so leave me be!!!"

A crowd had gathered around the two by this time, egging the two on. Heinrich’s fists were clenching furiously, as he fought the impulse to lash out at his opponent. But at one point, Wolfy hit Von Seyss across the face.

His reaction was quite surprising. Instead of trying to strike back or crying in pain, as Wolfy expected, Heinrich stood his ground, wiped the blood from his face, and glared almost maniacally at his enemy as that same, demented giggle burst out from him, becoming louder, stronger and more scornful.

Wolfy stared at Heinrich in a panic. "You’re crazy...you’re crazy, Von Seyss!!!"

"What’s your point?" sneered Heinrich. He acted as though he was going to rush at Wolfy and grab his collar, but Vogler screamed and tore across the grounds as if his tail were on fire, with taunts of "Coward!" "Sissy!" "Schwein!" and worse shouted at him by the other boys, who were slapping Heinrich on the back and helping to wipe the blood from his face.

Of course, Wolfy hadn’t quite learned his lesson yet. During the next class, he decided that Heinrich really was a lunatic, and let him know that in no uncertain terms.

After luncheon, Wolfy suddenly and mysteriously was unable to speak. No one could explain why, not even the doctors. Only a certain young student would have known, for he had discovered a tropical plant that could cause a temporary loss of speech---and had secretly slipped a bit of its juice into Vogler’s coffee. Wolfy recovered; but from then on, he steered quite shy of Heinrich and never bothered him again.

The years passed, and at last Heinrich Von Seyss was now Doctor Heinrich Von Seyss. His mother was quite proud, needless to say. She herself had been keeping quite busy, working in the slums among the poor, while Dr. Von Seyss opened up a private practice in the better part of Vienna. While it wasn’t as high a position as surgeon or similar, Von Seyss was paid fairly well and lived quite contentedly with his mother in the fine house he had managed to buy.

However, he was quite uncomfortable with the work his mother was doing, mainly because of its location and the types she would associate with. That he saw various criminal elements in the slums was even more discouraging.

"Why must you go out among those people, Mutter?" Von Seyss often asked Hilda. "Who knows what kind of diseases some of them could be carrying? Why don’t you just work with me? If you want to run a soup kitchen or something, there are better places to do it!"

"Heinrich," Hilda replied patiently, "you don’t understand. The poor need our help, too---not just the people who can pay well."

"It isn’t just that, mother. Haven’t you noticed the thieves, the drunkards and trollops--not to mention the lunatics lurking around the slums? And you even go there at night---that’s all the more dangerous!"

Hilda kissed his cheek. "Life is full of risks, mein Sohn, and often one must take them. You’re a good boy to worry about me, Heinrich..."

Von Seyss smiled and hugged his mother as she looked up lovingly into his eyes, continuing: "You’ve become a handsome young man, and a good doctor...and you’re going to make your mother proud. Now stop worrying about me, and let me do my work!"

Her son laughed and kissed her. "Very well, Mutter. Just be careful..."

There came a rainy evening when Dr. Von Seyss returned to his home to find his mother still absent. Guessing that she was still in the slums, Von Seyss went to search for her..but he had a gut feeling that something had gone terribly wrong.

When he reached the slums, he found a crowd of mice gathered around something, with frightened and sorrowful looks on their faces. His mother could not be seen anywhere, and there were constables standing among the group, trying to hold everyone back.

A constable tried to push him back. "Please stay where you are, Herr Doktor..." But it was too late. For there before the doctor lay the body of Hilda Von Seyss.

"Gott im Himmel!!!" screamed Von Seyss. "My mother---that’s my mother!!!"

He shook himself clear of the constable and, fighting through the crowd, threw himself over the woman's body and sobbed hysterically. "Mutter...Mutter..." he said over and over, as he cradled his mother and rocked her.

"She’s dead, Herr Doktor," the constable said, gently laying a hand on his shoulder. "There’s nothing more you can do now."

"Who did this? Who did this??" Von Seyss demanded in rage, casting accusing glares at the crowd.

"It...it was someone here on the street, Herr Doktor," a peddler replied meekly. "A fellow named Täuber. He’s crazy in the head, sir---a real mean one. That poor woman wasn’t even bothering him, but he just walked right up and knifed her..."

"Then what are you standing here for??" Von Seyss asked the constables. "Aren’t you going to go after him?"

"He’s been arrested, sir," one of them said, "and he’ll be tried. But I’m afraid he won’t be executed."

"Because, sir, he’s insane. They’ll send him to an asylum, just like before..."

Von Seyss could make no reply. He only stared blindly ahead of him, holding his mother tightly as the rain mingled with the tears on his face...

He spoke to no one at his mother’s funeral, nor afterwards. He only nodded silently to the visitors as they offered their sympathies. His medical office had been closed for the duration, meanwhile.

But when he was finally alone, Dr. Von Seyss sat staring at his mother’s picture on the mantelpiece, as it sat surrounded by the black wreath and flowers---his thoughts dark and despairing as he reflected on what had happened.

He had begged his mother to stay out of those slums. Those people were dangerous, he’d told her...but she’d wanted to help them. And how had they thanked her?

That devil Täuber. He had cruelly murdered an innocent old woman for no good reason. And because he was a madman, he was going to get away with it.

Von Seyss looked around at his home...so cold, so lonely now. It was no longer a home, but merely a house...for the only creature that had been left to love him was dead. Dead, like his father, like everything dear and innocent that had existed in Von Seyss’ life. Dead at the hands of someone who had neither known nor cared who she was, nor what she had meant to anyone---someone who, Von Seyss felt, had not been fit to live.

So many painful memories and feelings now whirled like a dervish in Von Seyss’ intellect...his father’s sudden death, his stepfather’s cruelty that had injured him in both mind and body...and to crown it all now, the violent death of his beloved mother, made the more unbearable because the brute who had killed her could never be punished as he deserved to be.

As all the grief, the pain and hatred, and the rage surged through Von Seyss’ tortured soul, something in his mind snapped. He began to turn furniture over, to smash and break whatever he could, even tearing down the curtains and throwing things against walls---all the while screaming and cursing, raging against everyone and everything that had hurt him and caused the ruin of his life.

"I’ll make you pay!! I’ll make you ALL pay!!" the doctor screamed, shaking his fist in the air, as at the world.

And as his mind became completely unhinged, all the darkness in his life overwhelmed his soul, pushing away all that had been good and decent in Heinrich Von Seyss---leaving only a cruel and heartless shadow of the mouse he had been.

"Verflucht du, Täuber!! Verflucht du zu Hölle!!" Von Seyss shrieked again, as he pounded his fists against an elaborate glass mirror over and over. "You’ll pay, you mindless trash---everyone like you will pay!!"

He continued pounding until the mirror was completely smashed, and it fell to the floor.

Von Seyss stared down at the fragments, and at his hands, cut and bleeding. The room seemed to spin, as he began to giggle hysterically---louder and louder, until shrieks of maniacal laughter rang through the house, stopping only when the doctor fell to the floor in a dead faint.

Von Seyss’ office was never re-opened. The building was soon emptied out and sold, and any questions asked were left unanswered.

Later on, however, Heidelberg Sanitarium, an asylum outside of the city, suddenly acquired a new physician and director. It also happened to be the same asylum to which Täuber, murderer of Hilda Von Seyss, had been committed. He was in a solitary cell, confined in a strait jacket, since he was known for being violent.

And it was to this very cell that a visitor came one night...a tall, handsome mouse in a white doctor's coat. He stepped in, shutting the door behind him, and walked up to the sleeping patient.

"You heard me," the doctor hissed as he leaned over Täuber, who found himself staring into cold green eyes and an even colder sneer.

"You’re a very sick mouse, Herr Täuber," continued the doctor as he calmly held up a syringe and squirted a bit of fluid from it. "So I’ve come to cure you...permanently!"

The following morning, the director of Heidelberg had just reported for duty and was settling in his office when the head nurse frantically brought him the news of Täuber’s death. The director acted appropriately shocked, but it was decided that the cause of death had been heart failure.

Since Täuber had no family, and little money, he was quickly buried in the potter’s field outside of town. Those who would have cared to investigate at the time might have discovered that the asylum’s new director, Dr. Heydrich Von Steiner, was the son of Täuber’s murder victim: Dr. Heinrich Von Seyss.

However, Von Seyss’ murderous sprees would not end with Tauber’s death, for the doctor’s brilliant but twisted mind had now found other ways to use his scientific "skills"---and this incident was only the beginning.

There were eventually other victims---at first, selected patients from Von Seyss’s own asylum, who were subjected to tortuous experiments he conducted with various plant extracts he had been studying. Sometimes the patients survived. Often, they did not, or if they seemed a threat, they were quickly dispatched. At any rate, there was always some "rational" explanation for their deaths, and for some time, no one suspected anything.

But Von Seyss began to sense that people would start to talk if he continued using his patients, and so he turned to another group that he had blamed for his mother’s death: the mice in the slums. Often shunned and treated as invisible by society, they seemed the perfect subjects for the demented doctor’s experiments---supposing that none would care what happened to what were considered the dregs of society.

Silently, one by one, slum mice were lured to the doctor’s home---most never to return. Often they were drunkards and desperate mice begging spare coins, invited to the doctor's home for what would be their last meal...

Sometimes it was a street urchin caught pinching from a fruit cart---only for a tall, handsome doctor to laughingly pay for his theft, pat the youngster on the head and lead him home to a dreadful end...

Then there had been the trollop who’d sidled up to him one evening, thinking she was making some easy money, and not a fatal mistake...

On and on went Von Seyss’ quiet but murderous rampage, and it seemed that nothing would stop it.

Then one day, there had been little Anna Heinstoffer...a sweet innocent girl of 16, roaming the slums with her little basket of flowers. By the time Von Seyss introduced himself to her, his victims had numbered 20, and those that hadn’t died one way or another would never live normal lives again. But even that wasn’t enough for the demented doctor.

He had often passed Fraulein Heinstoffer in the streets of Vienna, and something about her attracted him greatly. He watched her carefully, finally realising that she was simple-minded. That had attracted him all the more, for he felt that he had yet another victim in the making.

It had taken little effort to persuade the flower girl to come home with him that evening, for it turned out that Anna was an orphan, with no place to sleep but the streets. She had no education to speak of, but was casting about for a living as best she could. At any rate, there was no one to miss her, which suited Von Seyss perfectly. However, when he took Anna’s delicate arm in his and led her through his door, he had looked into her bright, trusting eyes and at her pretty face, and thought to himself, "Not her."

He gave Anna a decent dress to wear, a fine meal and some wine, then afterwards danced with her as his grammaphone played a waltz. That had been harmless enough; but as he gazed into Anna’s deep blue eyes and smelled the fragrant flowers still in her golden hair, he soon made other plans for the naive and trusting girl.

Their little waltz finished, Von Seyss let Anna help herself to a bit more of his wine---and later that evening, he helped himself to Anna.

She had been glad to stay with him, surprisingly---after all, she’d had nowhere else to go. But, despite the occasional beating, Von Seyss treated her well and never allowed her to see or hear the horrible crimes he was committing. It was only during his last fortnight in Vienna that things began to change.

Anna became more and more reluctant to keep company with the doctor---at times, she even seemed afraid of him, and her obedience toward him became quite grudging. Only when Von Seyss had been forced to flee Vienna did things take a reverse turn. She had suddenly been quite eager to be with him, wanting to be married---and that had been the night he discovered his mistress was pregnant with his child.

He had been quite furious at the prospect, for he’d never intended to be a husband, least of all a father. But there had been another and deeper reason for his disgust, one that Von Seyss could not have guessed at that time. At any rate, he was all the more anxious to leave that night, without Anna---then, fearing that she would turn him in to the local constables, he threw her down his staircase, then fled into the night.

And why, exactly, had Von Seyss laughed before leaving the girl for dead? Had it been because he was glad to be rid of Anna and his own child? Or had it been a hysterical response to the moral horror of the crime?

Or, had he responded to the memory of another staircase in another Viennese house long ago---the true beginning of the nightmare?