The action takes place in the early 60s. XX century in Switzerland, in the private madhouse "Cherry Orchard". The sanatorium, thanks to the efforts of its owner, the hunchbacked maid of honor Matilda von Tsang, MD, and donations from various charitable societies, is expanding. New buildings are being built where the most affluent and respected patients are being transferred. Only three patients remain in the old building, all of them are physicists. Lovely, harmless and very pretty psychopaths. They are accommodating and modest. They could be called exemplary patients, if three months ago, one of them, who considers himself Newton, had not strangled his nurse. A similar case was repeated again. This time, the culprit was the second patient, who considers himself Einstein. Police are investigating.
Police inspector Richard Fos gives Freilaine von Tsang the order of the prosecutor to replace the nurses with orderlies. She promises him to do it.
Joining the hospital is the ex-wife of the third physicist, Johann Wilhelm Mobius, who married missionary Rosa and now wants to say goodbye to her first husband with her three sons, as she leaves for the missionary to the Mariana Islands. One of the sons tells his father that he wants to become a priest, the second - a philosopher, and the third - a physicist. Mobius is categorically against one of his sons becoming a physicist. If he himself had not become a physicist, he would not have got into a madhouse. After all, King Solomon appears to him. The Boys want to play their father on flutes. At the very beginning of the game, Mobius jumps up and asks them not to play. He turns the table over, sits down in it and begins to read the fantastic psalms of King Solomon, then drives away the Rose family, which leaves the frightened and weeping, parting with Mobius forever.
Sister Monica, his nurse, who has been courting him for two years, sees that he is pretending to be a madman. She confesses his love to him and asks to leave the madhouse with her, because the maid of honor von Tsang does not consider him dangerous. Mobius also admits that he loves Monica more than life, but cannot leave with her, cannot betray King Solomon. Monica does not give up, she insists. Then Mobius strangles her with a cord from the curtains.
The police come back to the house. They again measure something, record, take pictures. Gigantic growth orderlies, former boxers enter the room and bring a luxurious dinner to the sick. Two police officers carry the body of Monica. Möbius laments that he killed her. In a conversation with him, the inspector no longer shows the astonishment and hostility that he had in the morning. He even tells Möbius that he enjoys finding three murderers who, with a clear conscience, may not be arrested, and justice may rest for the first time. Serving the law, he says, is an exhausting job that burns out both physically and mentally. He leaves, sending friendly greetings to Newton and Einstein, as well as a bow to King Solomon.
Newton comes out of the next room. He wants to talk with Mobius and inform him of his plan to escape from the sanatorium. The appearance of orderlies forces him to accelerate the implementation of the plan and do it today. He admits that he is not Newton at all, but Alec Jasper Kilton, the founder of the theory of correspondence, who made his way to the sanatorium and portrayed a madman to be able to spy on Mobius, the most brilliant. physicist of our time. To do this, he mastered the German language with great difficulty in his intelligence camp. It all started with the fact that he read the Mobius dissertation on the basics of new physics. At first he considered her childishness, but then the veil fell from his eyes. He realized that he had met with the brilliant creation of modern physics, and began to inquire about the author, but - to no avail. Then he informed his intelligence, and she attacked the trail. Einstein comes out of another room and says that he also read this dissertation and is also not crazy. He is a physicist and, like Kilton, is in the service of intelligence. His name is Joseph Eisler, he is the author of the Eisler effect. Kilton suddenly has a revolver in his hands. He asks Eisler to turn to face the wall. Eisler calmly walks up to the fireplace, puts his violin on which he had played before, and suddenly also turns with a revolver in his hand. Both of them are armed and come to the conclusion that it is better to do without a duel, so they put their revolvers behind the fireplace grate.
They tell Mobius why they killed their carers. They did this because the girls began to suspect that they were not crazy, and thereby jeopardized the fulfillment of their missions. They considered each other really crazy all this time.
Three orderlies come in, check the presence of all three patients, lower the bars on the windows, lock them and then leave.
After they leave, Kilton and Eisler vying with each other praise the prospects that could provide Möbius with the intelligence of their countries. They offer Mobius to run away from the madhouse, but he refuses. They begin to “tear” it from each other’s hands and come to the conclusion that it is nevertheless necessary to solve the matter by a duel, and if necessary, shoot Möbius, despite the fact that he is the most valuable person on earth. But his manuscripts are even more valuable. Then Mobius confesses that he burned all his notes in advance, the result of fifteen years of work, even before the police returned. Both spies are furious. Now they are finally in the hands of Mobius.
Mobius convinces them that they must make the only reasonable and responsible decision, because their mistake can lead to a global catastrophe. He finds out that in reality both Kilton and Eisler offer the same thing: Möbius’s utter dependence on the organization where he would go to serve and the risk that a person has no right to go: the death of humanity due to weapons that can be created based on his discoveries. At one time, in his youth, such a responsibility made him choose a different path - to abandon his academic career, to declare that he was King Solomon, so that he would be locked up in a madhouse, because he was freer in it than outside. Humanity lags behind physicists. And because of them, it can die, Mobius calls on both colleagues to stay in a madhouse and tell his bosses on the radio that Mobius is really crazy. They agree with his arguments.
Following this are the orderlies in black uniforms, in caps and with revolvers. Together with them - Dr. von Tsang. They disarm Kilton and Eisler. The doctor tells physicists that their conversation was eavesdropped and that they had long been under suspicion. The doctor claims that King Solomon appeared to her all these years and said that now she should take power over the world on behalf of the king, for Mobius, whom he first trusted, betrayed him. She says she made copies of all the Mobius records a long time ago and opened giant enterprises on their basis. She framed all three physicists, forcing them to kill the carers, whom she herself set against them. For the outside world, they are killers. The orderlies are employees of her factory police. And this villa now becomes the true treasury of her trust, from where all three can not escape. She dreams of power, of conquering the universe. The world will fall into the hands of the crazy mistress of the madhouse.
