Two murders had been committed there in times gone by. There had been an interval of more than a few years between the two killings, and the one was in no way connected with the other except as to locale-for which reason, those who remembered and were superstitiously minded always claimed that some day sooner or later that same locale would inevitably be the scene of a third murder.
Its location-on a side street just off Washington Square-afforded a certain seclusion and, for New York, a comparatively quiet retreat. Colin Hewitt was not superstitious; nor, indeed, was the previous tenant from whom, as it were, he had inherited the place-a fellow writer who, some two years ago, had left New York to make his home in the south of France.