Krantzer, a clerk, was sitting at the window of his fourth-floor furnished room in Stockholm. The day was sultry and Hans was at the window to catch the breezes that might be blowing inland fiom the Baltic, states "Dagens Nyheter," Stockholm. He was thinking of nothing in particular when something in a fourth-floor room in the building opposite attracted his attention.
An unusually good-looking young woman was sitting in the room, reading a book. Hang Krantzer noticed all details clearly. The woman was well-dressed. Her hair was set in the best of permanent waves. Krantzer liked the look of the woman and was "fixing" lier to draw her attention to himself.
Suddenly a drama developed. Krantzer saw a middle-aged man enter the room. The woman became terrified. She dropped her book with a scream. A second later the blade of a long knife flashed through the air. The man had stabbed the woman in the back. Another piercing scream and the woman slipped from her chair and crumpled up on the floor. Obviously she was dead. At first Hans Krantzer felt unable to move. The events which he had clearly seen took place so quickly that he could not even shout -for help. A second later, however, he dashed out of his room, running down the staircase, jumping three steps at a time. He raced across the street to the house opposite and called the housekeeper to help him to catch the murderer who must still be in the building.
The housekeeper was at first flabbergasted. then amused. He really thought that Krantzer had gone mad. For the room in which the murder was supposed to have taken blade belonged to an empty flat. The flat had been closed for several weeks. Not a soul had entered since if became vacant, let alone any furniture, which Hans said was in the place. To calm Hans, the housekeeper took him up to the fourth floor. Hans was amazed. He ran about excitedly in the empty flat from which he could see his own room on the other side of the street.
What had happened? Had he been dreaming?
The housekeeper fetched the police. Krantzer repeated his story to the constable. The constable carefully examined the empty flat in which a murder was supposed to have taken place twenty minutes earlier. The locks were not tampered with, the dust in the rooms was undisturbed.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.