I tried to commit suicide."

"Why?"

"I was tired of life, I guess."

"What do you want--sympathy?"

The sudden harshness in his voice brought her eyes around, but his face
was a white blur.

"No--no, I don't think so."

"Well, you won't get it from me. Suicide is silly. You can have troubles
and all that--everybody has them--but suicide--why did you try it?"

A high, thin whine--a wordless vibration of eloquence--needled out of
the darkness into their ears. The shock was like a sudden shower of ice
water dashed over their bodies. Nora's fingers dug into Frank's arm, but
he did not feel the cutting nails. "We're--there's someone out there in
the street!"

* * * * *

Twenty-five feet ahead of where Frank and Nora stood frozen there burst
the booming voice of Jim Wilson. "What the hell was that?" And the shock
was dispelled. The white circle from Wilson's flash bit out across the
blackness to outline movement on the far side of the street. Then Frank
Brook's light, and Nora's, went exploring.

"There's somebody over there," Wilson bellowed. "Hey, you! Show your
face! Quit sneaking around!"

Frank's light swept an arc that clearly outlined the buildings across
the street and then weakened as it swung westward. There was something
or someone back there, but obscured by the dimness. He was swept by a
sense of unreality again.

"Did you see them?"

Nora's light beam had dropped to her feet as though she feared to point
it out into the darkness. "I thought I saw something."

Jim Wilson was swearing industriously. "There was a guy over there. He
ducked around the corner. Some damn fool out scrounging. Wish I had a
gun."

Frank and Nora moved ahead and the four stood in a group. "Put out your
lights," Wilson said. "They make good targets if the jerk's got any
weapons."

They stood in the darkness, Nora holding tightly to Frank's arm. Frank
said, "That was the damndest noise I ever heard."

"Like a siren?" Frank thought Jim Wilson spoke hopefully, as though
wanting somebody to agree with him.

"Not like any I ever heard. Not like a whistle, either. More of a moan."

"Let's get into that goddam hotel and--"

Jim Wilson's words were cut off by a new welling-up of the melancholy
howling. It had a new pattern this time. It sounded from many places;
not nearer, Frank thought, than Lake Street on the north, but spreading
outward and backward and growing fainter until it died on