It was nearly ten and the public was beginning to enter the Exposition in serious numbers. Gail moved so fast that I barely had time to take in what I was seeing as she hustled me into a side entrance of the Foods and Beverage Pavilion, past a mechanical Mr. Peanut, a map of the Del Monte empire, the Italian Swiss Colony wine garden, where a sign proclaimed that its “special sherry hour” ran from one to six, a Heinz 57 display of Kitchens from Many Nations, and free samples of Junket Rennet Custard.

As we swept by the displays, she uttered the unusual sentence, “Did I mention I play the carillon in the Tower of the Sun?”

“That’s very nice.”

“You know what a carillon is?” she asked.

I said that if I recalled correctly, it was a set of cathedral bells that could be played with great difficulty by manually throttling a kind of keyboard made from large wooden pegs.

She nodded. “Yes, this one’s a beauty—forty-four bells. On loan from Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. The one I play at Berkeley only has twelve bells.”

We passed some restrooms and a first-aid station, then stepped out a doorway that verged on a stunning plaza. Fluming arches of water spanned a long reflecting pool surrounded by a thicket of blue-and-white flowers. Mirrored from one end of the pool to the other, and demanding my immediate upward attention, was a rocketing octagonal spire at least four hundred feet tall.

“Made it!” laughed Gail. “With time to spare. I’m playing Bach at ten. Hey, Russ!” She waved to a robust fellow, perhaps in his late forties, who looked like a sportsman of the Field & Stream variety. He was standing with a stockier gentleman in a royal blue suit.

“Hi there, Gail,” said the guy she’d called Russ, the far more tanned and casual of the two men. His features resembled a relief map of a rock quarry and his ready smile caused long furrows to be formed alongside his eyes and the corners of his mouth. “Do you know my friend here? Bob Culpepper. Bob’s in charge of all police assigned to Treasure Island, so if you want to be impressed, go right ahead.”

The man in the royal blue suit shook Gail’s hand. “Russ tells me you’re the cause of these bells I thought I’d been hearing in my head all summer.”

Culpepper and Russ now turned to look at me with curiosity.

Gail began an introduction. “Russ, this is—”

There was a tremendous noise, as if an immense sledgehammer had been brought down upon a huge and succulent Hubbard squash.

Culpepper turned first and saw what the invisible sledgehammer had wrought.