J. P. DUNBAR CHAPTER I AN UNWILLING HERO OF ROMANCE GREAT was the disgust of J. Percival Dunbar when he found that, in the newspaper accounts of his rescue of Kitty Van Zandt, he had been made a hero of romance. His aspirations were not in that direction. He was flattered only when called a hardheaded man, of a practical turn of mind, devoid of sentiment and of sympathy, with no nonsense about him. That he was such a man was his sincere belief and he tried to live up to his belief. Therefore he cultivated a habit of cynicism. Chief But conditions were against him. among them was his appearance. In his tall and well-proportioned frame, which he carried with an easy grace, the result of his athletic training in his college days, women saw much to admire. So they gossiped about him applaudingly. That was sufficient to make him a carpet knight in the minds of other men in spite of his assumed indifference. Partly because he piqued women by this indifference and partly because he possessed a compelling taste that forced him into the fine choice of clothes he wore so well as to give him an air of distinction, they gave him their favor. They said he was handsome, though there were critical observers among them who insisted that his nose was somewhat too sharp, his lips too thin, his chin too square, and that there were too many steel glints in the glances of his gray eyes to class him among those who measured up to the Greek god standard of manly beauty. And he was young, not yet thirty and looked younger. Then, too, "he parted his name in the middle." This was due to circumstance; not to choice. It was a device to keep under cover as much as possible his hated name of Jeremiah, which was suggestive of an early and humiliating disappointment. That disappointment, rather than the name itself, was the cause of his hatred. These things combined, together with his singular success so early in life, made him an object of interest and curiosity among his friends and acquaintances. On a bright May morning in 1899 this young man, who had persuaded himself that he was without sentiment and was ordering his life on lines that must commend him to practical men, was in Prospect Park, where a business man ought not to have been at such hours. And this practical and unromantic young man being there, must make a heroic rescue of a fair maiden from danger and give the reporters "a human interest story." It is but justice to him to relate that he was where he was by the merest chance. That morning he had been greatly distressed by an interview he had had with a financial power in Wall Street. When he left the great man, he was in much confusion of mind. Instinctively following the route he had so often pursued when a resident of the Brooklyn borough, he found himself at the ferry gates at the bottom of the street, where he was aroused from his absorption. Then, feeling that he was not in a proper frame of mind to return to his office where he must meet people, he determined to cross the ferry and, seeking the Park, have a vigorous walk while he thought out the vexatious matter to the end. However, he had not walked far in the Park when his thoughts were rudely diverted. There were shouts on the air, the rapid beat of hoofs of a horse on a hard road and mingled with them sharp feminine staccatoes in "whoas." A horse attached to a vehicle was plunging along a road crossing the path he was on at an acute angle. Impulsively, he dashed across the intervening space of green and bush, coming out twenty yards in front of the running animal, behind which thundered a mounted policeman at full speed. Thinking quickly he turned and ran in the same direction. As the animal overtook him he seized the reins at the bit, threw himself back and, with powerful jerks, though dragged a distance by the frantic beast, brought it to a standstill. The policeman came up and as he took the trembling horse by the head, exclaimed: "Good work, sir! Now help the lady out." Dunbar obeyed, to discover that the lady was one he least expected to see and the one woman of all others most embarrassing for him to meet-Kitty Van Zandt. The young woman was the attractive and high-spirited daughter of Van Zandt, the Wall Street broker with whom he had had dealings and was likely to have more-the young woman, in short, who had driven him from Brooklyn to seek a residence in the borough of Manhattan. These two young people had known each other since childhood. It was, however, but two years prior to the happening in the Park that he had awakened to two considerations |