The Heights of Hazard
Summary
A diamond-bright socialite, weary of jazz-age ennui, scoffs at modern courtship during a moonlit soiree, longing for the perilous wooing of pioneer sagas; before the champagne loses its fizz, a velvet-masked stranger abducts her in a thundering race-car, spirits her to a penthouse eyrie, hands her both whistle and pistol like party favors, then narrates—by candle and city-glow—how her photograph once steered him through avalanches, claim-jumpers, and blizzards in the raw Sierras; as dawn creeps over skyscrapers she discovers she has already fallen for the myth he embodies, and when her flabbergasted kin crash the scene she presents him, half-laughing, as the fiancé whose surname she still needs to ask.
Synopsis
Miss Olivia Martindale, at a dinner, announces: "There is no longer any romance in American life," and immediately arouses a storm of protest. Nevertheless, she describes to the assembled company the days of old when men had to scale the heights of hazard to win their women, adding that that is the way she would wish to be wooed. That evening, while strolling in the grounds, a muffled figure steps out, seizes her, and forces her into a waiting racing car. At the Bermuda Apartments. The Unknown unmasks and proves to be a handsome gentleman in immaculate evening clothes. He quietly escorts her to a chair, hands her a police whistle and a pistol to reassure her, and begs her to listen to what he has to say. He bids her call up her anxious relatives and simply tell them she is safe, asking them to come and get her without the police. Attracted by the man's magnetic personality and the glamour of the adventure, she obeys him. Then he tells her how he had seen her in the far west, how her face had been his guide through all the rough gold mining camp life, and now that he had wrested his fortune from those hills he had come east to meet her. His narrative takes them right up to the present, then as the girl, swayed by overpowering emotions, arises, he pleads his suit eloquently and passionately until she surrenders, and he sees in her eyes the dawn of love. Sweeping her into his arms, he kisses her, just as the door bursts open and Mr. Martindale and the others enter. Olivia calmly introduces "Mr -er-er" (she has to ask the gentleman his name) Billy Williams, the well-known millionaire, to her speechless papa as her fiancé.
