But Jesse was entitled to his idiotic fancies; he, Judd, wasn't going to interpose any obstacles in Jesse's way. She needed taming, and Jesse's reputation as a tamer was established. Leaving all that aside, though, she wasn't going to stay around his house creating discord and giving her mother cherished opportunities to "open up" on him whenever she felt like it. She would have to go somewhere else. He'd take care of her all right. He had no idea of absolutely turning her out; Tony wouldn't have that, and, besides, there wasn't anything mean about him. But he wasn't going to be flouted any longer; wouldn't have it; wouldn't endure it; wouldn't tolerate it. Fact was, he intended to have it out with Tony that very night. He'd go over to the house on the Drive and get the thing over with. No use in postponing it.
HE'D GO OVER TO THE HOUSE ON THE DRIVE AND GET THE THING OVER WITH.
Thus Judd, fuming, and already more than half drunk.
"Get me a taxicab," he ordered a club servant, and, with a final libation for the tightening of his resolution, he lumbered unsteadily into the taxicab and was catapulted to the house on Riverside Drive.
The butler admitted him and smirked behind his back with the derisiveness of English servants in American households when he saw Judd hold out a miscalculating hand for the banister post and miss it by a foot, thereby almost going to his knees on the stairs. But he recovered his equilibrium, growling, and made his way into Mrs. Treharne's sitting room. Heloise was there alone, reading a French comic weekly of extraordinary pictorial frankness with such gusto that she did not even rise when Judd partly fell into the room.
Judd glared at her out of red eyes.