Smoke Ghost & Other Apparitions by Fritz Leiber

Author:Fritz Leiber
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2000-12-31T22:00:00+00:00

THE HOUSE OF MRS. DELGATO

THE HOUSE of Mrs. Delgato was a sour stench, quite truly, in the nostrils of the respectable citizenry of Felicidad, New Mexico – which in this instance included all the other inhabitants of that lazy border town. They had a name for her house – a name that most people wouldn't consider nice and certainly not respectable.

Yet they delayed in taking decisive action, legal or otherwise, against Mrs. Delgato and "her girls," as she openly referred to them.

There were several reasons for this. The City Fathers were traditionalists: they respected Mrs. Delgato's one-time international reputation – it lent an oblique glamor to Felicidad.

And Mrs. Delgato was a good, even a righteous citizen in most respects. She paid her taxes on the dot, she frowned on noise and drunkenness, she always drew her shades, and she kept her girls within strict bounds. Never were they permitted out on the streets of Felicidad. Seldom were they even allowed to take the air in the high-walled, deep-shaded garden.

Mostly Mrs. Delgato's girls were confined to the imposing dark stucco house proper. Summer and winter, naked and in furs, they lolled in its shadowy bedrooms, or paced restlessly along its corridors behind the drawn blinds, or gathered of an evening in the large parlor with the upright piano, the horsehair sofas, the bead curtain and the peacock plumes.

Naturally enough a shade sometimes failed to be drawn, or rolled up impulsively on some whirringly wicked whim of its own. Even more naturally the more adventurous boys of Felicidad would climb the surrounding trees, or egg one another on to mount the vine-covered wall, in hopes of catching a revealing glimpse of one or more of Mrs. Delgato's girls.

Many of the grown men of Felicidad showed an interest in the house of Mrs. Delgato quite equal to that of the boys, though it was a more covert interest. Not so, however, in the case of Les Grimes, one of Felicidad's mental "unfortunates," who was always either loitering at the railway station, where the trains were a noisy excitement and an occasional quarter could be picked up for toting a stranger's bags, or prowling outside Mrs. Delgato's place, a slack-jawed Peeping Tom. Les liked to mouth over the rude name the Felicidados had given the dark stucco house – he seemed to take an endless pleasure in the terse phrase.

Mrs. Delgato was aware of Les's interest in her girls and when they met on the street she would threaten him jovially with the silver-handled whip it was her habit to carry.

"I saw you luring Lolita, shameless one!" she would cry. "Have a care, man." Or words to that effect.

Lolita was typical of Mrs. Delgato's girls and probably the pick of them for sheer beauty – a luxurious, youthful creature with the striking combination of green eyes and naturally yellow hair. Lazily graceful, forever yawning and stretching, Lolita loved to sunbathe in the garden when Mrs. Delgato permitted. At such times Lolita would croon a little song to herself in a way that was strangely seductive.

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