ABSTRACT
The summer the banks closed four of us—a playwright, a scenarist, a newspaper man, and I—were sitting it out in a Malibu Beach house unfortunately secured in a moment of curious optimism. Between wonders as to whether the rocket had at last gone up, we played double Canfield for vast, uncollectable sums, hoped that the grocer would continue to hold still, and read magazines. It was better than worrying. For some reason—the old Escape one, doubtless—we developed a collective appetite for the Foreign Legion tales of the pulps, and had extended arguments as to who was the best man in the field: Surdez, Newsom, or Wren. My judgment thus unsettled, when I wanted a sand and honor story for this book, I asked an editor who printed acres of them to help me. He picked Surdez, and asked The Gorgeous Georges to select his own story. After a suitable period of meditation, “Not in the Ritual” was the answer. And so far as I am concerned, that settles that.
