Arthur K. Barnes (1911-69) is best known for his science fantasy romps about Gerry Carlyle, the bring-em-back alive Interplanetary Huntress, whose adventures graced the pages of the legendary Golden Age pulp, Thrilling Wonder Stories in the 1940s. But Barnes was equally beloved by fans of the time for his hilarious series of Pete Manx stories, penned for the same magazine. Manx, a carnival barker, conman and small-time crook, always in trouble of one kind or another, would duck into the laboratory of his friend Dr. Mayhem for safety. There, to satisfy the slightly-crazed doctor's curiosity about the past, Manx would be sent back in time, where Manx's attempts to line his pockets with a classic griff would soon reduce King Arthur's or Julius Caesar's court, or the Trojan War, or Robin Hood's outlaws, to complete shambles, with the result that he would soon be in hotter water than before. Reader columns were full of letters praising the series and demanding more of Manx's dizzy misadventures but, oddly, the stories were never collected. So, here for the first time ever in book form, after being out of print for more than half a century, are the uproarious doings of Pete Manx, not a time traveler--but a time troubler. (As an added treat, this edition also contains a pair of articles by Barnes on the creation of Pete Manx and a behind the scenes peek at the inspiration for two of the stories.)

Jean Marie Stine

Pete Manx was nervous.

Spieling before a sideshow or working the shell game on some sucker, he'd have felt at home. But the apparatus in Dr. Mayhem's laboratory bothered him. Power cables, massive insulators, tubes, coils--huh-uh! Ever since Pete's brother-in-law had taken the hot squat in Joliet, Pete himself had developed a definite allergy to electricity.

He tipped his derby back on his bullet head, squinting at Mayhem.

"Now look," he said. "I know my rights; I ain't no guinea pig. For a hundred bucks I'll do a lot, but--"

"Shush," frowned the doctor. "You won't be hurt. Just wait here, Mr. Manx, 'til I give the word."

Mayhem's agile, wizened figure disappeared behind a curtain. A spatter of applause greeted him as he appeared on an improvised rostrum in a screened-off portion of his laboratory.

Pete tiptoed to the curtain and parted it. He glimpsed a dozen young men--college kids--and a large, amorphous gentleman who wore with dignity pince-nez and a who-the-devil-are-you air.

"Nasty looking customer," Pete told himself. "Wonder what this is all about? The doc wouldn't give me a hundred fish for nothing."

Mayhem commenced to talk.

"Gentlemen, I regret keeping you waiting. I invited you here to witness a little experiment. Professor Aker"--he bowed with a faintly ironic leer, to the man with the pince-nez--"has honored me by disagreeing with a certain theory I postulated. He maintains that you and I, gentlemen, are--um--cogs."

Pete grinned as he saw the large gentleman bristle, then rise.

"Dr. Mayhem," rumbled Professor Aker, "I am at a loss to know why I was summoned to your laboratory. But now that I am here, I feel that it would be expedient to explain my premise."

"Here we go again," whispered an irreverent freshman. Professor Aker had, in the university, a definite reputation as a bore.

"Ahem," said the professor. "It was my contention that our present-day civilization is such a complex organization, with each individual so dependent upon many other individuals for existence, that a man today receives no practical education whatsoever. He is, as I said, merely a cog. In other words, he knows only a limited phase of whatever trade or profession he follows."

"And," prodded Mayhem, "you said that if a modern man were suddenly transported back to ancient Rome, for instance--"

"Ah, yes, yes. Despite his apparent advantage of centuries of knowledge, he would be utterly helpless. He would starve for want of ability to make something useful. An office worker--what could he do? Nothing. Could an automobile worker who spends his days bolting on fenders support himself in Rome?

"Or take an ordinary jeweler. Could he make the parts of the watches he repairs every day? Of course not! He couldn't build a clock to save his soul! I contend that the only type of man with any chance of making a financial success, if cast back into the past, is the man of science. Science alone can defeat adverse environment."

Mayhem chuckled unpleasantly.

"So you say, repeatedly. But, if you really could go back to Roman times, I wonder if you would still feel the same?"

Aker drew himself up.

"My dear Mayhem, I would revolutionize Roman standards of living, change the course of history, by the simple introduction of cheap powder. Electricity. The history of civilization is, of course, the history of transportation. By introducing electricity and motors, I could--"

"Yes, yes. Familiar ground, Professor Aker. But you are soon to have a chance to put your theory to the test, I've built a time machine," said Mayhem with the simplicity of true genius. "No, don't argue. It's never been done before, I know. But then there's never been a Horatio Mayhem before. I can project you back into past time, and, unless you want to back down, I can send you temporarily to the days of ancient Rome."

"You are mad," Aker decided.

"Suit yourself. But I'd like to make a small wager. I need a few thousand dollars' worth of new equipment for my research--"

Aker reacted as department heads have reacted immemorially to suggestions. "Outrageous! I have a ready told you I would not countenance such wanton expenditure."

"So," Mayhem spoke persuasively, "I'll bet with you. I'll send you and another man--an ordinary layman--back to Rome, and give you a certain period in which to prove your theory. If my man makes a bigger success than you, then you'll give me the equipment I want."

Aker purpled.

"What! Do you seriously..."

"Afraid?" taunted Mayhem.

Pete Manx, still watching surreptitiously, chuckled. Mayhem had maneuvered Aker behind the eight ball. With all those school kids making wise remarks and daring the old bloat to go through with his argument, Aker, pompous and sensitively didn't dare back down now.

Aker glared around. "Afraid? Bah!" he growled. "Of course not!" He sank down into his chair.

"Then you agree," Mayhem smiled. "Good! You may come out now, Mr. Manx."

Manx appeared from behind the curtain, waving a hand agreeably at the group. "Hiya," he grinned. "Just call me Pete."

"Who is this person?" Aker demanded.

"A gentleman I hired at the beach--a barker at one of the concessions, in fact. His chief virtues are a certain native shrewdness and a knowledge of Latin, a knowledge he shares with you, Professor, Naturally, when you go back to Rome, it is necessary to speak the Roman tongue."

"This-er-fellow speaks Latin?"

Aker said dubiously.

"'And why not?" came back Pete belligerently. "My old lady was a teacher in high school. Listen. Omni Gallia divisa est--"

"Not now," Mayhem interposed hastily. "But soon, perhaps. Now, the arrangement is clear, I trust. Professor Aker and Pete Manx will go back to Rome in my time machine, and will be given a certain period in which to achieve success. And if my man wins, Professor Aker will give me my equipment."

"Look here, Mayhem," Aker said uneasily. "This is poppycock. I'm getting out of here right now."

"You are indeed," said the doctor. "Oh my, yes! I took the precaution of wiring your chair so it is a miniature electric chair." He pressed a button. "Er--good luck, Professor."

He was, however, addressing what seemed to be a peculiarly repulsive-looking corpse. For Professor Aker's ample body had suddenly slumped in the chair, an expression of utter vacuity frozen on the beefy features.

"Don't be alarmed," the doctor called, his hands raised to quiet the audience. "He isn't harmed. It's merely a trance. His mind has been projected back in time."

"Hey, wait!" Pete Manx gulped. "That looks like the hot seat to me!"

"Pete, my boy, it's quite all right." Dr. Mayhem smiled. "Just sit here, if you please."

Pete squirmed.

Bang!

The inner consciousness of Pete Manx left his body, derby, checkered vest, and orange tie, to appear with startling abruptness in another time sector, Pete went, however, in an erratic sort of way, much like a pendulum gathering momentum and swinging back and forth between ancient Rome and modern America.

The laboratory suddenly had vanished. Sunlight glared down on him instead. Yelling tradesmen stormed and chaffered. Tides of laden slaves surged among the booths of vegetable sellers and money changers. Then--

He was back in the laboratory--paralyzed! Unable to stir a muscle, wink an eyelash, or bridge a synapse, Pete stared blankly and listened to Dr. Mayhem speaking.

"Time, like space, is curved, revolving around a central time-consciousness. There the temporal sense of all men from the beginning to the end of things has its origin. We, gentlemen, are on the rim of the wheel, so to speak. If we could project ourselves to the hub and out again along another spoke, we would find ourselves in a different time..."

Swish!

Rome!

A horseman pacing slowly along a narrow street, preceded by a gilded litter borne by slaves. Cries of "Cave! Cave!" Rough, fluent oaths of a bearded Gaul looming up near by.

Back again to the laboratory. Dr. Mayhem was still lecturing.

"They have both been mentally transported, while their bodies lie here in a state of trance, into the minds of two persons in the days of Rome's glory. Their consciousnesses were projected into the Time-center, and thence out again to a period known to us only as history."

Pete Manx went back to Rome and, this time, stayed there. Once more the hot Italian sunlight blazed down upon him. Odors of wine and olives and spices were strong in his nostrils. For a moment the world swung dizzily about him; then suddenly something came violently in contact with his nose and he was precipitated full-length upon the Appian Way.

"Earthquake!" he gasped. "I ain't in Rome; I'm in California!"

A harsh voice spoke swift Latin words, and Pete recognized them. He sat up, feeling an odd awkwardness about his new body, and stared at a furry-bearded soldier who was shaking both fists and cursing.

"Purse-snatcher," the soldier roared, among other things, and expressed an intention of tearing Pete apart and scattering his revolting body from Viminal Hill to the Coliseum. "An honest soldier cannot be in Rome a day before some thief lifts his purse. What is thy name, dog?"

"Petus Manxus," replied Pete.

"Then arise, Manxus the thief, that I may smite you again."

This struck Pete as unsound advice, but he stood up nevertheless. A quick glance downward told him that he was dressed in a billowing white tunic like a nightgown; his feet, sandal-shod, were invisible to him. Apparently Pete's mind was inhabiting the body of scene Roman who had just got himself into a peck of trouble.

Pete desperately fended for himself with ju-jutsu. His triumph was instantaneous. A twist of the wrist sent the Gaul spinning, whereupon Petus Manxus' two hundred and fifty pounds lit upon him in a running broad jump. The unfortunate soldier did not get up again, remaining flat on his back twitching and wheezing. Pete fled down the Via Appia until he was protected by a surging multitude of Gauls, Scythians, Britons--a potpourri of the world under Rome. Then, feeling himself unobserved, he withdrew into a vacant space behind a wine-seller's booth and sat down to rest and pant.

"So this is Rome," he muttered disparagingly. "Pew! Science is sure a funny thing."

But he had a job to do, and a rough-and-ready philosophy that softened life's knocks. So he carefully took stock of his possessions. They were not many. Under his tunic he wore a woolen under-garment that itched, and a leather pouch. In the pouch was a purse that contained three lonely pieces of silver and a knife. Pete grunted. If he had been a thief up to now, he'd certainly been an unsuccessful one, He would have to start from scratch, and the only thing in his favor in this friendless world was the fact that there seemed to be hordes of suckers just begging to be plucked.

Wandering back into the busy square, Pete came at last to a vacant booth. In it was a sloping wooden table which had a two-inch curb all around. An idea glimmered into his brain.

He had no tools save for the knife in his pouch. But with this he set to work, humming under his breath, "Hold that Tiber! Hold that Tiber!" Carefully he marked off the slanting surface of the table with a pattern of ten dots. At each dot he painfully gouged a shallow depression in the soft wood. Then he whittled a number of tiny pegs and, below each depression, bored small holes into which he fitted the pegs. Above some of them he also distributed an occasional peg. On the right side of the board, paralleling the curb, he fitted another narrow wooden strip so that a channel extending almost to the top was formed.

At the top, curving from side to side, he pegged in a semi-circular strip of stiff reed. Finally, at the base of the right-hand channel, he arranged a painfully-carved wooden plunger. He stepped back to survey his work.

"Crude," he sighed, "but good enough for a beginning." A gnawing in his middle was making itself felt; he was hungry. Hastily he went forth, surveying the Via Appia till he found three urchins playing marbles in a dusty corner. He traded his knife for the marbles.

Then he was ready. Petus Manxus returned to his booth, a cold feeling of excitement making him shiver a bit. He made an involuntary gesture to shove his derby further back on his head. He winced as plump fingers encountered a bald, pink dome.

Two soldiers were passing; Pete called to them. "Hey, you two! Want to see something new? C'mere."

The men approached.

"Well?"

The Emperor's latest amusement--" Was there an emperor? Apparently so, for the soldiers bent to examine the board with interest. "You, there! With the purple nightshirt! Come and see!"

Three men in purple togas frowningly, approached. Attracted by the senators, others followed.

This was familiar stuff to Pete; he launched glibly forth into his spiel.

"Friends, Romans, countrymen!" he yelled. "Lend me your ears! I come here not to sell you something, but to fascinate and amuse you! Come see the Emperor's favorite game!"

"What is it called?" a paunchy senator took the bait.

"Clavus pila! Pin ball! Rich prizes skillful! This is not a game of chance, my friends, but a test of skill and skill alone. Step right up, folks, and keep your eye on the ball!"

The crowd surged up. Pete casually dropped one marble in the channel along the right side of the board, drew back the plunger, slammed it forward again. The ball shot up, followed the curving strip of stout reed, caromed off a nail, and began dribbling slowly down the board bounding off pegs, zigzagging, and eventually dropping into one of the holes.

"A Vestal Virgin!" Pete bellowed, and the onlookers noticed that each hole was labeled with a name. Six were Vestal Virgins; three were Senators; the one at the top was dubbed Caesar. "It's easy, folks! A Caesar, two Senators, and five Virgins wins you two sesterces. A Caesar, three Senators, and five Virgins wins you three sesterces. If you hit Caesar, three Senators, and all the Vestal Virgins you can take the board home with you ... Come one, come all!"

With uncanny accuracy, Manxus poured four more marbles into guide slot and fired, registering Caesar, two Senators, and one Out at the bottom of the board. In a trice the crowd was begging him to take their money, eager for a chance to play.

Pete took them one at a time, charging one sesterce per game, picking the marbles out of their resting places by hand after each game was finished. By a stroke of good fortune, the first two players each won a little; from then on there was no stopping the mob. By nightfall Manxus' pouch and both hands were stuffed with coins.

Smelly, inefficient oil lamps were brought out, but Pete vetoed further play that day. Somewhere in Rome there was a place that his body called home, but he naturally didn't know where it was. Instead, he took a room at an inn--the Caupona Racchius, B. Bibulus, Proprietor--which reminded him in appearance and odor of any other beer joint back home with dollar-a-day rooms upstairs. But Pete didn't mind; he was already well on the road to becoming the slot-machine czar of Rome!

Next day he set up his outfit in the square at dawn. By making it a bit easier to win, he had customers lined up all the way around the square waiting to play clavus pila. By eleven o'clock he had broke a carpenter, who was so afraid to return home to his wife that Pete returned his money. The grateful carpenter gladly promised to build a dozen clavus pila boards of finest materials and deliver them to Pete's place at the inn.

By two o'clock a tax collector had gone down swinging, losing in addition to his own money, two hundred denarius belonging to the government.

Eventually inn-keeper Bibulus was seduced by the insidious sight of a praetorian guardsman raking in his winnings. He came, played, and was conquered. Petus Manxus went home that evening with a partnership in the Caupona Bacchius.

Thenceforward the clavus pila rage rushed ahead on its own momentum. Pete set up the new tables in the inn, a dozen of them, and had Bibulus and his three fat daughters help regulate the play, take in the coins, watch the chiselers who tried to start their game over again while no one was looking, and put down a stern foot when anyone was caught titling the board.

Within a week Pete was riding the streets in a sumptuous litter, wearing fur togas, and with a retinue of twenty slaves. All over Rome his clavus pila parlors were springing up like mushrooms.

Pete was smart. The more parlors he opened, the more his income. The more money he made, the more he could afford to lower the odds so everyone could win occasionally, working on a smaller percentage. And the more people won, the more they poured sesterces into the Manxus coffers.

"It's a vicious circle," Pete grinned to Bibulus. "They actually beg me to take their dough!"

It was inevitable that Petus Manxus should look around for more worlds to conquer. He considered the idea of inventing roulette or tango, but vetoed it. That would require opening a new set of joints, and since he had all the gambling element playing pin-ball, the new games would just take some of the players from one racket to the other with no increase in intake. He looked into the theater situation briefly, but gave that up when he learned Rome had but two or three theaters, and they were the Emperor's own graft.

"Such a pity," Pete moaned cheerfully to the bewildered Bibulus. "What a push-over they woulda been for Bingo and Bank Nite!"

But politics--there was something in which Pete's experience would serve him well!

Pete scurried around among the influential Romans who were somewhat under obligation to him, because of clavus pila losses, and put on gentle pressure. He talked earnestly to the head of the flute-blowers' guild, to his friend the carpenter, to many others. And one week before election day, the moon rose on a Rome gone politically insane.

Rome was having her first political parade, under the auspices of Petus Manxus.

Leading the way, blowing and plucking away with all their might, was a weird orchestra; the instruments were flutes, lyres, and horns. Next came a group of Pete's intimates. Each carried a square poster, up thrust on a pole, which bobbed and twirled in the smoky light of torches and lamps.

"Manxus for Magistrate!" they proclaimed in large letters. "A New Deal for Romans!"

"Vote for Manxus, Old-line Republican! Bring Back Prosperity!"

"Seventy Sesterces Every Saturday for Each Citizen Over Sixty!"

This was followed by a gorgeously decorated litter carried by eight handsome slaves. Standing up inside, bowing and smiling to the crowd, was Pete. Behind came about a hundred paid retainers, all cheering mightily at the rate of one denarius per hour,

So, after a whirlwind campaign in which he advocated the Townsendum old-age retirement plan, conservatism, liberalism, and other incomprehensibles, Petus Manxus was returned magistrate, with the assistance of some sleight-of-hand at the polls. With Bibulus as chief adviser, Pete devoted himself to administering his office.

Things ran smoothly--too smoothly, according to Bibulus.

"The Emperor hasn't even asked you to make a will in his favor!" he worried. "Strange."

"So that's how he gets his rake-off eh?" Pete asked. "Just an old Roman custom. Y'know, I haven't even seen Claudius yet."

"Few do," Bibulus observed meaningly, "and most of them regret it. The Emperor's favor is dangerous to lose. Just the same, there's something strange about it. Are you sure you haven't a powerful friend at court?"

"Except for my uncle who is a Tammany alderman, no."

"Yet a woman has appeared often among the spectators when you are on the bench. A beautiful woman, veiled to the eyes--"

"Women," pronounced Pete, "is poison. Ixnay, Bibby. Have you got any news about the guy I'm lookin' for?" Ever since Pete's election he had been searching for the trail of his inadvertent companion into time, Professor Aker, who should have been somewhere in Rome. Until today, Bibulus had brought no news.

Now, however, the former capo, twisted his face into a crumpled arrangement of wrinkles, intended to be a smile.

"I have learned of a wizard whose magic failed--a madman. He rushed down the Via Appia some moons ago shouting dire prophecies. Trying perhaps to start a new cult. To those who would follow him he promised chariots that would move without horses, lamps that would burn without flame, and"--Bibulus bent double with laughter--"and galleys that would fly through the air like birds! Verily!"

Pete's eyes widened.

"Zeus! Go on!"

"He tried to make magic. He filled a pot with a liquid that burned like fire. He wound strands of wire around metal cylinders, and plunged a bit of copper into the pot. Then he began to shout and call for some metal whereof no one had heard--what was it? I forget. They brought him zingiber-ginger. He flung it down and trod upon it. He yelled loudly for--I have it--zinc!"

Pete whistled.

"I see it all now," he muttered. Aker planned to build a series of simple galvanic batteries, and with them power his primitive electric motors made of coils and armature. But he had forgotten one vital thing; zinc, necessary for his battery, wasn't known until the sixteenth century! "So what happened to 'im?"

"No one knows. But I shall search further. And now you must hold court, Petus Manxus. Here--your toga. Many await."

Uncomfortably, Pete donned the garment, arose from his cushioned bench, and went into the next room. Once a dignified example of Roman architecture, it had been altered somewhat under Pete's orders. A railing kept the spectators at a distance, and to the left of the desk of the magister a railed-in enclosure held the prisoners.

There was a spattering of applause as Pete mounted the bench. He waved a negligent hand.

"First case," Bibulus called. Two guards marched forward, impelling between them a large, handsome young man with jet-black curls and a harassed expression.

"A poisoner," whispered Bibulus, as the defendant was hustled into the dock. "He tried to slay Gaius Hostilius, the consul."

"What's his racket?" inquired Pete in his abominable Latin.

"A street magician, of strange powers. He attracted the consul's attention with his tricks, and performed the miracle of turning water to wine. That was all right, but Hostilius demanded that the cup be brought to him. When he drank of it, he fell down and rolled about in agony."

Just then the prisoner, who had stared incredulously at Pete when the latter's ungrammatical Latin had soiled the judicial atmosphere, began to shout in a language incomprehensible to the others.

"Manx! Manx! Is that you, for heaven's sake?"

"He casts a spell on us!" cried Bibulus, and a guard promptly suppressed the unfortunate prisoner in no uncertain manner.

"Petus Manxus--by the gods! What ails you?"

"Zeus," gasped Pete, glaring at the defendant, "has stricken me with a thunderbolt!" Then, in English, "Hey, Prof! Is that you?"

"Manx!" squalled the young man. "Of course it's I! Get me out of this, quick! I didn't poison the fellow. My--er--plans went wrong and I was supporting myself with simple chemical magic, when he--"

"Sure. Sure." Pete soothed him. "I'll give it the fix." He turned to Bibulus. "We'll just dismiss the charge. It's his first offense."

"Poisoners," Bibulus frowned, "are always thrown to the lions."

Pete silenced him with a lifted hand, pronounced sentence. As he felt the people were behind him strongly, he was naturally greatly surprised by the outburst which greeted his announcement that the prisoner would go free.

Rome didn't like poisoners.

"To the lions!" someone bellowed. "Flay him alive! Tear out his tongue!"

The professor seemed to shrink. Pete looked about in desperation. He met the eyes of a veiled woman who sat in a corner--watching him intently--perhaps the same one Bibulus mentioned. No help there. But there was a florid, benevolent-looking old man in the front row, and to him Pete turned for aid.

"Sir, will you use your influence in quieting this mob? After all, I'm sure the prisoner had no murderous intentions, and maybe the consul deserved killing anyway, if what I've heard about Gaius Hostilius is true."

Bibulus clutched Pete's shoulder.

"Gods, Petus! You put your foot into it that time. That's the plaintiff, Gaius Hostilius!"

It looked like a big day. The crowd suddenly turned into a mob, with the volatility of the Latin temperament. Pete caught a glimpse of the veiled woman vanishing through a curtain, and saw Gaius Hostilius mounting a chair to shout, "Down with the tyrant! Is this Roman justice?"

"No!" roared the mob. "To the lions with both of them!"

"My-y-y friends," began Pete, then decided the moment unpropitious for a speech. Instead, he grabbed the professor's arm and dragged him back through a curtained aperture. But the mob wasn't so easily thwarted. They came bellowing in, and Pete and Professor Aker fled for their lives. But in vain. They were finally cornered in Pete's private bath, and attacked with fury.

"Bibulus!" Pete roared. "Get help!"

But Bibulus had long since decided on the better part of valor; he had discreetly vanished.

The tumult and the shouting died as a corps of guardsmen marched through the mob, swords bared. Under threat of bloodshed the crowd subsided, drawing back to wait watchfully.

"You're just in time," Pete sighed thankfully to the bronzed legatus. "Brother, we needed help, and how!"

"Seize them," the lieutenant snapped. "Disarm those men! Petus Manxus you and this felon are under arrest. Caesar himself will decide your fate this day!"