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holding up both hands high in front of him, "are quicker and
cleverer than the fingers of the best piano player in the world!"

    "Are you a piano player?"

    "Don't be daft," he said. "Do I look like a piano player?"

    I glanced at his fingers. They were so beautifully shaped, so slim and long and elegant, they didn't seem to belong to the rest of him
at all. They looked more like the fingers of a brain surgeon or a watchmaker.

    "My job," he went on, "is a hundred times more difficult than playin ' the piano. Any twerp can learn to do that. There's titchy little kids learnin ' to
play the piano in almost any ' ouse you go into these
days. That's right, ain't it?"

    "More or less," I said.

    "Of course it's right. But there's not one person in ten million can learn
to do what I do. Not one in ten million! ' Ow about that?"

    "Amazing," I said.

    "You're darn right it's amazin '," he said.

    "I think I know what you do." I said. "You do conjuring tricks.
You're a conjurer."

    "Me?" he snorted. "A conjurer? Can you
picture me goin ' round crummy kids' parties makin ' rabbits come out of top ' ats ? "

    "Then you're a card player. You get people into card games and deal
yourself marvellous hands."

    "Me! A rotten card-sharper!" he cried. "That's a miserable
racket if ever there was one."

    "All right. I give up."

    I was taking the car along slowly now, at no more than forty miles an hour, to
make quite sure I wasn't stopped again. We had come on to the main
London-Oxford road and were running down the hill towards Denham.

    Suddenly, my passenger was holding up a black leather belt in his hand.
"Ever seen this before?" he asked. The belt had a brass buckle of
unusual design.

    "Hey!" I said. "That's mine, isn't it? It is mine! Where did you
get it?"

    He grinned and waved the belt gently from side to side. "Where d'you think I got it?" he
said. "Off the top of your trousers, of course."

    I reached down and felt for my belt. It was gone.

    "You mean you took it off me while we've been driving along?" I asked,
flabbergasted.

    He nodded, watching me all the time with those little black ratty eyes.

    "That's impossible," I said. "You'd have to undo the buckle and
slide the whole thing out through the loops all the way round. I'd have seen
you doing it. And even if I hadn't seen you, I'd have felt it."

    "Ah, but you didnt , did you?" he said,
triumphant. He dropped the belt on his lap, and now all at once there was a
brown shoelace dangling from his fingers. "And what about this,
then?" he exclaimed, waving the shoelace.

    "What about it?" I said.

    "Anyone round 'ere missin ' a shoelace?" he
asked, grinning.

    I glanced down at my shoes. The lace of one of them was missing. "Good
grief!" I said. "How did you do that? I never saw you bending
down."

    "You never saw nothin '," he said proudly.
"You never even saw me move an inch. And you know why?"

    "Yes," I said. "Because you've got fantastic
fingers."

    "Exactly right!" he cried. "You catch on pretty quick, don't
you?" He sat back and sucked away at his homemade cigarette, blowing the
smoke out in a thin stream against the windshield. He knew he had impressed me
greatly with those two tricks, and this made him very happy. "I don't want
to be late," he said. "What time is it?"

    "There's a clock in front of you," I told him.

    "I don't trust car clocks," he said."What does your watch say?"

    I hitched up my sleeve to look at the watch on my wrist. It wasn't there. I
looked at the man. He looked back at me, grinning.

    "You've taken that, too," I said.

    He held out his hand and there was my watch lying in his palm. "Nice bit
of stuff, this," he said. "Superior quality. Eighteen-carat gold. Easy to flog,
too. It's never any trouble gettin ' rid of
quality goods."

    "I'd like it back, if you don't mind," I said rather huffily.

    He placed the watch carefully on the leather tray in front of him. "I
wouldn't nick anything from you, guv'nor ," he
said. "You're my pal. You're giving me