Skif could not imagine how anyone could get at any of these tempting articles. Even the belt pouches were slung right under the mannequin’s stuffed arm. But Raf, their expert, was about to show him.

“Watch close, young ’un,” Bazie chuckled. “Yon Raf ’s slick.”

He strolled up to stand beside the mannequin, looking from side to side as if he was observing the traffic in a street. Meanwhile—without ever so much as glancing at his quarry—his hand moved very, very slowly toward one of the handkerchiefs just barely hanging out of a pocket. Thread by thread, almost, he delicately removed it, and when it fell free of the mannequin’s pocket, he whisked it into his own so quickly it seemed to vanish. As slowly as it had seemed to move, the whole business had not taken very long—certainly it was reasonable to think that a target would have remained standing beside the thief for that period of time, especially in a crowd or at the side of a busy street with a lot of traffic on it.

“Tha’s th’ ’ard way,” Bazie told Skif, who watched with wide eyes. “Raf, ’e’s th’ best I ivir showed. ’E’s got th’ touch, fer certain-sure.”

Now Raf sidled up to the other side of the mannequin, still casual and calm; he pretended to point at something, and while the target’s attention was presumably distracted for a moment, out came a knife no bigger than a finger, and between one breath and the next, the strings of both belt pouches had been slit and knife and pouches were in Raf ’s pocket.

And all without jingling a single bell.

Now it was Lyle’s turn, and he extracted the remaining handkerchief without difficulty, although he was not as smooth as Raf. “I’m not near that good,” Deek said. “So I’m got t’ do th’ shake’n’snatch. Tha’ takes two.”

He got up, and he and Lyle advanced on the mannequin together. Then Lyle pretended to stumble and fell against it, setting all the bells jingling; as it fell into him, Deek grabbed for it. “’Ey there, lad!” he exclaimed. “Steady on! An’ you—watch where yer goin’, you! Mussin’ up a gennelmun like that!”

Skif would have expected Deek to pretend to brush the mannequin off, and get hold of his goods that way, but Deek did nothing of the sort. He simply set it straight. They both moved off, but now the mannequin no longer had the kerchief around its neck, and Deek held up both the kerchief and the pouch that had been tucked inside its tunic triumphantly.

“Tha’s th’ easy road, but riskier,” Bazie noted. “Chance is, if mun figgers ’e’s been lifted, ’e’ll send beaks lookin’ fer th’ shaker—tha’s Lyle.”

“An’ I’m be clean,” Lyle pointed out. “Ain’t nothin’ on me, an’ beak’ll let me go.”