 Why is it so easy to steal from Fownes?
The pockets of Mr. Humphrey Fownes were being picked outrageously. What made it possible was Humphrey Fownes' abstraction; he was an uncommonly preoccupied individual. In the ensuing contretemps they emptied his rear pants pockets, got his wristwatch and restored the contents of the handkerchief pocket. It all went off very smoothly, like a game of put and take—the sole difference being that Humphrey Fownes had no idea he was playing. It was this rather than skill that enabled the police to maintain such a tight surveillance on him, a surveillance that went to the extent of getting his fingerprints off the postman's bag, and which photographed, X-rayed and chemically analyzed the contents of his pockets before returning them. Two blocks away from his home a careless housewife spilled a five-pound bag of flour as he was passing. By the time Fownes reached his front door an entire dossier complete with photographs had been prepared and was being read by two men in an orange patrol car parked down the street. Lanfierre's job was to ferret out aberration. He came to see that genuine quirks were rare and, as time went on, due partly to his own small efforts, rarer. Fownes was a masterpiece of queerness. Lanfierre was almost proud of Humphrey Fownes. It was only with the greatest reluctance that he finally mentioned Fownes to MacBride. And if there was a house sitting on such a mountain and if winds did blow, it would shake exactly the way that one does. "You're starting to see flying houses, hear loud babbling voices. You've got winds in your brain, Lanfierre, breezes of fatigue, zephyrs of irrationality—" At that moment, all at once, every last window in the house slammed shut. The house could have been preparing to take off and sail down the.... It expressed his weariness and distaste for people who went off and got neurotic when they could be enjoying a happy, normal existence. Fownes stopped on the porch to brush the plaster of paris off his shoes. Or, as Fownes hoped it might appear, the illusion of the domed city vanished and was replaced by a more satisfactory, and, for his specific purpose, more functional, illusion. The sun and moon both looked down upon a garden that was itself scintillant, composed largely of neon roses. Undiminished, the yellow moon and the red sun continued to be brilliant, although the sun occasionally arced over and demolished several of the neon roses.
 He is distracted by his thoughts
 He is distracted by his thoughts  He is unable to defend himself  He is unaware of his possessions' value  He is physically feeble