I made my way through a butler’s pantry and an enormous brick-floored kitchen, crossing a hallway to the formal living room. The light I’d noted from the street cast a warm glow over the room. It was a noteworthy object in and of itself, a leaded-glass dragonfly lamp by Tiffany. I’d last seen one in an antique shop on upper Madison Avenue with a $1,500 tag on it, and that was a few years ago.

But I hadn’t come all the way to Queens to steal furniture. I’d come with a very specific purpose, and I didn’t really need to be in the living room at all. I didn’t have to take inventory, but old habits die hard, and I could hardly avoid it.

The lamp made it easy, saving me the trouble of using my flashlight. There was a timer so that it would turn itself off during daylight hours and resume its vigil at dusk, burning bravely until dawn, announcing to passers-by that nobody was home.

Considerate of them, I thought, to leave a light for the burglar.

The lamp was perched on an ornamental French kneehole desk. Four of the desk’s six drawers were fakes, but one of the others held a Patek Philippe pocket watch with a hunting scene engraved on its case.

I closed the drawer without disturbing the watch.

The dining room was worth a look. A sideboard absolutely loaded with silver, including two complete sets of sterling tableware and a ton of hallmarked Georgian serving pieces. No end of fine porcelain and crystal.

I left everything undisturbed.

The library, also on the ground floor, was a room I would have gladly called my own. It measured perhaps twelve by twenty feet, with a glorious Kerman carpet covering most of the buffed parquet floor. Custom-built bookshelves of limed English oak lined two walls. In the middle of the room, centered beneath a fruited Tiffany shade, stood a tournament-size pool table. At the room’s far end, twin portraits of Arkwright ancestors in gilded oval frames looked down in solemn approbation.