By the time my eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, the thrill of illegal entry had subsided to a less acute sense of profound well-being. Flashlight in hand, I took a quick tour of the apartment. Even if Appling and his wife were sequestered with the rest of the turkeys, there was always the chance that one of the rooms held some relative or friend or servant, sleeping peacefully or cowering in terror or putting in a quiet call to the local precinct. I went quickly in and out of each room and encountered nothing living but the houseplants. Then I returned to the living room and switched on a lamp.

I had plenty to choose from. The cobra door knocker was the first but hardly the last piece of art nouveau I encountered, and the living room was festooned with enough Tiffany lamps to cause a power failure. Large lamps, small lamps, table lamps, floor lamps-no one could want that much light. But then the collecting mania is by definition irrational and excessive. Appling had thousands upon thousands of postage stamps, and how many letters do you suppose he sent out?

Tiffany lamps are worth a fortune these days. I recognized some of them-the Dragonfly lamp, the Wisteria lamp-and you can pick up a nice suburban house for what a couple of those would bring at Parke-Bernet. You could also earn a very quick trip to Dannemora trying to walk out of the Charlemagne weighted down with leaded-glass lamps. I went around examining them-the place was as good as a museum-but I left them as I found them, along with any number of other gewgaws and pretties.

The Applings seemed to have separate bedrooms, and I found jewelry in hers, in a stunning tortoiseshell jewelry box in her top dresser drawer.