Strip all the labels off a suit of clothes and lay it before a committee of tailors. In a few moments certain points would be agreed upon. It may be a new suit, or an old one, a fine piece of tailoring, or a cheap hand-me-down. The committee could often identify the cheap suit and tell the name of its manufacturer, while with a seventy-five-dollar suit it might be possible to determine the maker’s name. This holds true of many other lines of work, and it is particularly true of criminal investigation.
Who cut and made that suit of clothes?
The conference sat down to determine this, judging the robbery strictly as a piece of workmanship. Names of known bank criminals were brought up, one by one, and details gone over. It soon became clear that none of the men identified with bank crime were likely to have the brains, skill or organization to plan and execute so complicated a robbery.
The criminals had known the habits of the bank in conveying cash uptown. They knew the route, and were aware that the guard was only an elderly man and a seventeen-year-old boy, both unarmed. They had boarded the cab at the best point, and evidently made arrangements for stopping it. There was team work in every detail. It showed marked insight, for instance, to provide additional men to boost each assailant in at the doors. For young Wardle, the bank employee, had made a plucky attempt to shove his robber out and shut the door, and might have succeeded had there not been an outside man. Robberies are committed under exciting conditions. They sometimes fail because criminals balk. That outside man was there not only to help his “slugger” into the cab, but to force him in if he shrank, and make certain he did his work. Whoever planned such details, it was agreed at the conference, possessed more cunning than the ordinary bank criminal.
Montani is Examined.
When Montani, the taxicab driver, arrived at Police Headquarters, he was willing to talk, and seemed anxious to help the police in every way. He knew suspicion might be directed toward himself, but did not resent that. He talked like a man confident of the truth of his story, and certain that he would be found blameless.
Montani is an Italian, from the northern part of Italy, about 30 years old, five feet six inches high, rather stout and thick-set, with very dark complexion. The striking feature of his countenance, his large, intelligent brown eyes. Commissioner Dougherty found himself thinking of Napoleon in connection with Montani.
The first examination lasted all afternoon, Montani going out to lunch with the Commissioner. Hundreds of questions were asked bearing on the robbery, the appearance of the criminals, and Montani’s past and personal affairs. The story was gone over again and again, and different questioners relieved each other. Yet the taxicab man never lost his temper or patience, and did not contradict himself in any important particular.
Montani had been in this country since the age of twelve, it appeared, had a wife and two children, and was the owner of two taxicabs operated from a stand at a hotel near the bank, whose money he regularly carried. He had owned three cabs, but lost one through business reverses. In fact, he had passed through money troubles, and his story excited sympathy. Starting originally as a truckman for a salvage company, his ambition and intelligence had won him such confidence that this company lent him money to set up trucking for himself. Still more ambitious, he had become a taxicab proprietor. Through the trickery of an ill-chosen partner, however, he has lost some of his savings. He seemed a little bitter about this, and it was a circumstance not likely to escape an expert police examiner, for the loss of money through fraud, coupled with temptation, is often the starting point in crime. The Italian’s former employers spoke highly of his character when questioned by detectives. He gave the names of chauffeurs who had worked for him lately, and of business people who knew him, and careful investigation failed to disclose any suspicious circumstances. Montani quite won the newspaper men—so much so that, when he was discharged in court a few days later for apparent lack of evidence, the newspapers criticised the police for having held him at all.
And yet, before that first night, Montani himself, largely through simple answers to questions, had become so involved that there was ground for holding him under arrest.