Instead of running north after the robbers’ automobile when he had taken a policeman aboard his cab, he ran south, away from it. This action, he maintained, was taken under orders from the policeman. But the latter denied that.
He was not able to explain how the robbers had known where to post their automobile so it would be waiting at the spot where they finished their work.
Interest centered in this mysterious black automobile without a license number. For, though Montani was an experienced chauffeur, and his replies to other questions showed that he had seen both the rear and the side of that car, he was unable to tell its make.
Meanwhile, it was learned that three men had hurriedly boarded an elevated train near the scene of the robbery shortly after, not waiting for change from a quarter. The ticket-seller was unable to describe them, but connected them with the robbery when he heard about it.
Montani was held in the custody of the Commissioner that night, to be put through further examination in the morning. But long before morning the police were working on an entirely new development.
The First Direct Clue
The law-abiding citizen goes around New York with little knowledge of the crowding underworld all about him. It is perhaps just as well that he knows nothing of the lives and morals of hundreds of people who elbow him on the streets, sit beside him in the cars, and scrutinize him with a strictly professional eye in many places.
Nor has he any clear conception of the relations that a good police officer maintains with members of this underworld. It is a world just as complete as that of business or society, however, and much of the time of a detective or police official is spent keeping track of people in it, forming acquaintances and connections in various ways, and establishing the organization of informants that will help in the detection and prevention of crime. A good detective is like a good salesman—he keeps track of his “trade.”
Shortly after midnight of the first day, Commissioner Dougherty received a message over the telephone that sent him uptown to meet an informant. At two o’clock in the morning of Friday, February 16, he and this person had a talk at a fashionable uptown hotel. Indeed, most of the meetings with informants during this case were held at two well-known hotels, perhaps the last places in the city that anybody would connect with such conferences.
Informants are not always right, nor always possessed of useful information. But this one had the first real clue.