Some important information against him now came from outside.
It developed that Montani had been involved several months before in an insurance case, claiming indemnity for a burned automobile under a policy. He had presented, as part of its value, a bill for repairs amounting to $1,348. The insurance company, however, had found that this bill was fraudulent, that the repairs had never been made, and had obtained a statement to that effect from the Italian chauffeur. Out of pity for his wife and two children the case was not pressed against him. Now that he was involved in another crime, however, the insurance people came forward and laid the facts before the police.
Of course, Montani knew nothing about this new development.
For two days the chauffeur was questioned at intervals, and the inquiry centered chiefly on the knotty points in his story of the crime. He was particularly pressed for better explanations of the slackening of his cab when the robbers boarded it, but stuck to his original statement about a man getting in front of the vehicle. He described this person as an old man, and said he must have been in league with the criminals. As the police had good evidence that there had been nobody in front of the taxicab, however, this point was returned to again and again, and toward night on Saturday, February 17, the little chauffeur began to feel the strain.
On his way to supper that evening with men from the Detective Bureau, Montani was taken through the Bowery. Suddenly he stopped, dramatically, and exclaimed:
“There! That is the old man who got in front of my cab!”
His finger indicated a Bowery character as typical as anything ever seen in melodrama—a ragged little old figure with an amazing set of whiskers, engaged in picking up cigar butts along the gutters. He was immediately taken to headquarters.
No detail of his work interests Commissioner Dougherty more keenly than his study of the many picturesque characters who turn up as an important case unfolds. He has a ready appreciation of everybody who appears, from the society lady who lost her jewels to the typical Bowery loafer. He is as ready to look at facts from a criminal’s point of view as that of an honest man. He has often gone half across the country to get acquainted with a good burglar, and in this warm human interest lies the basis of his skill as an examiner of suspects. These details are set down, not in glorification of Dougherty, but for the guidance of every police officer interested in his methods.
The moment Dougherty laid eyes on this new character, with his magnificent whiskers, he gave him a nickname.
“King Dodo!” said the Commissioner, and that by that name he was known in so far as he figured in the case at all. “King Dodo” proved to be entirely innocent, and nothing more than the victim of a chance move of Montani’s, who evidently thought that he ought to produce something tangible to back up his assertion that the cab had been intercepted by an old man. “King Dodo” established a perfect alibi, proving that he had been elsewhere at the time of the robbery, and after being questioned and the truth of his story established, he was released, there being no reason for holding him.