While making these arrangements, a curious incident occurred, showing how small is New York, after all, with its five million people. As Dougherty sat in the 18th precinct station, Detective Rein brought in a prisoner arrested for shooting a citizen. He was drunk and extremely disagreeable, and gave his name as “Steigel,” living at 98 Third avenue. Something in this address echoed to something in Dougherty’s memory—a keen one for names, dates, addresses and facts generally. He investigated further, and found that this prisoner was no other than the criminal Molloy, whose urgent need of “character witnesses” had played so important a part in furnishing the first information in the taxicab case.
By some mischance, these operations came to the ears of the newspaper men. Word went about, beginning in Brooklyn, that important arrests were to be made. The reporters followed the Commissioner in a crowd when he refused to make a statement. They not only hampered the work, but greatly endangered the outcome. On the following day, Monday, the papers published information about the police activities of the night before. The hazard here may be appreciated when the reader is told that Kinsman had been a persistent reader of newspapers from the day of the robbery, and that it was largely the pessimistic newspaper comment upon Montani’s release in court that led him to return to New York. Deceived by the newspaper chorus of “police demoralization,” and the easy way in which Montani had got free, he concluded that the taxicab investigation had been given up as hopeless.
Kinsman was arrested in the Grand Central Station at half-past eleven Monday morning, with Swede Annie and the unknown in the red tie. They were about to set out for Boston.
There were some amusing circumstances in the arrest.
Kinsman’s immunity over night, and police precaution in deferring the arrest until the last moment, on the chance that other persons would join the party, gave him a false confidence. He afterward admitted that ideas of a “pinch” at that time were far from his mind.
When a criminal thought to be dangerous is to be arrested in a crowded place like the Grand Central Station, police officers operate by methods that prevent a struggle. As two detectives closed in on the party, Kinsman watched one of them out of the corner of his eye. While a waiter at the “Nutshell Café” he had often thrown objectionable guests out onto the sidewalk. He now fancied that one of the detectives resembled a man he had once “bounced,” and was ready to fight if attacked.
“I was just folding it up,” he said, referring to his fist, “and getting ready to land on him when one had me from behind and the other in front. Then I knew they were cops.”
Annie was gorgeously dressed in a new blue suit and fine fur coat, bought out of the taxicab money. The unknown man proved to be Kinsman’s brother, who had come down from Boston with him. Kinsman had visited his native city before returning to New York, but had escaped the police net there by stopping at a hotel and sending for his brother. He sent a grip home by this brother, and it was afterward found to contain three packages of bills of $250 each in the original wrappers of the bank.
As soon as word of these arrests was telephoned to Police Headquarters, the other traps were sprung. Detectives brought in Montani, Jess Albrazzo and Myrtle Horn, the latter, with Annie, being held as witnesses.