Chapter III: Part 3

“Come up to Baton Rouge Sunday morning, and we’ll work in the apartment in the State House where we won’t be interrupted. Bring the papers with you.”

He slept well that night--Friday--and rose refreshed to drive out to Audubon Park with Seymour Weiss in the latter’s spandy-new Cadillac, which had been delivered only the afternoon before, and would be ruined the next night by the reckless speed with which, not yet broken in, it was driven to Baton Rouge after news of the shooting reached New Orleans.

The morning was pleasant, and Senator Long enjoyed the game to the fullest. An indifferent golfer at best, he played primarily for the thrill of sending an occasional long drive screaming down the fairway. Whenever he achieved this, and more particularly if in doing so he outdistanced his friend Seymour’s drive, he shouted with a delight which not even an ensuing flubbed approach could quench.

The game also gave him an opportunity to discuss current developments and problems with one of the few friends he trusted completely. That Saturday he and Weiss seated themselves on a tee bench, and let foursome after foursome go through while they talked in the only relative privacy available to them. What about the federal patronage impasse?

“I told him,” Mr. Weiss recalls, “that some of the leaders were worrying. After all, if the Walmsley-Sandlin people were the only ones who could give out those federal jobs.... And he interrupted me at that point and asked me had I ever heard of the tenth article of the Bill of Rights? Well, of course I had, and told him so. He said yes, everybody had heard of it, but did I realize what was in it?

“Then he went on to explain that while it was only about three lines long, it provided that anything not specifically permitted to the federal government or forbidden to the states by the Constitution was straight-out reserved to the individual states or to the people.

“I said something like all right, so what then, and he said, as nearly as I can remember his words:

“‘So then there’s a bill going into that special session tonight--Oscar must have done issued the call by this time--providing a thousand-dollar fine and one hell of a heavy jail term for any federal employee who interferes with Louisiana’s rights under Article Ten. So anybody that uses federal funds to interfere with our program is going to be arrested and tried under the law we’re about to pass. That’ll give them something to think about up yonder.’

“I didn’t believe any such law as that could be made to hold water and said so, and even he admitted that it was open to interpretation, though he still thought it was perfectly sound. But he also said it wouldn’t make any difference because long before the question could reach the Supreme Court at Washington and be settled, that federal-patronage deal would be so badly scrambled up it wouldn’t affect the outcome of our election in January one bit. He also said he had been telling all our people to take every slick dime of Washington money that was offered to them, and then go to the polls and vote for our candidates, because his program would do more for them than they ever would get out of those lousy WPA jobs.

“The main thing he tried to impress on me that morning was that I could forget all my worries about the presidential campaign. ‘Everything’s in wonderful shape,’ he said to me. ‘It’s never been in better shape. All the money we’re going to need we already have in hand, I mean we’ve got it right now, not just pledges but cash; and on top of that we’ve got a load of affidavits and other documents about some of the things that have been going on, a stack of papers heavy enough to break down a bullock.’

“As I remember, I asked if this was the material in the vaults of the Riggs National Bank, and that was when he really surprised me. He said no, everything had been taken out of the Riggs vaults just a few days before he left Washington, and put in another place for safekeeping. But he didn’t say where he had put it, and I didn’t ask. After all, he was the one to decide where he wanted it, and why, and if the time ever came when it was important for me to know where it was, he would tell me. And besides, he was so confident about everything being in the best possible shape, so sure things couldn’t be better, that I felt no anxiety about it.

“‘We’re going to handle the campaign exactly the same way as we did in the West for that double-crossing Roosevelt in 1932,’ he told me. ‘Between us, we’ll pick out the main towns in each state, and you’ll go there five or six days in advance and try to line up someone who will serve as chairman of the meeting when I get there.’ That is how we did it in 1932, and it wasn’t always easy, because hunting for Democrats in the Dakotas in those days, or in Minnesota, was exactly like the old one about the needle in a haystack. In some of those towns there just wasn’t a Democrat. But I would stick to it and find someone, no matter who. If the only Democrat I could produce was a truck driver, all right. Huey would have a truck driver for chairman of the meeting he would address on behalf of Franklin Roosevelt for president.

“‘It’ll be a lot easier this time,’ Huey went on while we were talking during that Saturday golf game, ‘because you know and I know I make my best speeches when I’m taking the hide off of somebody. I never could make a decent Fourth of July oration in my whole damn life. But give me something to raise hell about and somebody to blame for doing it, like I had when I was campaigning for Mrs. Caraway in Arkansas, and nobody can stop me!

“‘Not only that, but you’ll get on the radio and give out interviews to the newspapers before I hit town, with all that same old business about this interesting and controversial personality that’s about to come to town, the man they had been reading and hearing so much about, and they would have this chance to come out and find out the truth for themselves. Also what date he’ll be there and so on, and how he would talk about a topic of importance to the whole country, and most of all to them, with Joe Whoozis to preside over the meeting, and that’ll draw a big crowd every time, no matter if they’re Democrats or what. And no matter if they’re Democrats or what I’ll have every last, living one of them talking and thinking and voting my way before I get through.’

“You see, all Huey ever wanted was to get a crowd in front of him. You could leave the rest to him. He had done just that in Arkansas three years before, and everything was better organized by 1935. Not only would I be there with arrangements and interviews, but the boys would have come to town and distributed literature and cartoon circulars to every house in the place and printed copies of some of Huey’s speeches about share-the-wealth and so on.

“‘We’ll do it just like Arkansas, only on a hell of a lot bigger scale,’ he said. ‘We’ll have all the copies we need of _My First Days in the White House_ along with the Share-Our-Wealth book, which we didn’t have in ’32, and when I come to town with the sound trucks and deliver the speech of my life, you just watch them flock over to our side.... Yes, sure, there’s enough money to pay for all those books and pamphlets and everything else we’ll need.’

“How much money was in that box? I haven’t any idea, and I don’t think anyone else ever knew. It came from all sorts of sources. State and city employees contributed two per cent of their pay for campaign purposes. Those were the so-called deducts. Then there were campaign contributions from people who disliked Roosevelt and believed Huey could whip him, and didn’t care whether he called himself Republican or Democrat or Vegetarian, just so long as he licked Roosevelt or made it possible for somebody else to lick him. Also, there were contributions from people who were under obligations to Huey, like the banks he kept solvent in Louisiana. I don’t believe even he had any idea how much the total came to. A million, maybe; maybe several millions. All I know for certain sure is that he said for me not to worry about financing the campaign, that we had every round dollar we ever would need of campaign expenses already put away for safekeeping after he took it out of the Riggs bank vaults--and to this day nobody has ever been able to find out what became of it!

“During the course of our game that morning, walking down the fairways, we talked a lot about the governorship too. As I remember it, Huey mentioned a number of names, and some he said just didn’t have what it’d take to run a state, and about some he said he didn’t want to buck the north Louisiana prejudice against voting for a Catholic for governor, because there was no use making a campaign any harder than you absolutely had to, even if you could win it anyway.

“The one thing he said we’d have to be careful about was that if he picked one of the half dozen or so that regarded themselves each one as the rightful Long candidate, he would make some of the others so sore there would be a chance of a split in the party, and that was one thing he wanted to avoid.

“Well, with all our time out for talking, it was about two o’clock in the afternoon when we finished our round. He had certainly seemed to enjoy it, both the exercise and the chance to talk without having every Tom, Dick, and Harry coming over to interrupt and say he just wanted to shake hands. Also it must have been a relief to be able to talk without worrying about people listening in or repeating what he was supposed to have said.

“We went back to the hotel for lunch. He said there was no need of me coming up to Baton Rouge either that night or the next day, as the first time the bills would come up for passage would be in the House on Monday morning; it would be just routine up to that time. So I said Bob Maestri [State Conservation Commissioner and later for ten years mayor of New Orleans] and I would be in Baton Rouge on Monday morning, and then we parted. Murphy Roden had been waiting to drive Huey to the capitol, and they left, right after lunch. Everything indicated the going would be so smooth and easy. Who could have dreamed that the next time I saw him, only a day later, he would be waiting for Dr. Maes to come up from New Orleans and try to save his life?”

* * * * *

Baton Rouge’s hotel lobbies and the State House corridors alike were crowded by the time Murphy Roden and the Senator reached the skyscraper capitol, where they went at once to his apartment on the twenty-fourth floor. He had the state maintain a suite for him there because he felt that at that height the freedom from pollen and dust enabled him to sleep better.

Most of the House members were already on hand, but many of the senators did not trouble to put in an appearance until the following day. Since all bills were to be introduced in the House, the Senate had nothing more momentous on its agenda than to meet, answer roll call, listen to the chaplain’s invocation, and appoint two committees. One of these would solemnly inform the governor, and the other the House, that the Senate of Louisiana was lawfully convened and ready for business. Having conveyed this somewhat less than startling intelligence, the token quorum by which a constitutional mandate had been fulfilled could, and in fact did, adjourn until Monday afternoon, at which time all bills duly passed by the lower house would be laid before them.

These would be headed by House Bill Number One, the anti-Pavy gerrymander, and a somewhat similar measure which was designed to keep Congressman J. Y. Sanders, Jr., from returning to his home in Baton Rouge to run for a judgeship. His father, a former governor and congressman, stood at the very head of Huey Long’s _bête noire_ list. Another measure high on Long’s “must” roster made provision for the fact that his current senatorial term would expire unless renewed in the fall of 1936 by re-election.

But in one-party Louisiana, the Democratic primary was the only actual election, even though technically it selected merely a party nominee. Its date was fixed for September by the state election law as this statute currently stood. Obviously, a campaign for a senatorial primary to be held in the fall of 1936 would play hob with Long’s plans to run against Roosevelt for the presidency that same season. Consequently, one of Huey’s thirty-one must bills amended the state election law by setting the primary’s date ahead from September to January. Thus Mr. Long could win the Democratic nomination (equivalent to election in Louisiana) for senator at the year’s outset; with that as paid-up political insurance he would be free to devote the balance of 1936 to his presidential campaign.

Another of the must bills is significant in this connection in spite of the fact that it was rooted in a strictly personal grudge, because it so strikingly exemplifies the savagery with which at an earlier stage of his career Long made Negro affiliation the prime target of political attack.

Dudley J. LeBlanc, a Southwest Louisiana Acadian, had run for governor several times, had been a legislator off and on, and would one day become a millionaire as author and high priest of a nostrum called Hadacol. He and Long had been allies as members of the Public Service Commission in the old days, but had fallen out and had been at swords’ points ever since.

Defeated by the Kingfish when he sought to retain his office, LeBlanc organized a burial-insurance society of a type immensely popular among the Negroes. Since he catered primarily to this segment of the population, he put in a Negro nominal president of the “coffin club,” as Long invariably called it. In the columns of his weekly newspaper, _The American Progress_, Long thereafter lost no opportunity to reproduce what purported to be one of the brochures issued by LeBlanc’s company, showing pictures of LeBlanc and the Negro officers of the company together. Ultimately, Long had a law passed banning from Louisiana that type of insurance society.

LeBlanc thereafter moved the company’s home office across the state line into Texas, and continued in business. Although no longer pillorying opponents by reason of Negro affiliation, Long included in his must bills a prohibition against publishing, printing, or broadcasting in Louisiana any advertising matter by insurance companies not authorized to do business in the state.

Occupied with these and a thousand and one other such minutiae of legislative procedure, Long remained on the main floor of the capitol that Saturday night until the House adjourned, trailing a nimbus of bodyguards as he dashed back and forth between Governor Allen’s office and the House chamber. Some of his leading supporters tried vainly to keep up with him: Dr. Vidrine, “Cousin Jessie” Nugent, Dr. Clarence Lorio, Louisiana State University president James Monroe Smith. These had little to occupy them, for all the must bills were introduced by their “official” author, Chairman Burke of the Ways and Means Committee; and under a suspension of the rules, each was immediately referred to Mr. Burke’s committee as quickly as he could say “Ways and Means” and Speaker Ellender could utter a contrapuntal “Any objections? Hearing none, so ordered!”

Thrill seekers behind the railings and in the gallery had anticipated at least some show of oratorical fireworks. Disappointed when they found the proceedings about as exciting as listening to a couple of clerks take inventory in the kitchenware stockroom of a department store, they drifted away and left the capitol for their homes, while Long and the faithful Murphy Roden retired to the Senator’s twenty-fourth-floor retreat.

6 ---- SEPTEMBER 8: MORNING

“_Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government
shall be on his shoulder and his name shall be called Wonderful._”

----ISAIAH

Young Dr. Carl Weiss, his wife, and his baby son occupied a modest home on Lakeland Drive, not far from the capitol, and therefore likewise conveniently near Our Lady of the Lake Sanitarium, where he did most of his surgical work. The capitol had been built on what was formerly the state university campus. From its north façade the windows of the governor’s office looked out across a small, artificial body of water, still known as University Lake, to the big hospital on the opposite bank.

Thus Dr. Weiss, Jr., and Huey Long were within but a few blocks of one another when they rose early Sunday morning. Yvonne Pavy Weiss rose early too. Together she and her husband woke, fed and dressed their three-months-old son, Carl Austin Weiss III, and went with him to the home of Dr. Weiss, Sr., where two doting grandparents fondly took over the baby’s care, while the young couple went to Mass. As the elder Dr. Weiss put it in a subsequent statement:

“I was with [my son] practically all day. He and his wife came with their baby to our house early in the morning. They left the baby with me and my wife while they went to St. Joseph’s Church for Mass. After that, his wife returned to our house, while my son went to Scheinuk’s [a Baton Rouge florist] to inquire about a patient who had consulted him the day before.

“Mr. Scheinuk gave my son a bouquet of flowers, saying he had not sent any flowers when the baby was born, and my son came home saying: ‘Look what Mr. Scheinuk sent the baby.’ My son and his wife then went to their home, and returned to take dinner at my house at 1 P.M.”

Dr. Weiss, Jr., was twenty-nine years old. He had been graduated at fifteen from Baton Rouge High School and had begun his premedical work at Louisiana State University, transferring to Tulane, where he received his academic degree as Bachelor of Science in 1925, and his degree as Doctor of Medicine in 1927.

“He served as an intern at Tulane,” his father once related, “and then at the American Hospital in Paris. He studied under the masters at Vienna, and after completing his work in Paris, served at Bellevue Hospital in New York. The last six months of his stay at Bellevue he was chief of clinic. He then came to Baton Rouge to practice here.”

He had sailed from Hoboken on the _George Washington_ on September 19, 1928, and returned to New York on May 19, 1930, aboard the _American Farmer_. On his customs declaration, filed when re-entering the United States, he listed $247 worth of purchases made during his twenty months abroad, including twenty dollars’ worth of surgical instruments, a forty-five dollar camera, five dollars’ worth of fencing equipment, old swords for which he had paid six dollars, and a pistol for which he had paid eight dollars, a small Belgian automatic, made on the Browning patents.

In college and in his postgraduate work he devoted himself to his studies with a single-mindedness that excluded athletics, though he seems to have taken up fencing while abroad, a sport of many European surgeons. One may therefore take it for granted that while at Tulane he neither shared pilgrimages to the wide-open gaming establishments just across the parish line from New Orleans in adjoining areas, nor patronized the peep-hole Joe-sent-me establishments where needled beer, home-brew, raisin wine, and cut whisky were retailed in the sanctified era of national prohibition.

At one time a story was current that he had met Yvonne Pavy while both were students in Paris. This was not the case. She did not leave for France until a year after he had returned to the United States. An honor graduate of Tulane University’s Newcomb College for Women, she had been immensely popular in the social and sorority life of her student years. In 1931 she was selected as one of a group of girls who were sent to Paris to represent Acadian Louisiana. At the same time she was awarded on a competitive basis a French-government scholarship to the Sorbonne, and extended her Parisian sojourn to pursue language studies there.

Returning to Opelousas, she was appointed to a teaching position in the grade school at St. Martinville, where Emmeline Labiche, who according to Louisiana tradition was the prototype of Longfellow’s Evangeline, had died nearly two centuries before. The following year she went to Baton Rouge to study for her master’s degree at the state university, where she taught a French class at the same time.

Short-lived as it then was, her professional teaching career did follow a Pavy family tradition. Her sister Marie taught in one of the Opelousas grade schools, and one of her father’s brothers, Paul Pavy, was principal of the high school there until Huey Long, as inflexible in his attitude toward the Pavy family as Judge Pavy was in his attitude toward him, dismissed them out of hand by invoking one of the “dictatorship statutes”--the one requiring the certification of every public-school employee by a Long-controlled state board.

When Carl Weiss, Jr., returned to Baton Rouge, he joined his father in the practice of medicine. However, he was so determined not to capitalize on the wide esteem and affection in which the elder Dr. Carl Weiss was held that for a time he called himself “Dr. C. Austin Weiss.” It was not long, however, before he built up a substantial practice on his own account.

During the course of her postgraduate year at Louisiana State University, Yvonne Pavy had occasion to visit the office of the senior Dr. Weiss for treatment of some minor ailment. When the physician learned of her year at the Sorbonne he told her of his son’s studies at the American Hospital in Paris. So they met, Dr. Carl Austin Weiss, Jr., and the daughter of Judge Ben Pavy of Opelousas. They fell deeply in love and were married in December 1933. In midsummer of 1935 their son, the third Carl Austin Weiss, was born, and the sense of fulfillment this kindled in the happy young parents was no greater than the affection lavished on him by his grandparents.

* * * * *

That same Sunday morning Huey Long ordered breakfast sent up from the capitol cafeteria to his twenty-fourth-floor suite. He telephoned Earle Christenberry in New Orleans, reminding him of their engagement concerning the income-tax return that must be filed before another seven days passed. Earle had already packed all the necessary papers, the receipted bills, the canceled checks drawn by the Senator against his two accounts, one in the Riggs National Bank at Washington and one in the National Bank of Commerce at New Orleans. Earle customarily made out all the checks for Huey to sign, and deposited the Kingfish’s senatorial salary to Long’s account.

“Huey and I had signature cards on file at the Riggs bank in Washington and the National Bank of Commerce in New Orleans,” Christenberry explained. “The only checks he wrote were the ones he issued in New York, and the first I would know of it was when the cancelled check came with the monthly statement, or a call from the bank that the account was overdrawn.”

Many persons were under the impression that Long also had a large financial interest in a Win-or-Lose Oil Company but, says Christenberry, “to my knowledge as secretary-treasurer of the company, he had no interest in this corporation, and I so testified in federal court. Months after Huey’s death one of the stockholders testified that one certificate issued in his name in reality represented Huey’s holdings, but if he received dividends they were paid to him in cash by the holder of that stock certificate, by whom the canceled checks were endorsed and cashed.”

Earle reached Baton Rouge some time before noon, and prepared to go over all the papers with his friend and employer. But within a short time, the work being little more than well begun, Long threw up his hands in a characteristic gesture, as though brushing a distasteful matter out of existence.

“He said to me,” reported Mr. Christenberry, “‘You know what this is all about, don’t you?’ and I said I did. ‘Well, all right then,’ he told me, ‘you take all this stuff back to New Orleans with you and fill out the forms, and then bring the whole thing back Monday or Tuesday, and I’ll sign the damn papers and we’ll be rid of them. Look, I’m not even going to stay here till the end of this session. I’ll leave Tuesday, maybe even tomorrow, right after the House passes the bills, and come down to New Orleans and sign them there. And you know what we’ll do then? We’ll go on a vacation together, just you and me, no bodyguards or anything. We’ll get in your car and go wherever we want to go without making one single, slivery plan in advance.’

“After that, he and I went down to the cafeteria and had lunch. Naturally, there was the same steady procession as always of people coming to the table to say hello, but not so many as there would have been any other time except Sunday noon. Most of the legislators and out-of-town politicians would not be in till later that evening because the Senate was to be in recess till Monday and the House wasn’t going to meet till eight, and it was going to be just a short session to order the bills put on the calendar for the next morning.”

* * * * *

John Fournet was one of the out-of-town notables whose arrival that evening was expected. He had been a member of the Long peerage for years, but had refrained from political activity of that sort ever since his elevation to the state Supreme Court a year or so earlier.

None the less, he had been Speaker of the House for four years, he had been elected to the lieutenant-governorship on the Long-supported Allen ticket in 1932, and was one of those whose name was frequently mentioned as Long’s likely choice for endorsement to become Oscar Allen’s successor.

Senator Long had requested him to come to the capitol for a conference, and he had left New Orleans early that morning for the home of his parents in Jackson, planning to invite his father to accompany him to Baton Rouge. It would be a proud thing for the elder Fournet to see the deference paid his son as a state Supreme Court justice, as an intimate of the Kingfish, and perhaps as a candidate for governor of Louisiana.

7 ---- SEPTEMBER 8: AFTERNOON

“This day may be the last to any of us at a moment.”

----HORATIO NELSON

The thirty-one must bills which were certain to be enacted into law within no more than three more days were the subject of Sunday’s mealtime talk throughout Louisiana that noon. Huey Long was expressing complete confidence as to what these would do to “put a crimp into Roosevelt’s notion he can run Louisiana.” Everyone who paused at his table in the capitol cafeteria was given the same heartening assurance.

In private homes everywhere authentic information as to what the new laws would provide was available for the first time on this day. In New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Monroe, Alexandria, Shreveport, and Lake Charles the morning papers had carried full accounts of the introduction of these measures, giving the subject matter of each bill in summary form.

Thus the members of the Weiss family at last had before them full information about the measure which would displace the father of young Mrs. Weiss from the judicial position he had held continuously since before she was born. But the table talk at the senior Dr. Weiss’s home was anything but dispirited.

“My son ate heartily and joked at the dinner,” he said when referring to the occasion; and this was borne out in a statement by Yvonne’s uncle, Dr. F. Octave Pavy, who was in Baton Rouge for the session as one of St. Landry parish’s three House members.

In any case, while the gerrymander was not ignored in the Weiss family conversation, it was not looked upon as a disaster; and after dinner all five--three men named Carl Austin Weiss and the wives of the two older ones--motored to the Amite River where Dr. Weiss, Sr., had a summer camp.

Frequently on such occasions, but by no means always, Carl and Yvonne took with them the small-caliber Belgian automatic pistol he had brought back from abroad and customarily kept in his car when he went out on night calls. He and his wife would engage in target practice, shooting at cans either while these were stationary or as they floated down the placid current of the river.

But on this particular Sunday they did not bring the gun. Carl and Yvonne went swimming and had a gay time of it, while the elders, seated on the warm sand of the high bank, dandled their wonderful three-month-old grandson.

“While they were swimming,” Dr. Weiss, Sr., recalled later, “I remarked to my wife: ‘That boy is just skin and bones,’ and she said: ‘Yes, we have got to make him take a rest, he has been working too hard lately.’”

Seeing them there, that pleasant afternoon, any observer would have concluded that this was a family group whose members gave no indication of being troubled by forebodings of an impending disaster.

Obviously the wonderful baby must have had a feeding and an occasional change sometime during the afternoon, and no doubt he slept in his mother’s arms once the party tidied up the camp ground, got into the car, and headed homeward a little after sundown.

* * * * *

In his high apartment Huey Long, who had not left the capitol since Murphy Roden drove him to Baton Rouge from New Orleans on the previous afternoon, gathered his top legislative and political leaders for a consultation about the candidate his faction should endorse for governor. His brother Earl was not among those present, nor was he under consideration for any elective office. The breach between them stemmed from the time Earl ran for lieutenant governor on an anti-Huey ticket three years before.

Justice Fournet, who stood high in the Kingfish’s favor, was not present at the conference either. He did not reach the capitol until well after dark. Another absentee was Judge Richard W. Leche of the Circuit Court of Appeal, but----

“Huey had telephoned me to come up for the session,” he said in recalling what he could of the day’s events. “However, I had been thrown from a horse just a fortnight or so before, while vacationing with Mrs. Leche in Arizona. The fall fractured my left upper arm just below the shoulder. Huey had joked with me about it, saying it was a pity I hadn’t broken my neck instead, and I replied that this illustrated once more his readiness to make any sacrifice for the good of the state.

“When he asked me if I would come to Baton Rouge for the session, I assumed this was because I had been Governor Allen’s secretary and knew all the legislators. But since it was hardly proper for a judge of the appellate bench to be a lobbyist even on behalf of the administration to which he owes his position, I told him that with my left arm in an airplane splint it was almost impossible for me to get around, and that I would have to stay in New Orleans right along to have dressings changed, and the like. He didn’t seem pleased, but nothing more was said about it at the time.

“However, when he called me at my home in Metairie Sunday afternoon he had something else in mind. The first thing he asked me was: ‘Dick, what the hell are you, outside of being an Indian?’ For a moment this had me stumped. I couldn’t imagine what he meant. Then I remembered that two or three years earlier, a group of us were chatting about one thing and another, and the question of religion came up. That was one thing Huey never bothered about. I mean what any man’s religious beliefs were. Anyway, someone in the crowd asked me what my religion was. I answered that as I saw it, religion was something that dealt with the hereafter, and the only people who had a hereafter I thought I could enjoy were the Indians. They believed in a happy hunting ground, and as for me, give me a gun and a dog and some shells and you could keep your harps and your wings. Anyway, I said I guessed that by religion I would be classed as an Indian. So when Huey asked me over the phone what I was, aside from being an Indian, I said:

“‘You mean you’re asking me what my religion is?’

“‘That’s exactly what I mean,’ he answered. ‘You’re going to be my candidate for governor, and some of the boys here said I couldn’t run you because you’re a Catholic and it’s too tough to swing north Louisiana’s vote to a Catholic for governor.’

“‘Well, I was born a Catholic,’ I told him.

“‘You didn’t run out on them, did you?’ he demanded.

“‘No,’ I told him, ‘but I changed to the Presbyterian church a long time back. Now listen, Huey. I’ve got no idea of running for governor. I’ve got exactly the kind of position I like, and down here they make a practice of re-electing judges who have not been guilty of flagrant misconduct, so my future’s secure.’

“He said something about how I had better leave all that to him, and he would see me in New Orleans as soon as the session was over and we would talk further about it. That ended the conversation. I never spoke to him again.”

* * * * *

Another of the intimates Huey Long summoned to Baton Rouge that afternoon was Public Service Commissioner (now Juvenile Court Judge) James P. O’Connor. The reason for this was never disclosed, for when O’Connor arrived “we just chatted about a lot of inconsequentialities. One of the things he was all worked up over was writing some more songs with Castro Carrazo for the L.S.U. football team.”

* * * * *

The afternoon wore on. Apparently Judge Leche was the only one in whom the Senator confided about the gubernatorial selection.

“Senator Long did not leave the capitol all day,” Murphy Roden says in telling about the events in which he played so large a role. “As long as he was in his apartment there was no break in the stream of people who came to call on him. The House was to meet that night and approve the committee’s favorable report on the bills so they could be passed and sent to the Senate the next day.

“After he dressed, the Senator was in and out of the apartment, spending some of the time in Governor Allen’s office. I brought his supper up to him from the cafeteria, and several persons were there talking to him while he ate, but no one ate with him. He went down to the governor’s office about seven o’clock, even though the House wasn’t scheduled to meet until eight.”

8 ---- SEPTEMBER 8: NIGHTFALL

“_The results of political changes are hardly ever those which their
friends hope or their foes fear._”

----THOMAS HUXLEY

Huey Long came down to the main floor of the capitol an hour before the House was to go into session to arrange for an early morning caucus of his followers the next day. Primarily he wanted to make certain that there would then be no absentees among votes on which he knew he could rely.

At regular sessions of the legislature, when House and Senate were normally convened during the forenoon, such early conferences were daily affairs. But since in this instance the ordinary routine did not apply, he was bent on making assurance doubly sure.

Behind closed doors he always took charge of caucuses in person, outlining step by step what was to be done on that particular day: who should make which motions, at what point debate should be cut off by moving the previous question, how the presiding officer was to rule on certain points of order, should these be raised by the opposition, and so on.

Since the next morning’s session of the House would be the only genuinely important one of the current assembly, the one at which all thirty-one must bills were to be passed and sent on to the Senate, he was taking no chances on unexpected difficulties due to absenteeism. Not only must every one of his partisans be in his seat when the Speaker called the House to order, but all the House whips and other aides must attend the morning’s caucus without fail, to rehearse in the most minute detail every procedural step to be taken on the House floor, and every counter to each procedural obstacle any anti-Long member might seek to raise.

That Sunday evening, seated at Governor Allen’s desk, Long was sending for his legislative leaders, one by one, and giving them the names of the men they each had to bring to the caucus by eight the next morning.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, as nearly as can be determined, the five members of the Weiss family returned from their Amite River outing shortly after nightfall. The young physician and his wife left his parents’ home with the baby for their own Lakeland Avenue residence. A composite of various subsequent accounts pictures the scene there as one of tranquil domesticity.

Yvonne prepared the baby for bed while Carl went out to the yard and remained there for a time, petting the dog. Coming back indoors about 8:15, he made a telephone call to his anesthetist, Dr. J. Webb McGehee. Yvonne assumed that this call was to a patient, but Dr. McGehee later confirmed the fact that Dr. Weiss called “and asked me if I knew that the operation for the following day had been changed from Our Lady of the Lake Sanitarium to the General Hospital. I told him I knew that.”

Miss Theoda Carriere, one of the registered nurses later called to attend Senator Long, lived not far from the home of Dr. Weiss. After a twelve-hour day stint at the Sanitarium, in attendance on a traffic-accident victim, she was taking her ease on the front gallery of her home. She saw Dr. Weiss leave his house at this time, and depart in the direction of Baton Rouge General Hospital. There he checked the condition of the patient on whom he was to operate the next day.

In view of the time factor involved, he must have gone from the hospital directly to the State House, leaving his car in the capitol’s parking area, where it was found later. At least five eyewitnesses place him in the north corridor of the Capitol’s main floor a little before 9:30, waiting in a shallow niche opposite the double door to Governor Allen’s anteroom.

* * * * *

Charles E. Frampton is now manager of the State Museum at the Cabildo in New Orleans, the building in whose _sala capitular_ the transfer of Louisiana from France to the United States was consummated. But in 1935 he was one of the veterans of the press gallery at Baton Rouge. He describes what he saw as follows:

“Some time after eight o’clock on this particular Sunday night I was seated with Governor Allen at his desk when George Coad, then editor of the _Morning Tribune_ in New Orleans, called me by phone from the office and said a hurricane had wrecked a Civilian Conservation Corps camp in southern Florida, and that a number of ex-soldiers had been drowned. He asked me if Senator Long was there, and I said I believed he was in the House chamber. Then he asked me to tell him about the storm, and the CCC disaster, and get any comment he might want to make. I told Coad to hold the line; I thought I could get Huey on the phone.

“I picked up another phone on the governor’s desk and called the House sergeant-at-arms. Joe Messina answered and said yes, the Senator was right there. I asked if I might talk to him, and he told me to wait a minute. After an interval Huey got on the phone. I relayed what Coad had told me, and asked if he cared to comment on it. He said, ‘Hell, yes! Mr. Roosevelt must be pretty happy tonight, because every ex-soldier he gets killed off is one less vote against him.’ We chatted for a minute or so longer, and I asked whether he intended to do anything about this when he got back to Washington, and he replied by asking where I was. When I told him I was in Oscar Allen’s office, he said: ‘Wait there. I’m coming there myself in just a few minutes.’

“I hung up, picked up the other phone, and relayed the conversation to Coad, telling him that since Huey was on the way over I might have an add for him, and to hang on the line. He said he would, and again I laid down the phone without breaking the connection.

“Oscar and I talked for a couple of minutes, and then I thought to myself I had better not wait for Huey to come to me; after all, he was a United States senator and I was a reporter looking for a story, so maybe I’d better go see him. Telling Coad to hang on, I then went out of the governor’s private office into the big reception room adjoining it, and opened one of the double doors leading into the corridor that extends from the House chamber to the Senate. As I opened the door this whole thing blew up right in my face.”

* * * * *

Justice Fournet takes up the narrative at this point. Here is his statement:

“In the late afternoon my father and I drove from Jackson to Baton Rouge, and I went to the twenty-fourth floor of the capitol in search of Huey. He was not in his apartment, so I returned to the main floor, and looked into the House chamber, where I was informed the Senator was. Sure enough, he was there on the House floor, followed or attended by Joe Messina and talking to Mason Spencer.

“Just as I caught sight of Huey he rushed to the Speaker’s rostrum and began to talk with Ellender. When he left there it looked to me as though the House was about to adjourn. Huey rushed by Joe Messina and me. We tried to follow as best we could and got into the north corridor, into which the House and Senate cloakrooms, the Speaker’s and lieutenant governor’s office, as well as the governor’s office and those of his secretary and executive counsel all open.

(LEON TRICE)]

Left hand advertisement:

THANKS to the late Senator Huey P. Long for favor granted. Mrs. H.
Gomme.

Right hand advertisement:

THANKS S^t. Raymond, S^t. Anthony, Sen. Huey P. Long favor granted.
ROSE ANDERTON.

“There was not a soul in that corridor when we got there except Louis LeSage and Roy Heidelberg, who were seated on the ledge of the window at the east end of the corridor. I asked them where Huey had gone and they said he was in the governor’s office, so Joe and I walked to the door of that office at a leisurely pace, and as we approached the door I could hear a voice which I recognized as that of Senator Long ask:

“‘Has everybody been notified about the meeting tomorrow morning?’ and a voice which I identified as that of Joe Bates of the Police Bureau of Identification answered: ‘Yes, Senator.’

“At this point I noticed three or four people lined up against the marble recess in the corridor wall opposite the door to the governor’s anteroom. I don’t remember the exact number but I definitely recall there were more than one. Just then Huey walked out of the office door of the governor’s secretary and....”

* * * * *

The third eyewitness to what took place was Elliott Coleman, on special assignment as one of the Senator’s bodyguards and later for many years sheriff of Tensas parish. He says of the night in question:

“I was an officer of what was then known as the Bureau of Criminal Identification, which was headed by General Louis F. Guerre. He had directed me to come from my home in Waterproof for duty at the state capitol during the special session of the legislature. There was nothing specific of an alarming nature, but there was a general feeling of uneasiness in view of the murder-plot probe against the Senator earlier that year, after the Square Deal Association disorders.

“Nothing particularly noteworthy happened on Saturday, but on Sunday night, when the special session was meeting, I went into the House chamber and was standing back of the railing with State Senator Jimmie Noe, and he was trying to get me to help him in his effort to get Huey’s endorsement as a candidate for governor in the campaign that was about to begin.

“Huey was in the House, circulating about the floor, talking to this member and to that, with Murphy Roden and George McQuiston remaining outside the railing but as near to him as they could. Huey was talking to Mason Spencer and they were probably joking with each other, or telling a funny story, because they laughed, and then Huey went up on the rostrum and sat with Speaker Allen Ellender for a time. All this while I was outside the railing with Jimmie Noe, and he was talking about getting Huey to back him for governor.

“While Jimmie was talking to me, Huey jumped up all of a sudden, from where he was seated on Ellender’s rostrum, and hurried down the side to the corridor. I figured the House was about to adjourn, so I left Jimmie and turned to hurry into the corridor myself. There were not many persons there and I saw Huey, followed by Murphy Roden, go into Allen’s office, and it seemed to me like he wasn’t in there hardly at all, that it was almost as if he had turned right around and come back out. He was met as he came out by Justice Fournet, and they were walking toward the elevator and toward where I was standing, with Murphy Roden following.”

* * * * *

Judge James O’Connor’s testimony logically follows that of Sheriff Coleman. He says:

“I was in the House chamber when Huey came sort of storming in and sat down beside Allen Ellender on the rostrum. I was standing in the space between the railing and the wall, chatting with friends, when Huey beckoned to me as though saying: ‘Come on over, I want to talk to you.’

“When I got there he said something that struck me as unusual, because he had not been smoking in months, maybe not in as much as a year. He said: ‘I want you to get me half a dozen Corona Belvedere cigars.’ I asked him where to get those, and he said: ‘Downstairs in the cafeteria. They have a box of them there.’

“When I came downstairs something else struck me as very peculiar. There wasn’t a soul in that basement on this Sunday night. I walked into the cafeteria. They had just air-conditioned it, and the new glass doors were very heavy. There was no one in that restaurant either, except three or four of the girls behind the counter. I got the cigars and then sat down to drink a cup of coffee, and was about to finish it, when I heard a noise like cannon crackers going off. It was coming faintly through those heavy glass doors....”

* * * * *

Murphy Roden, who recently retired as Superintendent of State Police with the rank of colonel, is last of the surviving eyewitnesses to take up the tale. A graduate of the F.B.I. school and therefore a specially trained observer, his memory is sharp and vivid in recalling what took place during the violent interlude in which he played so large a role. He says:

“Whenever the Senator returned to the governor’s office I would wait in the anteroom, and as he went out I would leave just ahead of him, and Elliott Coleman would walk just behind him. He made several trips into the House chamber and back while the House was briefly in session that night.

“On the last such trip the Senator spent a little time on the floor, talking jocularly to several of the members, and then sat for a time with Speaker Ellender on the rostrum. At such times I would follow his movements as best I could from outside the railing, and when he hurried out I would try to anticipate his movements so as to be just ahead of him when he left the hall. The House seemed to be about ready to adjourn then, and he rose and hurried from the rostrum toward the governor’s office. I was ahead of him and when he turned in I went into the anteroom and waited for him there. He went into the inner office where Governor Allen was. Joe Bates, a special agent of the Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation, and A. P. White, the Governor’s secretary, were in there too, along with some other persons whose identity I do not recall except for Chick Frampton of the _Item_, who was standing over Allen’s desk and using the telephone in there.

“Senator Long was in that office only a moment or two. It seemed to me as though he had walked right in, turned around, and gone right out, going through the anteroom and heading back toward the hallway. I realized he was going back out, and managed to get into the hall just ahead of him, so as to be in front of him when he got out there. But he was walking fast and caught up to me and was just about beside me at my left. We are speaking now in terms of my being just one step ahead of him as he came out.

“Judge Fournet was standing at the partly opened door that led from the hallway directly into the governor’s inner office, a private entry and exit to that office. Behind us was Elliott Coleman. Chick Frampton had also hurried out of the governor’s outer office and anteroom right behind us. The Senator was going back in the direction of the House chamber from which he had just come, and from which people were just beginning to move out. But at the private door to Governor Allen’s inner office he stopped, and we were standing still as Judge Fournet came up and started to talk to him. I have no idea what they were talking about, because I was not watching them or paying attention, but looking around us as always to see what other persons nearby were doing.

“One of them was a young man in a white linen suit....”

* * * * *

It is 9:30. One floor below, in the otherwise deserted basement cafeteria, Judge O’Connor is still sipping the last of his coffee when, muffled by distance and the heavy glass doors of the restaurant, he hears a noise like exploding cannon crackers.

9 ---- SEPTEMBER 8: 9:30 P.M.

“_Do we ever hear the most recent fact related in exactly the same way
by the several people who were at the same time eye-witnesses to it?
No._”

----LORD CHESTERFIELD

The stage is set for a violent climax. Huey Long has turned through the anteroom of the governor’s office, where Chick Frampton, bending over the desk with his back to the door, is preparing once more to lay down the telephone without breaking the long-distance connection to New Orleans. He has told his editor, Coad, to hang on while he--Frampton--goes in search of the Senator, and does not see Huey just behind him. Intent on his conversation with Coad, he has heard neither the Senator’s question as to whether everyone has been notified about the morning’s early caucus, nor Joe Bates’s affirmative reply.