“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.