Word of the shooting of Huey Long had spread through the capitol’s corridors and offices with almost explosive speed. The minute she heard the report, Lucille May Grace (Mrs. Fred Dent in private life), Register of the State Land Office, tried to telephone Dr. Clarence Lorio, who, though not Senator Long’s physician, was one of his closest friends in the Baton Rouge area. Mrs. Dent (since deceased) was devoted to Huey Long, for he had supported her father for re-election to the office of Land Register, a post which he held for more than thirty years. Upon her father’s death Long appointed her to serve in Mr. Grace’s stead for the unexpired balance of his term, since she had been his principal assistant almost from the very day she was graduated from Louisiana State University. Since she had retained, and even added to, her father’s tremendous personal following among the voters, Huey decided at the end of her term of office in 1932 to put her name on the Allen slate, which would carry his imprimatur as the “Complete-the-Work” ticket. Hoping to induce Long to rescind this decision, one or another of the rival aspirants spread a completely baseless rumor to the effect that Mrs. Dent’s ancestry was tainted with a touch of Negro blood. Huey Long’s almost obsessive response to this sort of aspersion was a matter of common knowledge; it is only because what ensued may have some bearing on the motive behind the assassination that this particular incident is worth giving in some detail. Though he had already consented to put the name of Lucille May Grace on the slate that would carry his endorsement, he lost no time in retracting this agreement, and made it crystal clear forthwith that unless she could show to his complete satisfaction that the rumor which had gained considerable circulation was without even the semblance of a foundation, he would place another’s name on the ticket for the position she, and before her her father, had held. Miss Grace, the niece of an Iberville parish priest, enlisted the latter’s aid and that of the late John X. Wegmann, a universally respected New Orleans insurance man and perhaps the foremost Catholic layman in Louisiana at the time. Thus birth and baptismal records going back for generations along the Grace family tree were produced, and they conclusively demonstrated the utter falsity of the canard. Satisfied, Long restored her name at once to his personally approved “Complete-the-Work” ticket of candidates, headed by the name of Oscar K. Allen for governor. * * * * * Miss Grace (she did not become Mrs. Dent until a year later) had attended Louisiana State University with both Clarence and Cecil Lorio, and knew how close the former’s friendship with Senator Long was. She began at once to call him, but he was not at his farm in nearby Pointe Coupee parish, and the telephone at his Baton Rouge residence was apparently out of order. So she called his brother, Dr. Cecil Lorio.