Beyond doubt another factor in the swiftness with which a monolithic organization of incipiently national scope crumbled into nothingness was the realization that its treasury had disappeared. Naturally, every effort was made to trace this hoard of dollars and documents. In November of 1936, while the Long estate was still under probate, the safety-deposit box which the Riggs National Bank at Washington still held in the late Senator’s name was opened in the presence of Mrs. Long, the deputy Register of Wills, Earle Christenberry, a bank official, and a representative of the Internal Revenue Service. It was found empty, stripped of the trove which Long told Seymour Weiss he had removed to another and secret place of concealment.
With no clue to the new depository to which the contents of this vault had been transferred, the search for it was as prolonged as it was bootless. Every key on the ring turned over to Mrs. Long by the Lady of the Lake Sanitarium after her husband’s demise was examined. Only one of them proved to have any possible relation to safety-deposit boxes. On August 11, 1936, Earle Christenberry made a tracing or rubbing of this key, and sent it to the Yale and Towne Company at Stamford, Connecticut.
Four days later W. W. Herrgen of that firm replied: “The key which you sent to me ... is for one of our No. 3401-C safety deposit locks, and a search of our files shows that this key could be for use in a lock at the Whitney National Bank of New Orleans.”
The Whitney, largest and most independent bank in New Orleans at the time, was for that very reason the last one Huey Long would have been likely to select. In any case, its officials reported that the key in question was not for any of the boxes in their vault. Of the money, aggregating what may well have been several million dollars--enough to finance an entire presidential campaign on the lavish scale to which Huey Long was accustomed--no trace has ever been found.
Even the sale of _My First Days in the White House_ was pitifully small compared to what it would have been had its author lived to issue it as a campaign document.
Up to this day no one has been able to hazard a guess as to what was done with this accumulation of currency. Long had always levied a political tribute of two per cent on the salaries of all state employees. No effort was made to conceal this. Indeed, the Kingfish boasted that his support came from the people in small, regular individual contributions, and not in huge individual gifts from the swollen corporations, the money barons, and something called “the interests.”