Heart to Heart: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective

by Don Pendleton

  Thiebault describes the mysterious traveler "In appearance M. de St. Germain was refined and intellectual. He was clearly of gentle birth, and had moved in good society; and it was reported that the famous Cagliostro (so well known for his mystification of Cardinal Rohan and others at Paris) had been his pupil. The pupil, however, never reached the level of his master and, while the latter finished his career without mishap, Cagliostro was often rash to the point of criminality, and died in the prison of the Inquisition at Rome. In the history of M. de St. Germain, we have the history of a wise and prudent man who never wilfully offended against the code of honour, or did aught that might offend our sense of probity. Marvels we have without end, never anything mean or scandalous."

  A Florence news item published in Le notizie del Mondo carries a report from Tunis, July 1770: "The Comte Maximilian de Lamberg, Chamberlain of M.M.L.L. II. and RR having paid a visit to the Island of Corsica to make various investigations, has been staying here since the end of June, in company with the Signor de St. Germain, celebrated in Europe for the vastness of his political and philosophical knowledge."

  Writing from the Netherlands some years later, Heer van Sypesteyn said, "M. de St. Germain came to the Hague after the death of Louis XV [May 10th, 1774] and left for Schwalbach in 1774. This was the last time he visited Holland. It cannot be ascertained with accuracy how often he was there. It is stated in a German biography that he was in Holland in 1710, 1735, 1742, 1748, 1760 and 1773."

  And how did the Dutch regard St. Germain? "... a remarkable man, and wherever be was personally known he left a favourable impression behind, and the remembrance of many good and sometimes of many noble deeds. Many a poor father of a family, many a charitable institution, was helped by him in secret. Not one bad, nor one dishonourable action was ever known of him, and so he inspired sympathy everywhere, and not least in Holland."

  I trust that this is quite enough about St. Germain. But I have to give you just a bit more. Like this little gem: "Sometimes he fell into a trance, and when he again recovered, he said he had passed the time while he lay unconscious in far-off lands; sometimes he disappeared for a considerable time, then suddenly re-appeared, and let it be understood that he had been in another world in communication with the dead."

  Okay?

  Please note the "disappeared" and "suddenly re-appeared" in the quote just above.

  Had you ever heard of the Comte de St. Germain before this? Probably not. Isn't it just a little strange that such a remarkable character could escape the notice of our historians? Probably not. We do not give a lot of space in our histories to the truly remarkable characters; none at all to the likes of a St. Germain.

  One final note, this from the Souvenirs de Marie Antoinette by an intimate friend of the queen, the Countess d'Adhemar. The Souvenirs are based on the countess's daily diary. She was an intimate within the royal court, and she had a sense of history. She also had a remarkable friend who had labored heroically to save the royal family from their grisly fate. The following entry refers to a perilous visit by St. Germain in 1792 after the French monarchy had toppled:

  "The church was empty; I posted my Laroche as sentinel and I entered the chapel named; soon after, and almost before I had collected my thoughts in the presence of God, behold a man approaching...it was himself in person...Yes! with the same countenance as in 1760, while mine was covered with furrows and marks of decrepitude... I stood impressed by it; he smiled at me, came forward, took my hand, kissed it gallantly. I was so troubled that I allowed him to do it in spite of the sanctity of the place.

  “'There you are!' I said. 'Where have you come from?'

  " I am come from China and Japan....'

  "'Or rather from the other world!'

  "'Yes, indeed, pretty nearly so! Ah! Madame, down there nothing is so strange as what happens here. How is the monarchy of Louis XIV disposed of? You, who did not see it cannot make the comparison, but I..’

  "'I have caught you, man of yesterday!"'

  Man of yesterday, indeed. Louis XIV's reign had ended nearly one hundred years earlier.

  Early on, St. Germain had tried to warn Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette of the coming upheaval. The crown would not listen, and now—with all of the nobility in great jeopardy—St. Germain had come to counsel his friend, Madame d'Adhemar. As he bid farewell to the Countess, she asked him whether she would see him again. He replied, "Five times more; do not wish for the sixth." He then stepped through the doorway and disappeared into thin air; literally, according to her account.

  Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were both beheaded in the year 1793, Louis in January and his queen in August.

  Now, this fragment from Souvenirs: "I saw M. de St. Germain again, and always to my unspeakable surprise: at the assassination of the Queen; at the coming of the 18th Brumaire; the day following the death of the Duke d'Enghien [1804]; in the month of January, 1813; and on the eve of the murder of the Duke de Berri [1820]. I await the sixth visit when God wills." Countess d'Adhemar died of natural causes in 1822.

  So okay. We have but a tiny glimpse here of a living phenomenon—first noted in about 1710 as a man in his forties, finally in the year 1820 as a man who shows no evidence of aging.

  So are we ready now for Valentinius?

  Or are we talking about the same guy?

  Chapter Six: Second Sight

  Of course I was just flailing about for a handle, any handle, and St. Germain came to mind only because of his supposed linkage to the Medici family of Renaissance Italy. Actually I knew very little of the St. Germain legend at the time, and I had to allow for the possible coincidence of names, even though Sloane had traced our California Medici (or his forebears) to the eighteenth-century Florentine duchy. The original Valentinius would have been a contemporary of St. Germain and apparently came to these shores shortly after the American Revolution with a Spanish land grant in his pocket. It could be significant, or merely coincidental, that the Medici family had marriage links to the Spanish throne.

  But after all, how much coincidence can you buy? I was into some pretty heady stuff. The name Valentinius itself evokes all sorts of images, being a slight variation on three Roman emperors—Valentinian I, II, and III, a pope, Valentinus, ninth century, and an earlier Valentinus of the second century a.d. who was a Christian mystic and founder of the Roman and Alexandrian schools of Gnosticism. For a further small variation, the Latin title for those three Roman emperors is Flavius Valentinianus—so it appears that small variations were not considered a problem in those days. We should be aware that family names have not always been as formalized as they are today; in fact, they did not even come into vogue until the late Middle Ages.

  Remember too that I was being confronted with one hell of an anomaly. The guy who winked-in on me at Malibu was apparently the same guy who'd given me an unlimited power of attorney to save, I guessed, the remnants of a two-hundred-year-old Spanish land grant from being confiscated by the modern state of California.

  So put yourself in my moccasins please, and tell me why I should not be reaching at wild conclusions.

  Still it would not be accurate to say that I was reaching for anything at all; I was merely reacting to quivers and going with the flow.

  Jim Sloane however obviously wanted me to start a flow of my own. "It seems that the ball is in your court," he observed. "What do you intend to do with it?"

  I replied, "No, Jim; the ball is not yet in my court." We were talking tennis terms, and I was in my element there. "Someone has just handed me a racquet and pushed me toward the court. And I think this racquet needs to be re-strung. I'd rather use my own."

  He smiled faintly and said, "Fine, use whatever you'd

  like but do it quick. The finals are a week from Friday, and it's winner-take-all."

  He closed his briefcase and rose to leave; offered me his hand and I took it. I told him, “The handshake is pure courtesy. I'm agreeing only to look into the thing. I'll contact you within twenty-four
hours to let you know whether I'm accepting the game. The state of California is a hell of an opponent. And I don't even know who is sponsoring this match.”

  Sloane said, "My guess says Hank Gibson is sponsoring it."

  I asked, "Who is Hank Gibson and what is his interest?"

  The lawyer stared at me for a moment, as though reflecting on that, then told me: "Gibson is the latest and greatest boy entrepreneur financial genius of Orange County. Real estate speculator. As you must know, ocean-front property is hard to come by in this area and therefore it comes at a heavy premium. Gibson was in contact with my father last year shortly before the state filed its action—hounded the hell out of him in fact, trying to get in touch with Medici. I don't know what kind of a deal he was brokering, but you can bet your ass it would have been highly profitable for the boy wonder. Anyway, his efforts failed. The state began its move a few weeks after Gibson bowed out. But I have had to wonder if he actually did give it up. There are all sorts of stories about Gibson's influence at Sacramento."

  Sure, that was interesting. I asked Sloane, "Are you suggesting that this guy expects to buy the property from the state if it is confiscated?"

  He replied, "No, I'm suggesting that the deal may

  already be set. Gibson is not a developer, he's a broker. However the property may ultimately find its way into a developer's hands, it could mean a fat fee for the boy wonder."

  I said, "I detect some personal animosity between you two. Am I right?"

  The lawyer flash-smiled, picked up his briefcase, and went to the door; turned back to say in parting, "You bet there is."

  It was about five o'clock that afternoon when I invaded Francesca's studio in a search of some light on the goings-on at Pointe House. But she wasn't there, so I browsed her art instead and found it quite good. I am no judge of fine art but I know what I like, and I liked most of her stuff, though I would have a tough time describing her style to a critic. Representational rather than abstract certainly, but even her seascapes revealed abstract symbols at close look; romantic, rather than baroque, but there were definite baroque touches, even in a couple of portraits; more coloristic in style than linear, but also highly perspective with deep shifts and flowing currents of color in, say, a background sky or sea.

  The colors were what really got to me, I guess, so I would have to say that color was the most distinctive characteristic of her work. And yet, something else leaped out from some of the stuff—some quality of feeling or emotion—I mean some special grabbing but totally ethereal representation; such as in a compelling study of a mother whale and her baby, the juxtaposition of mother and offspring in a way that spoke to me of mother-love and childlike-faith, of nurturing and being nurtured.

  The lady was good. Damned good.

  As for her sculptures, what could I say except to note the startling realism, the total imprint of character upon a lump of clay, the projection of personality frozen like a single frame of movie film, yet containing all the inner attributes of the subject. Like, you could look at this sculpted head and know what makes the subject laugh and what makes him cry. I knew Valentinius better from one of those clay busts than from the eyeball confrontation in Malibu.

  And I think I was getting to know a little something about the artist, too, much more than our personal meeting had provided. Art is like that, sometimes, whatever the medium, the artist revealing more of self than anything else in the work.

  I spent about ten minutes becoming abstractly acquainted with Francesca Amalie, then I wandered to a telescope at the window and peered at a couple of sailboats, inspected the mountains of Catalina Island thirty or so miles offshore, watched a seal slither off a rock into the sea just below—at which time Francesca herself strolled into the focal field. Took my breath away. She was nude, on the beach, yet close as my eyeball and as immediate as the air I inhaled. I shamelessly watched her cross to a blanket on the sands and lie down, then I abandoned the telescope and went searching for Hai Tsu.

  I found my hostess in a tidy apartment behind the kitchen. It was small but as luxurious from the doorway as anything else I'd seen at the mansion. She did not invite me in but greeted me with her usual restrained joy, then asked, "How may we serve you?"

  I replied, "Any way you wish, ma'am," but she did not react to that, so I limped on with: "Uh, I thought I saw Francesca on the beach. How do I get down there?"

  She smiled graciously, said, "I will show," and I followed her through the house to the atrium, a garden under glass which serves as the main entry hall to the mansion. I thought we were headed outside but she opened a narrow door on the north wall, smiled, and needlessly pointed out: "Elevator."

  I thanked her and she left me there.

  It was an open-cage type, quite old but automated and sturdy enough, as smooth as any modern elevator I'd ever used. There were only two buttons, up and down, so there was no need for a directory. I descended through a shaft of sheer rock walls, like coming down off the top of a fifteen-or twenty-story building, and emerged into muted sunshine on a south-facing ledge some twenty-five feet above the ocean. Steps scooped from the rock took me the rest of the way to the beach of a small cove facing Laguna. Mean high tide be damned, this beach was totally private by virtue of its inaccessibility except by boat or elevator. No more than fifty feet wide by twenty feet deep, it was carved out of coastal rock and isolated by soaring escarpments rising from deep water to either side. A couple of seals were snoozing in the sun and a pelican ruffled his wings and checked me out from his perch on a small rock at the center of the beach; otherwise it was just she and me and the deep blue sea, the roar of the surf breaking on the rocks that formed this cove.

  She looked at me and I looked at she for quite a long moment before she decorously covered herself with a short robe and made me welcome. I dropped to the blanket beside her and lay back to gaze at the sky as I quietly inquired, "How'd you know I'd come?"

  She laughed lightly, not exactly a giggle but with a touch of nervousness, then asked, "How do you know I wanted you to come?"

  I said, "You sent the elevator back topside for me."

  She said, "Boy, what is that? Egotism or self-assurance? How do you know someone else wasn't down here before you, and he left the elevator topside?"

  I said, "Valentinius would not need the elevator."

  She said, "I guess not."

  My arrival had disturbed the seals. I heard them slithering away. Then Francesca slithered aboard me. She'd left the robe behind, and my startled hands instantly became aware of that.

  Love at first sight?

  Well... lust, anyway. For damned sure lust.

  Chapter Seven: Déjà What?

  You can find love without sex and sex without love. The two together are nice, very nice; but even if you find ei-ther, without the other, life is usually enhanced because you did. With neither life would be a terribly gray affair, and I am not sure I would want it.

  But what the hell is love, exactly, and what is sex?

  Try to consider the question from the God viewpoint. You're considering building a world out of matter and infusing the matter, here and there, with some subtle essence of yourself. Not from vanity: you are God, after all; what is there to be vain about when you are everything? No; you want to build because of an innate need for self-expression and there is no way to express yourself except to create. But what the hell to create? You're an artist without oils or canvas, a poet without words, a novelist with no heroic tales to tell, a composer without music.

  Eureka! That's it! You will project all these creative aspects of yourself into an energy universe of space and time in which all the creative tools and circumstances may be developed for a full expression of your self!

  But wait, wait...this is likely to become troublesome. I mean, we are talking a hell of a big production here. When we start talking space and time, energy and matter, creative tools and artful expression...well it's going to take quite a bang to get something like that sta
rted. And once it's started, what's to control it? Moi? Let's think about this.

  You just want a creative expression; you don't want to be tied down to governing and policing, housework and all that crap! So who's going to be the executive in charge of production of this big bang?

  Aha! Okay. You are God so you have the answer within yourself. It's so obvious. You will deputize and delegate authority—sort of like hands-off management.

  But wait. There is no deputy material here, nothing to delegate authority to.

  But why not? If you can create a big bang, then surely you can create deputies and delegates. All you have to do....

  Well see, try it this way: just start the damned thing going; something will pop out of all that chaos, some aspect of your creative self that was projected into the bang will just naturally begin to stir sooner or later, and start to take charge. I mean, it will assume authority because you will project an authority aspect into the bang; just thinking it will make it so; so think creative authority.

  Simple, isn't it.

  Well it seems simple, but...

  No sweat. Trust me. I'm your higher-self aspect, and I know.

  But...with all that creative authority running around

  loose out there....Aren't we asking for sheer chaos, all

  manner of conflict, maybe even anarchy and revolution?

  That's the risk you take. But...

  Yes?

  Well...as a control... why don't you try projecting a bit of love aspect into the bang.

  Surely you jest! Come on now. Love? You want me to give my love to this project?

  Why not? You have plenty to go around.