Heart to Heart: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective (4 page)

"When was this?'

"Just this afternoon. Well, more like
noontime when he called it in. I approved the form and went to
lunch. He came in and executed the document while I was out. He
also left me a message to get this stuff out here as quickly as
possible."

"Where is your office located?"

"We're in Santa Ana, near the court
house."

"So it took you about...?"

"Well it can be an hour's drive, this time
of day. I came right out."

"What else do you have there?"

"Various records and documents related to
the problem."

I lit a cigarette, studied the smoke for a
moment, asked, "What problem is that?"

He said, “This is very
weird. Are you saying that you know
nothing
about...?”

I suggested, "Let's say that is the case.
I'm totally ignorant. Let's educate me."

The lawyer sighed, stared disapprovingly at
my cigarette smoke, ran a hand through his hair, sighed again. The
synaptical firings were getting a bit out of sync when he pushed
back his chair, crossed his legs, folded his hands in his lap, told
me: "The state of California is making a move on this
property."

"What kind of move? Eminent domain?"

"No. Well sort of, but.. actually there is a
legal question of proper succession to title. It's all very weird
and baffling, and..."

I was going through the
other documents, just scanning them to get some sensing of what was
there. Original Spanish land grant, or a copy thereof, dated 1782;
validation by the new Mexican government in 1835; successive
recordings and validations as California further mutated
politically into the modern age.

I commented, "Looks like a lock to me. Goes
back for over two hundred years."

"Well, yes, there's no question in the early
abstract," Sloane replied. "The problem is, uh, you see..." He was
thumbing through the historical abstract of title, trying to read
it upside down, finally placing his finger at the crucial point.
"Look at this date."

The entry was dated August 4, 1921. It
recorded the final adjustment to the original land parcel, which
once had encompassed thousands of acres but now was confined to the
headland jutting into the Pacific, the present boundaries.

I said, "Yes?"

"Yes. Please note the date. Note also the
name on the entitlement."

The name was recorded as Valentinius de
Medici.

I said, "Okay."

He said, "Look at the name on the original
grant."

I did. Again, the name was Valentinius de
Medici.

I said, "Okay. Same family."

He said, "The Valentinius who recorded the
1921 deed is the final Valentinius of record."

I said, "Okay."

"He is the one who retained my grandfather's
legal services in 1918."

"Okay."

"He was middle-aged at the time."

"Your grandfather?"

"Valentinius. My grandfather wasn't even
thirty yet."

I was looking more closely into the
documents. They reflected a long de Medici line.

Sloane sighed, his mental wavelength went
almost flat, and he told me, "This guy has got to be over a hundred
years old."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Or else the state of California has a
hell of a good case."

I said, "What is their case?"

"They are taking the position that the owner
of record has died intestate and without natural heirs."

I said, "Now wait a minute."

"Therefore the property passes legally to
the state. We have got to produce Mr. de Medici, alive and fully
documented as the owner of record, within ten days from
today."

“
Ten days, eh.”

"Frankly, I have been wondering if it is
possible to do that. I am beginning to wonder even, if my own
father is not somehow involved in some conspiracy to...look here,
Ford, I have a right to the facts in this case. Valentinius refuses
to come forward. Instead he advances you as his proxy. So you must
know what is going on here."

I said, "I haven't the
foggiest, pal. How hard have you tried to find this
guy?"

"I have spent the past year exhausting every
avenue. I even traced the family line back to Renaissance Italy. I
have found only one record of birth for a Valentinius de

Medici, and not a single record of death.
Yet the name keeps—"

"Back to when?"

"What?"

"What is the date of that record of
birth?"

"The year is 1690, in Italy."

I sighed, lit another cigarette, reminded my
disturbed lawyer, "You said a hundred years old. Sounds more like
three hundred years old to me. Is there a problem with that?"

He said, "It's no time for jokes. Of course
I have a problem with that."

So did I. Because I was beginning to get a
glimmer of why I had been "invited" to Pointe House. I told the
lawyer, "Not joking. I meant, if I could produce this three-
hundred-year-old man for the court's inspection, would that help
your case?"

"I hope to hell you're joking," Sloane
said.

But I was not.

Like the man said, it was no time for jokes.
I understood the ten-day crisis now.

And I was just wondering exactly what I was
supposed to pull off within ten days.

Chapter Five: A Possible Impossibility

There is a story that is told and
persistently repeated in the literature of the period, concerning a
mysterious and influential figure with intimate access to the
royal courts of Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, who charmed and astounded the nobility of the Continent
for more than one hundred years, and perhaps directly influenced
the actual history of the period.

The man was the almost
legendary Comte de St. Germain, believed to be the son of Prince
Franz-Leopold Ra- goczy and heir to the throne of the principality
of Siebenburgen (Transylvania). The principality was swallowed by
the Austrain Empire in the late seventeenth century and St.
Germain, as a boy of seven, was thought to have been spirited away
and raised under the personal protection of the last Grand Duke of
Tuscany, the Duc de Medici. This region of Italy, which includes
Florence, Pisa, and Siena, became the greatest center of
Renaissance culture under the Medici family, who ruled Tuscany for
three hundred years, provided the church with three popes, and
became linked by marriage to the royal families of Europe. The
Medicis are regarded as perhaps the most prominent patrons of the
arts in European history.

It is possible that St.
Germain was a Medici, but his direct lineage—if this biography is
accurate—was to the throne at Transylvania. It is possible also
that the legend which arose around the man was the direct
inspiration for the 1897 Gothic novel, Dracula, by Irish writer
Bram Stoker, in which a Transylvanian count has achieved
immortality via vampirism.

I have found no suggestion that St. Germain
was ever regarded as a vampire or werewolf, but he was clearly held
in awe by all who were exposed to him. Apparently he traveled all
over Europe, to Africa, India, and China, and spent several years
at the court of the shah of Persia. He was a familiar figure in the
lives of Louis XV and Louis XVI, Madame de Pompadour and Marie
Antoinette of France; of Peter m and Catherine II of Russia;
apparently he knew such diverse personages as Tchaikovsky and
Voltaire, merchants and princes and artists, scientists and
philosophers.

It was written of him by a
contemporary: “The Count speaks French, English, German, Italian,
Spanish and Portuguese equally perfectly; so much so that when he
converses with any of the inhabitants of the above countries in
their mother tongue, they are unable to discover the slightest
foreign accent. The Learned and the Oriental scholars have proved
the knowledge of the Count St. Germain. The former found him more
apt in the languages of Homer and Virgil than themselves; with the
latter he spoke Sanskrit, Chinese, Arabic in such a manner as to
show them that he had made some lengthy stay in Asia, and that the
languages of the East were but poorly learned in the Colleges of
Louis The Great and Montaigne.”

According to the record,
St. Germain was greatly talented in all the arts. He was a
composer and an extraordinary musician, a painter who astonished
with his remarkably brilliant colors, and a scholar with astounding
knowledge.

"The Comte de St. Germain accompained on the
piano without music, not only every song but also the most
difficult concerti, played on various instruments. Rameau was much
impressed with the playing of this dilettante, and especially
struck at his improvising.

"The Count paints beautifully in oils; but
that which makes his paintings so remarkable is a particular
colour, a secret, which he has discovered, and which lends to the
painting an extraordinary brilliancy. Vanloo, who never tires in
his admiration of the surprising colouring, has often requested the
Count to let him participate in his secret; the latter, however,
will not divulge it.

"Without attempting to sit
in judgement on the knowledge of a fellow-being, of whom at this
very moment that I am writing, both court and town have exhausted
all surmises, one can, I think, well assert that a portion of his
miracles is due to his knowledge of physics and chemistry in which
sciences he is well grounded. At all events it is palpable that his
knowledge has laid the seeds for him of sound good health; a life
which will—or which has—overstepped the ordinary time allotted to
man; and has also endowed him with the means of preventing the
ravages of time from affecting the body."

That last sentence quoted
is most interesting and most pertinent to our own story, as is the
following account: "There appeared at the Court [of Louis XV] in
these days an extraordinary man, who called himself Comte de St.
Germain. At first he distinguished himself through his cleverness
and the great diversity of his talents, but in another respect he
soon aroused the greatest astonishment.

"The old Countess v. Georgy who fifty years
earlier had accompanied her husband to Venice where he had the
appointment of ambassador, lately met St. Germain at Mme. de
Pompadour's. For some time she watched the stranger with signs of
the greatest surprise, in which was mixed not a little fear.
Finally, unable to control her excitement, she approached the Count
more out of curiosity than in fear.

"'Will you have the
kindness to tell me,' said the Countess, 'whether your father was
in Venice about the year 1710?'

"'No, Madame,' replied the
Count quite unconcerned, 'it is very much longer since I lost my
father, but I myself was living in Venice at the end of the last
and the beginning of this century; I had the honour to pay you
court then, and you were kind enough to admire a few Barcarolles of
my composing which we used to sing together.'

"'Forgive me, but that is impossible; the
Comte de St.

Germain I knew in those days was at least
forty-five years old, and you, at the outside, are that age at
present.'

"'Madame,' replied the Count smiling, 'I am
very old.'

"'But then you must be nearly one hundred
years old!'

"'That is not impossible.'
And then the Count recounted to Mme. v. Georgy a number of familiar
little details which had reference in common to both, to their
sojourn in the Venitian States. He offered, if she still doubted
him, to bring back to her memory certain circumstances and
remarks, which—

"'No, no,' interrupted the old ambassadress,
'I am already convinced. For all that you are a most extraordinary
man, a devil.'

"'For pity's sake!' exclaimed St. Germain in
a thundering voice, 'no such names!'

"He appeared to be seized with a cramp-like
trembling in every limb, and left the room immediately.

"I mean to get to know this peculiar man
more intimately. St. Germain is of medium height and elegant
manners; his features are regular; his complexion brown; his hair
black; his face mobile and full of genius; his carriage bears the
impress and the nobility common only to the great. The Count
dresses simply but with taste. His only luxury consists of a large
number of diamonds, with which he is fairly covered; he wears them
on every finger, and they are set in his snuffboxes and his
watches. One evening he appeared at court with shoebuckles, which
Herr v. Gontaut, an expert on precious stones, estimated at 200,000
Francs."

Another contemporary view
places St. Germain in England during the Jacobite revolution of
1745. In a letter to a friend in Florence, Horace Walpole, Earl of
Oxford, writes: "The other day they seized an odd man who goes by
the name of Count St. Germain. He has been here these two years,
and will not tell who he is or whence, but professes that he does
not go by his right name. He sings and plays on the violin
wonderfully, is mad, and not very sensible."

Apparently the authorities
had suspected St. Germain of revolutionary activities, but he was
quickly released with full apologies and entertained at dinner by
William Stanhope, Earl of Harrington, Secretary of the Treasury.
Commenting on this incident, the
British
Gazetteer
further elaborated: "The author
of the Brussels' Gazette tells us that the person who styles
himself Comte de St. Germain, who lately arrived here from Holland,
was born in Italy in 1712. He speaks German and French as fluently
as Italian, and expresses himself pretty well in English. He has a
smattering of all the arts and sciences, is a good chemist, a
virtuoso in musick, and a very agreeable companion."