Dear Hobie, Are you okay in London?
Liv and I miss you very much, and we miss Lizzie and William, these two little ones are still obedient, right?
Things are not going so well in France, Luxembourg has surrendered, the Netherlands has also renounced resistance, the damned Nazis have already begun to enter the borders of France, and it is said that things are not going so well at the front.
Liv and I were worried about whether the French military would be able to withstand the tanks of the Imperials.
The other day the Germans had crossed the line and flew over Paris, and although they were quickly chased away by the valiant French air force soldiers, Liv and I both thought it was not a good thing.
Now there are many rumors in Paris that the Germans will soon be able to fight, and I am afraid that Paris will not be able to save it by then.
Sorry, I shouldn't have told you this stuff to worry you.
But without that, I don't know what to say to you.
Liv and I have decided to take a boat to find you next week, but we don't know if we can buy a ticket.
It is said that the German vanguard has reached the Lille line, and if there are no reinforcements, the French soldiers and the British soldiers may really be able to resist the German tanks, so we must leave Paris, and Liv and I don't want to lose our lives in Paris.
Okay, let's not talk about these sad things, let's talk about happy things.
Hobie, do you remember that distant cousin of ours, Lewis?
Yes, that Lewis in Switzerland.
He is now a very well-known watchmaker.
At the beginning of this year, I commissioned Patek Philippe to make a watch for me that has both world time zones and a pulsometer, and you know, I'm a big fan of Patek Philippe, so I can directly commission Patek Philippe to customize a watch for me.
I used that watch very well, and I still wear it with me all the time.
But at the same time as I was making that watch, I asked him to make me a worldtimer.
Lewis had already made one last year, and I had seen that watch, and it was beautiful, so I personally commissioned him to make me another watch of that model.
Although I did not commission the watch through Patek Philippe, Lewis obtained personal authorization from Mr.
Stein, the current owner of Patek Philippe, to make the watch for me in Patek Philippe's name.
This watch was also delivered last month, and it's great, it's great.
But now I can't do without the watch I've been wearing, and that watch has a pulsometer on it, which is very convenient, so I'm going to mail this watch to you, I hope you like it!
Love your brother, Pierre May 18, 1940 This is the first letterhead, there are two more letterheads below, Yang Jing opened the second letterhead, only to find that the ink on the two letterheads was different, and the two letterheads were obviously not written on the same day.
The one I just finished reading was written in blue ink, and the second one was written in black ink.
Dear Hobie, I'm sorry, Liv and I won't be able to go to London with the kids.
The situation in France has become very bad, and I did not expect that in less than a few days, the whole of northern France has been completely eroded.
The French warriors and the British army have been surrounded by German tanks in a small area near the sea, and my God, has God forsaken us?
The German vanguard had arrived on the outskirts of Paris, where the rumbling of artillery and the whistling of German planes could now be heard every day.
I don't know how long France will be able to resist, but the situation is really critical.
The letters I sent to you last week were returned, and the British submarines had blocked the English Channel, and the letters could no longer be mailed between England and France.
There are now few ships left on the coast of France, so we are now simply not able to cross the English Channel to England by boat.
Liv and I were going to leave Paris with our children and take refuge in the south of France.
Also, the watch made by Cousin Lewis was hidden by me in the base of the table clock.
Remember the game we used to play together when we were kids?
If you remember, then you will be able to find this watch and, of course, these two letters.
That is, by the time you see these two letters, you have found it.
My neighbour is a French naval officer, and he is going to Dunkirk tomorrow, and I looked for him yesterday, and he said he could bring me something to England, so I am going to give him this clock to bring to you.
Hope you receive this grandfather clock.
Also, you must remember that it deserves to be a serious collector, and I hope that when we meet again, I will be able to see it on your wrist.
Love your brother, Pierre Alphonse May 24, 1940 As for the third letterhead, it is more direct proof of the origin of the watch, because it is a letter written by the master of Cortier himself to a doctor in Paris.
Dear Pierre, I have received your letter, and to be honest, I was a little embarrassed at first about your request.
But after I spoke to Patek Philippe's Mr.
Chris Stein, Mr.
Stein readily agreed to my request, saying that he would personally authorize me to make you a platinum worldtimer and use the Patek Philippe trademark.
But Mr.
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Stein also made a point that this is the only part.
So, my dear cousin, I will soon be able to make this watch for you, and by the time you read this letter, it should already be in front of you.
The third letterhead is a letter from Master Cortier to his cousin, the Parisian doctor, which, in addition to explaining the origin of the watch, also contains some common words, and at the end of the letterhead is the name of Lewis Cotil.
After reading these three letterheads, Yang Jing let out a sigh of relief, picked up his mobile phone and checked it again, and finally determined the true origin of this watch.
It is clear that Pierre Alphonse, who wrote these two letters, was the Parisian doctor who had commissioned Patek Philippe to have Master Cortil make a watch that had both world time zones and a pulsometer.
This did happen in 1940, when Patek Philippe, at the request of a regular customer, asked Master Cortier to create a watch that could function both a world time zone and a pulsometer.
It's just that what Yang Jing didn't expect was that this doctor was still a cousin of Master Kotil.
This is why the doctor was able to have Master Cortier privately produce for him another Patek Philippe Platinum World Time Men's Watch Ref-1415-Hu.
Unable to refuse his cousin's request, Master Cortier sought the consent of Mr.
Crisstein, the boss of the Swiss watchmakers Stein Brothers, who had acquired Patek Philippe in 1932, to make the watch for the Parisian doctors.
It is no wonder that there is no record of this watch in Patek Philippe, when Mr.
Christine only privately licensed it to Curtier.
For a master watchmaker like Cortier, even Patek Philippe does not want to be offended, and tries to meet the requirements of this master watchmaker as much as possible.
Later, it may be that Chris Stein forgot about this or forgot to record the authorization at Patek Philippe, so the watch does not appear in Patek Philippe's official records.
But even if there is no record, the true identity of this watch cannot be denied.
After all, the presence of these three letterheads is enough to prove that this watch is absolutely rooted.
Of course, if you count the certificate that was wrapped together and signed by Master Lewis Cortier, the identity of this watch is absolutely gone.
And it can also be seen from these three letterheads that after getting this watch, Pierre Alphonse wanted to give it to his own brother, Hobie in London.
As a result, it was clearly not a good time at that time.
The first letterhead was written on May 18, 1940, and the evacuation of Dunkirk, which shocked the world, took place on May 26 of that year.
The doctor had wanted to wait a few days before going to England by boat, but it happened that Britain and France were preparing for the Dunkirk retreat, and it was impossible to go to England by boat at that time, because at that time, all the ships had gathered in Dunkirk, and there were no passenger ships for ordinary people to take at all.
Even if there were ships, not a single ship dared to go to sea at the risk of being sunk by a German submarine.
When the doctor discovered this fact, he wrote a second letter to his brother, hid the three letters and the watch in the base of the clock, and commissioned his neighbor, who was an officer in the French navy, to send the clock to England.
According to the doctor's letterhead, as long as his brother received the clock, his brother would have been able to find the watch and the three letters, according to the game of hiding that the brothers had played as children.
As a result, for some reason, the clock was not sent to London, maybe the officer was captured by the Germans on the way to Dunkirk, or maybe something else happened, anyway, the clock ended up in England, I don't know how the old man of the clock shop let Armand collect it, and finally cheapened himself!
ps: Bow and thank "Ziyan Tianjiao" and "Seeing People in the Lights" for their 100 rewards!