It was not, however, until we were all in a first-class carriage and well started upon our journey to
Birmingham that I was able to learn what the trouble was which had driven him to Sherlock Holmes.
"Last Monday week he went up to
Birmingham, and he promised to be back on Thursday, and he never came, and he didn't come on the Friday, so I wrote to ask what was the matter, and he never answered the letter.
Nothing could be easier than for the gentleman to inclose a letter in a sheet of brown paper, and send it on, either by the mail or the night coach from
Birmingham. If the gentleman were particularly anxious to have it left as soon as possible, he might write outside, 'To be delivered immediately,' which was sure to be attended to; or 'Pay the bearer half-a-crown extra for instant delivery,' which was surer still.
"He's got a great speech to-morrow at
Birmingham and he's going straight through to-night.
They came from
Birmingham, which is not a place to promise much, you know, Mr.
The panorama passed before their eyes like a flash, save when the steam concealed it fitfully from the view; the travellers could scarcely discern the fort of Chupenie, twenty miles south-westward from Benares, the ancient stronghold of the rajahs of Behar; or Ghazipur and its famous rose-water factories; or the tomb of Lord Cornwallis, rising on the left bank of the Ganges; the fortified town of Buxar, or Patna, a large manufacturing and trading-place, where is held the principal opium market of India; or Monghir, a more than European town, for it is as English as Manchester or
Birmingham, with its iron foundries, edgetool factories, and high chimneys puffing clouds of black smoke heavenward.
It is not the object of this work to give a description of Derbyshire, nor of any of the remarkable places through which their route thither lay; Oxford, Blenheim, Warwick, Kenilworth,
Birmingham, &c., are sufficiently known.
After a few months, he left the school where he had been so unhappy, and went to
Birmingham to be near an old schoolfellow.
You must speak at Manchester and
Birmingham within this week.
Arriving in the month of July at Harwich, and going thence to
Birmingham, he made in the latter place, in August, a public profession of the Jewish religion; and figured there as a Jew until he was arrested, and brought back to London to receive the sentence he had evaded.
Well-seasoned timber is an expensive article, sir; and all the iron handles come, by canal, from
Birmingham.'
The address he gives, at which letters will reach him for the next fortnight, is, 'Post-office,
Birmingham.' This is all I have to tell you on the subject.