After a few brief instructions to Jowett, and a message for Osterhaut
concerning a suit of workman's clothes, Ingolby left his offices and
walked down the main street of the town with his normal rapidity,
responding cheerfully to the passers-by, but not encouraging evident
desire for talk with him. Men half-started forward to him, but he held
them back with a restraining eye. They knew his ways. He was responsive
in a brusque, inquisitive, but good-humoured and sometimes very droll
way; but there were times when men said to themselves that he was to be
left alone; and he was so much master of the place that, as Osterhaut and
Jowett frequently remarked, "What he says goes!" It went even with those
whom he had passed in the race of power.