one o'clock
There was scarcely a man there without friends or foes . Raymond alone had neither . To the others he was a strange , silent , unknown creature whose very address was a matter of conjecture ; a man who did not drink , did not smoke , did not talk ; who ate four bananas for his lunch and invariably carried a book in the pocket of his shabby coat . It was said of him that once , during a terrible blizzard , he had been the only clerk to reach the office ; that he had worked there stark alone until one o'clock , when at the stroke of the hour he had taken out his four bananas and his book ! There were other stories about him of the same kind , not all of them true to fate , but essentially true of the man 's nature and of his rigid adherence to routine . He had risen , place by place , to a position that gave him a hundred and fifty dollars a month , and one so responsible that his death or absence would have dislocated the office for half a day . `` A first-class man and an authority on pro ratas ! ''