No one cared how: no one cared who.

He was merely an universal secretary.
In this manner it happened that everything in London was very quiet.
That vague and somewhat depressed reliance upon things happening as they have always happened, which is with all Londoners a mood, had become an assumed condition.

There was really no reason for any man doing anything but the thing he had done the day before.
There was therefore no reason whatever why the three young men who had always walked up to their Government office together should not walk up to it together on this particular wintry and cloudy morning.
Everything in that age had become mechanical, and Government clerks especially.

All those clerks assembled regularly at their posts.

Three of those clerks always walked into town together.