But now I am more or less a live man again, and I want to fill in the gaps in my knowledge of what happened.

You know how much I know, and how little; those fragments of Russian newspapers were about all the information that I had.

I don't even know clearly how the whole thing started." Yeovil settled himself back in his chair with the air of a man who has done some necessary talking, and now assumes the role of listener.
"It started," said the doctor, "with a wholly unimportant disagreement about some frontier business in East Africa; there was a slight attack of nerves in the stock markets, and then the whole thing seemed in a fair way towards being settled.

Then the negotiations over the affair began to drag unduly, and there was a further flutter of nervousness in the money world.

And then one morning the papers reported a highly menacing speech by one of the German Ministers, and the situation began to look black indeed.