"But the roads are impassable, gracious lady," the man exclaimed; "the landslide——"
"Never mind about the landslide. There are other roads in Transylvania besides this one. I can go by a roundabout way, but I can get there somehow if I have a car. Or," she added impatiently, seeing that the man was looking very dubious, "a conveyance of any sort, I don't care what it is."
"Alas! gracious lady, that is just the trouble. The soldiers were here yesterday, and they commandeered all the horses and bullocks in Sót for military purposes. It is so hard," the man went on, muttering half to himself; "no sooner does a man scrape together a little money and buy an old horse, than the soldiers come down and take it away from him."
The man was full of apologies and explanations, but somehow Rosemary had the impression that he lied. He rambled on for a while in the same strain; Rosemary did not hear him. Her brain was at work trying to find a way to combat this net of intrigue that was hemming her in. She was quite sure that the man was lying—that Naniescu had ordered these ignorant yokels to tell the lies that suited him. She, Rosemary, Lady Tarkington, a British subject, could not be held up at the frontier, of course, but there could be a landslide, a block on the line, no conveyance available, horses commandeered by the military, two, three, perhaps four days' delay while Naniescu's courier was speeding to London with Rosemary's manuscript and her letter to the editor of the Times asking for early publication.
She turned with some impatience to Jasper.
"What shall I do?"
Gravely he shook his head.
"Accept the inevitable," he replied gently. "I understand that there is quite a clean little hotel in the place, and twenty-four hours' delay is not very serious, is it?"
"It would not be," she admitted, "if it were not prolonged."
"It can't be prolonged indefinitely."