But Job was not the man he had been twelve years before; he could not hold his own as he had once done. Shouting and cursing, the two men swayed round the apartment. Finally, they crashed against the table, and upset the lamp it fell and burst on the floor. Immediately the woodwork, soaked as it was in petroleum, broke into flame, and in almost less time than it takes to tell, the whole room was in a blaze.
With a yell of terror, Jerry tried to shake himself free, and leap through the girdle of fire but Job held him fast.
"No, you don't!" he shouted. "You die with me, whoever you are! I've made arrangements for this; I never intended to live: but I thought I'd die alone. Now I've got you!" and he made a clutch at Jerry's throat.
After that the struggle proceeded in silence, for Job held his peace, and Jerry could not cry out by reason of those two strong hands fast on his throat. By this time the room was blazing like a furnace, and the clothes of the two men were in flames. A frightened wayfarer saw the fire streaming towards the sky--saw two men vaguely struggling in the flames.
[CHAPTER XXX.]
THE TRUTH AT LAST.
"It is not impossible," said Geoffrey, thunderstruck.
Mrs. Marshall shook her head. "So possible that I always thought so myself," she said.
"My own idea was the same," remarked Mr. Cass, who was the third person of the party now assembled in Mr. Heron's library. "I have told you several times, Geoffrey, that I believed Mrs. Jenner to be guilty."
The young man drew a long breath. Even now he could scarcely credit the news. "So she really did kill her husband?"