I was silent for a moment, reflecting on the narrow escape of Allardice and the months of slow suffering which might have been Harrowgate’s fate had Holmes not intervened. “Do you suppose,” I asked, “that such schemes should be outlawed altogether?” Holmes gave a slight shrug. “The law may ban the mechanism, Watson, but not the motive. Remove the tontine, and you will still have wills, legacies, partnerships,all of which have served as motives for crime since the earliest days. The real safeguard lies in the character of the men concerned. Unfortunately, the law cannot legislate for character.” He rose, crossed to the mantelpiece, and with a flick of his fingers sent the last ash of his cigarette into the grate. “This case will find no place in the official records, of course,” he said. “Lestrade is content to leave the details untrumpeted, and our surviving trio will not wish to draw attention to themselves. Yet it is a perfect illustration, my dear fellow, of how an apparently respectable arrangement may harbour the seeds of the most deliberate villainy. It is precisely in such cultivated soil that crime flourishes most luxuriantly.” Holmes stood for a moment gazing into the fire, the light glinting on his sharp profile. Then, with that sudden change of mood which I had often observed in him, he turned briskly to the side-table. “And now, Watson, I perceive that you have not yet tried Allardice’s port. Let us drink a glass, not to absent friends, but to those whose absence we have happily prevented.” And so, with the rain drumming steadily on Baker Street, we raised our glasses to a quiet toast for life preserved, temptation defeated, and the knowledge that, for the moment at least, the wheel of the tontine continue to turn.