Farm junk No:3 As Time Goes By

Less obvious in the shed, but of much more historical interest, is this broken up piano. The keys and foot pedals are of missing having been used many years ago to unlock doors and perhaps not a few hearts as well. Much of the surrounding junk is from other unrelated instruments such as trombones and even triangles which were never in the original script. There are also few clues as to how and why the instrument has ended up in a farm building almost 2,246 miles North of Rick's Café Américain. But no matter.

At this point the reason for Rick's bitterness, his former lover Norwegian Ilsa Lund walks into his establishment. Upon spotting Rick's good friend and house pianist Sam, Ilsa asks him to play "As Time Goes By". Rick is furious that Sam has disobeyed his order never to perform that song ever again and is also stunned to see Ilsa.
Before Rick realises that she is accompanied by her husband, Victor Laszlo, a fugitive Czech Resistance leader who needs letters of transit to escape to America where he can continue his work resisting the Nazi objective of world and interplanetary domination, he seizes Sam's piano stool and in a few short minutes of red rage, reduces the grand piano to mere matchwood.
Later in the night the folly of his actions become obvious when Laszlo orders the house band to play "La Marseillaise" in an attempt to drown out a group of German officers rendition of "Die Wacht am Rhein".
Without the piano the house band simply cannot compete and it appears that all may be lost until Laszlo starts singing after which patriotic fervor grips the crowd and everyone joins in drowning out the Germans.
In retaliation the Germans order Vichy Captain Louis Renault to close the club.