The Sunken Stradivarius
A half-flooded basement archive beneath a conservatory in Ljubljana, Slovenia at 7:20 AM, where seventeen inches of brown water are lapping against rows of wooden instrument lockers and something is making the overhead pipes hum in B-flat.
A burst water main overnight has turned the conservatory's underground storage into a wading pool, and inside locker 19-C — which is padlocked and belongs to a deceased professor whose estate is in probate — someone can see through the vent slats what appears to be a violin case stamped with a Sotheby's auction tag from 1973. The water is rising about an inch every forty minutes. A locksmith can be here in two hours, the executor of the estate is unreachable on a hiking trip in Montenegro, and the fire brigade says they'll pump the basement but not before noon. Double has found a crowbar in the custodian's closet. Bust has found a Slovenian property law statute on their phone that says unauthorized forced entry into a probate-held asset carries a fine of up to €40,000 — or, if the asset is damaged, criminal charges.
“Last time I hesitated on old wood behind a locked door, someone else got $340,000 worth of organ pipes — I'm not watching a Strad drown because of a padlock and a dead man's paperwork.”
“You're comparing a choir loft in Kentucky to breaking into a dead professor's locker in a country where you don't speak the language, can't read the laws, and are currently standing in sewage.”
Double pried open locker 19-C with the crowbar, splashing triumphantly through the rising water — only to find a 1973 Sotheby's-tagged case containing a student-grade Czech factory violin worth about €200, while the conservatory's security camera (which Double didn't notice behind the pipe junction) captured the entire break-in, and the executor's hiking buddy turned out to be a Slovenian district judge who filed the €40,000 property violation charge from a mountain hut in Durmitor before lunch.
That violin had TONE, though — you can't put a price on tone, and frankly €40,000 is a bargain for the story.
You're right, you can't put a price on tone — but apparently a Montenegrin judge can put a very specific price on crowbar-related felonies.