>>>or it went back into the desk drawer and
>>>was subsequently destroyed, along with the desk, when the storage
>>>facility they'd stashed most of their possessions in while living in
>>>Australia burned down. (He worked for Standard Oil and they kept
>>>moving him around.)
>>
>>Aw, bad end!
>
>Yeah, it's a shame. An awful lot of my mother's stories about her
>childhood end with "... and I'd show you $ITEM, but it was lost in the
>warehouse fire."

Over a year later, I finally got around to asking my mother if she remembered what happened to this gun. Turns out my grandfather had several guns (and he did not keep any of them in a desk drawer; there was a scrupulously-maintained gun safe) but he sold all of them to a collector when he moved to Australia circa 1970. So the family Luger escaped the fire after all, and may well still be out there somewhere.