Anna’s pistol misfire is a two-shot disturbance in her room at the Gridiron Hotel. Its decisive fact is not a confirmed cause but a distinction: Joseph Pritchard’s account addressed the first discharge, while Aubert Gascoigne later acknowledged firing the second. Anna remains too shaken to explain what happened, and the first shot’s circumstances stay uncertain.

Setting and Immediate Aftermath

The incident unfolds in Anna Wetherell’s room at the Gridiron Hotel. After Joseph Pritchard’s footsteps retreat down the stairs, Gascoigne waits three or four minutes, until Anna’s breathing steadies and her body seems to regain strength. She is still trembling from the shock. His first questions test whether the pistol contained a blank or a false cartridge, but Anna answers only by shaking her head.

Gascoigne wonders whether Anna and Pritchard devised something together. The suggestion makes her push away from him in disgust and ask whether he means Pritchard. She then explains that the older chemist had been lonely. Her response rejects Gascoigne’s proposed collaboration, but does not explain the first shot or settle how it occurred.

Two Shots, Two Accounts

In the hotel lobby, the valet confronts Gascoigne after the slam of the door. He recounts hearing shouting, seeing Gascoigne arrive, and hearing a gun go off just after that; then, he says, there was another shot. The valet had been about to investigate, but Pritchard came downstairs and told him not to worry, explaining that Anna had been cleaning the pistol and it had gone off accidentally. The valet points out that this explanation accounts for only the first discharge.

Gascoigne supplies the missing distinction: the second shot was his. He says he fired the pistol experimentally after he could see that the first shot had fouled. His statement clarifies who fired the second time and why, but leaves the first discharge unresolved. The difference between Pritchard’s account and Gascoigne’s clarification makes the event more specific without making it fully intelligible.

Responses and Significance

The aftermath connects bodily shock to the limits of explanation. Anna burrows against Gascoigne rather than answering him; he, too, finds himself trembling and asks for brandy so he can sit and gather himself. He carefully lays the spent pistol on the whatnot beside her bed. The weapon is no longer being fired, but its presence preserves the incident as something tangible and unsettled.

Gascoigne reflects that things keep happening to Anna that neither she nor anyone else seems able to explain, then trails off. At the desk, he calls the episode a mistake and says the situation is resolved, but those assurances do not identify the cause of the first shot. The narrative thus separates the practical question of the second discharge from the larger uncertainty surrounding Anna: one shot receives an account, while the other remains a troubling gap.