[SDC]

Ezell's "Pistols of the World" has a little bit of info on these; Josef Nickl was an engineer with Mauser who designed several handguns during WW1 that would later be developed into the Czech VZ22 and VZ24 pistols. When the Czechs were equipping their military after gaining independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, they bought Mauser machinery for the factory in Brno, and Nickl was sent along to get the factory up and running; he continued his work on these pistols there, leading to the VZ22 and 24. Your pistol looks like it dates from the First World War, as Ezell shows one (serial number 22) in 9mm, with the same sort of cocking lugs on the slide that was built in 1916. Very few of these would have been made, as Mauser already had successful designs in production, and the NIckl design didn't offer anything over those existing pistols.