The Midnight Visitor: Class 10 English · Chapter 3

3.1 Before you read

Think of a secret agent from a film or a novel. Most of us picture someone sharp-eyed and smartly dressed, with gadgets in every pocket and a car chase never far away. Spy stories have trained us to expect glamour, speed and danger. This story starts by disappointing that picture, and then shows what a spy’s real weapon is.

The Midnight Visitor is set in one small hotel room in France, late at night. A young writer has come along to watch a real secret agent at work. A rival agent is already waiting inside with a gun, and he wants a secret report that is due to arrive soon. The whole contest lasts only a few minutes. Read the story in your NCERT book first; this page helps you understand it, enjoy its twist and prepare for the board exam.

3.2 Reading the story

The story moves almost in real time. From the moment the light is switched on to the last line, only a few minutes pass, and nobody leaves the room except by the door or the window. We have split it into three parts so that you can follow each turn. The floor plan in Fig. 3.2 tracks where everyone stands; press Play to follow the moves.

3.2.1 Part I: A spy who does not look like one

Fowler is a young writer with a romantic imagination, fed on spy thrillers. He has asked to spend an evening with Ausable, a real secret agent, hoping to step into the world of espionage he knows from books. So far it has been flat. The night out at a music hall was boring, and the only contact from the secret world was a prosaic phone call to arrange a meeting. Now Fowler trudges behind his host to a cramped room at the very top of an old hotel.

Ausable himself is the biggest disappointment. He is enormously fat and breathes noisily as he talks, and twenty years in Paris have not removed the Boston accent from his French and German. He reads Fowler’s face easily and teases him about it: the young man came for danger and drama, he says, and got an untidy, overweight companion and a boring night. Then he offers his guest some comfort: a document is on its way to him tonight. Lives have been risked to get it, and it could matter to whole nations.

The evening changes with the flick of a switch. Waiting in the middle of the dark room is a man with a small automatic pistol, and this, not the music hall, gives Fowler the first real excitement of his day. Ausable stays almost unbothered. After a few blinks he greets the gunman by name, Max, admits that he has been given a fright, and asks why Max is not in Berlin.

3.2.2 Part II: A balcony out of thin air

The gunman is a slight man with a sharp, fox-like face; take away his pistol and he would hardly frighten anyone. He comes straight to the point. A report about some new missiles is being delivered to Ausable tonight, and Max intends to leave with it.

Instead of answering, Ausable sinks into his armchair and complains crossly about the hotel: intruders keep reaching his room from a balcony, and this is the second break-in within a month. Max is surprised. He had no idea there was a balcony; he simply let himself in with a passkey.

Irritated, Ausable explains at length where this balcony comes from, who it really belongs to and how intruders reach it, adding that the hotel promised to close it off and never did. (We look at the details of this speech in Section 3.3.2.) Max waves Fowler into a chair and settles down to wait about half an hour. Ausable corrects him: “Thirty-one minutes,” since the meeting is set for half past twelve. The two spies trade remarks about how each side learned of the report, and Max promises to take it back tonight.

A sudden knock interrupts them, and Ausable greets it with a smile. Because the paper is so precious, he claims, he had asked the police to look in on him tonight. He adds a warning: the door is unlocked, so they will come in whether he answers or not, and they are quick to shoot. Max’s nerve breaks. Keeping the two men covered, he backs to the window, gets a leg over the sill and threatens to fire unless the callers are sent away. The knocking grows louder, and someone outside calls for Ausable.

3.2.3 Part III: The drop and the twist

Max gets both legs over the sill while keeping his pistol trained on the two men. Just as the door handle turns, he lets go, meaning to land on the balcony. Instead the room hears one high-pitched scream, and then nothing.

The door opens on nothing more frightening than Henry, a waiter delivering the drinks Ausable had ordered for his return. Once he has gone, the pale and shaken Fowler asks about the police, and about Max, who might climb back in at any moment. Ausable’s calm reply ends the story: no police were ever coming, Max will not be back, and there is no balcony.

That last line makes us replay the whole story. The balcony was invented, and so were the police. Ausable knew a harmless waiter was on his way, and he used that knock to frighten Max out of a window that opened onto a long drop. The writer never tells us what happened to Max; the scream and Ausable’s quiet words say enough. A sudden reveal like this, which changes the meaning of everything before it, is called a twist ending.

3.3 Think about it

Your textbook’s Think about it questions ask you to look back at the whole story: at spies in fiction, at the invented balcony, and at the moment Ausable hit upon his plan. This section works through each idea in turn, then looks at the characters, the themes and the title, which board papers ask about often.

3.3.1 Spies on the page and screen

Fiction gives us two kinds of secret hero. Detectives such as Sherlock Holmes or Satyajit Ray’s Feluda solve mysteries through sharp observation. Spies such as James Bond live in a world of gadgets, fast cars and fights. Both kinds usually look the part: lean, alert and well dressed. Ausable looks nothing like them, and that is the point. His strength stays hidden until he needs it.

Notice that Ausable is closer to a detective than to Bond. He never fires a shot or throws a punch. Like Holmes or Feluda, he wins because he notices more and thinks faster than the person facing him.

3.3.2 The balcony that never was

Why does an experienced spy like Max believe in a balcony he has never seen? Because Ausable never offers it as information. He complains about it, the way a tired man complains about a leaking tap, and Max overhears what sounds like a private grievance. A bluff works best when the other person thinks he has discovered the truth for himself. Look at how the details are put together:

• It comes as a complaint. Ausable grumbles mostly to Fowler and sounds annoyed with the hotel, not worried about Max.
• It has happened before. An intruder used it last month, so Max can picture another agent doing just that.
• Someone is to blame. The management promised to close it off and failed: a dull, realistic detail that makes the story sound true.
• It has a history. His room was once part of a bigger set of rooms, so a balcony belonging to the neighbouring room is easy to imagine.
• It has a route. He explains how an intruder reaches it from an empty room a little way along the corridor.
• It pays off later. When the knock comes, Max needs a hiding place at once, and the balcony is already waiting in his mind.

3.3.3 When was the plan born?

Your textbook asks you to decide when Ausable’s trick was born. Good answers rest on evidence, so begin with what Ausable could and could not have known.

Not planned in advance. Ausable could not have prepared for Max, because he did not know Max was in the room until the light came on. His blinking suggests a moment of real surprise.

Built in seconds, from what he already knew. He did know two facts that Max did not: his window opened onto empty air, and a waiter would soon knock with the drink he had ordered. Within seconds of sitting down he is grumbling about the balcony, which suggests he saw the shape of the trick almost at once: plant a hiding place, wait for the knock, then make Max want to hide.

Finished as events came. Some details he fitted in on the spot: calling the caller ‘the police’, warning that they would shoot, and pointing out that the door was unlocked. So the most convincing answer is a mix. The idea came in a flash, built on what he knew; the details were added as things happened. That is exactly what presence of mind means.

3.3.4 The characters

Board questions often ask for a character sketch. Name a quality, then prove it with something the character says or does. The table gives evidence for Ausable; the paragraphs after it cover the others.

Max is Ausable’s opposite. He is slim, armed and sure of himself, and he has done his homework: he knows about the report and when it will arrive. Yet he is overconfident and hasty. He accepts every word Ausable says, never checks the window, and panics at the mention of police. The pistol gives him power for a few minutes, but in a battle of wits he is outclassed.

Fowler is young, eager and easily impressed. The narrator stays close to his point of view, so through his eyes we see only a dull fat man and are surprised along with him. The pistol and the scream badly frighten him, and in the final lines he is still struggling to catch up. Henry, the waiter, never learns the part he has played: an ordinary man doing his job becomes, in Ausable’s story, the armed police.

3.3.5 Themes, suspense and the twist

• Presence of mind beats force. An unarmed man defeats a gunman with a calm voice and a good story.
• Appearances deceive. The fat, untidy spy is the most dangerous person in the room; the armed, alert one is the easiest to fool.
• The romance and the reality of spying. Real secret work, the story suggests, needs nerve, patience and brains more than glamour.
• Knowledge is power. Ausable wins because he knows his room, his hotel and his own arrangements better than his enemy does.

The title. Max is the uninvited visitor. Ausable says thirty-one minutes remain before a 12:30 meeting, so it is 11:59 pm while Max holds the two men at gunpoint. The title is literally true. It also has a sly ring: midnight callers in thrillers are usually frightening, but this one ends up as the victim.

How the suspense works. The writer raises and lowers the tension like a wave, as Fig. 3.4 shows. Boredom gives way to the shock of the pistol; the balcony talk eases things a little; the knock and the climb over the sill push the tension up to the climax, the scream. The waiter brings a moment of relief, and the last line delivers the twist. The story is so short that the suspense never has time to fade.

Irony. The story is full of irony. The man with the gun is the one in real danger. Fowler wanted a thrilling spy, and the ‘dull’ one gives him the most thrilling night of his life. Ausable warns Max about armed police, yet the only caller carries nothing more dangerous than a bottle. Each of these is situational irony: what happens is the opposite of what seemed likely.

3.4 Talk about it: presence of mind

Ausable’s great quality is presence of mind. Your textbook asks you to share examples of it and to think about how you would act in some everyday emergencies.

Presence of mind is not a gift that some people are simply born with. It grows out of preparation. Ausable could act in seconds because he already knew his room, his hotel and his own arrangements. In the same way, someone who has already pictured a kitchen fire or a road accident, and decided what to do, has a plan ready when panic tries to take over. Fig. 3.5 breaks the habit into four moves.

3.4.1 Stories of quick thinking

3.4.2 What would you do?

The textbook lists six everyday emergencies and asks how you would handle each. The table sums up safe first steps; your group can add more. Keep yourself safe, call for help early, and do only what you know is safe. In India, 112 connects you to police, fire and ambulance services.

3.5 Beyond the story

3.5.1 Suggested reading

3.5.2 Haiku

3.6 Board exam practice

In the board exam, Footprints without Feet is tested through extract-based questions and short and long answers. Short answers need about 40–50 words, long answers about 100–120. Write in your own words, name the character or event clearly, and support every claim with something from the story. Each model answer ends with the key points an examiner looks for.