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The Midnight Visitor, by Robert Arthur, is chapter 3 of Footprints Without Feet, the supplementary reader on the CBSE Class 10 English Language and Literature syllabus for 2026-27. It is a short spy story where nobody fires a shot. The hero wins with one invented detail. Below is the plot in plain words, the trick step by step, the three characters, and a plan for your board answers.
What happens in The Midnight Visitor?
The NCERT chapter opens with Fowler, a young writer, following a secret agent named Ausable to his room in a gloomy French hotel. Fowler is let down. Ausable is very fat, wheezes when he talks, and has kept the American accent he brought to Paris from Boston twenty years earlier. His room is small and sits on the sixth and top floor.
Ausable tells Fowler that a very important paper will be brought to him that night. When he switches on the light, a rival agent called Max is standing in the room with a small pistol. Max has come for that paper, a report about some new missiles. He says he got in with a passkey.
Ausable sits down and grumbles that this is the second time in a month someone has entered through the balcony under his window, which the hotel promised to block off. Max had not known about any balcony. They settle down to wait for the report, due at twelve-thirty, about half an hour away.
Then someone knocks. Ausable says it is the police, whom he asked to check on him. Max panics, climbs out of the window to hide on the balcony, and threatens to shoot if Ausable does not send them away. As he drops, he screams once. The door opens on a waiter, Henry, bringing a drink Ausable had ordered earlier. Ausable then tells the shaken Fowler, "there is no balcony."
How does Ausable trick Max?
The diagram at the top shows the events in order. The lie works because Ausable builds it slowly and never asks Max to do anything.
He plants the balcony early. He complains about it as an annoyance, not a hiding place, so it sounds true.
He adds dull, specific details. The room was once part of a bigger flat, the balcony belongs to the next room, and the management has not blocked it. Boring details are believable details.
He lets an ordinary event do the rest. A knock comes, and he calls it the police. Max now has a reason to run.
He leaves Max one exit. The only escape Max can see is the window, so he takes it himself.
Who are the main characters in The Midnight Visitor?
Ausable: looks nothing like a film spy, yet he stays calm with a gun pointed at him and thinks faster than his enemy. His looks hide his skill.
Max: slim, sharp-faced and armed, but he believes what he is told and acts out of fear when the knock comes.
Fowler: a romantic young writer who expected glamour. He stands in for the reader, so his shock at the end is ours too.
What are the themes of The Midnight Visitor?
Appearance versus reality: the clumsy-looking agent is the dangerous one, and the armed man is the weak one.
Brains over force: a quick, believable story beats a pistol.
Calm under pressure: Ausable keeps his voice irritated and ordinary, so Max never suspects a plan.
If you liked this twist, compare it with A Question of Trust, the next chapter, where a careful thief is fooled instead, and with The Thief's Story, another chapter where a thief meets someone he did not expect.
How do you answer exam questions on The Midnight Visitor?
The CBSE 2026-27 syllabus sets two of three short questions from this reader at 40-50 words each for 3 marks, and one of two long questions at about 100-120 words for 6 marks.
For a short answer, use three sentences: what happened, how, and what it shows. Example: Ausable got rid of Max by convincing him that a balcony ran under the only window. When a knock came, he claimed it was the police, so Max climbed out to hide and dropped into empty air. It shows that quick, calm thinking can defeat a pistol.
For a long answer, such as a character sketch of Ausable, plan four parts:
Claim: his appearance hides a sharp mind.
Evidence: his looks and accent, then the balcony story and the knock.
Interpretation: he stays calm and turns an ordinary event into a weapon.
Close: link back to the twist and the theme of appearance versus reality.
Fermi is a STEM learning platform, so it does not teach English, but if your board preparation also covers science and maths, the Fermi Concept Library covers every concept in physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics and computing. For the title chapter of this reader, read our Footprints without Feet summary, themes and questions.
