Summary: The Midnight Visitor by Robert Arthur
In this story, we have three characters.
Ausable: a secret agent, who is some fat in body structure, speaks French and German, but still carries his American accent in his speech.
Max: Another Secret Agent
Fowler: A young and romantic type of writer
As the text of the lesson begins, we find two characters talking together while passing through the dusty and dark corridor of a cheap and old-fashioned French hotel.
As we already know, that Ausable is a secret agent, who had a call from a young and romantic type of writer, named, Fowler, who wants to record an interview of Ausable as a spy dealing in espionage and dangers.
Ausable is at present telling Fowler that he must have felt bored in that cheap hotel, in which he had to pass a dull evening in a French music hall with a fat sloppy (lazy) man. As they reached the top floor, Ausable unlocked a room in which he was staying. He himself stood aside to let the guest enter. During the process of opening the door and letting his guest enter the room, Ausable told him that presently he (Fowler) was going to have an exciting experience of his life.
An important paper would reach him in the room and it was the paper for which several men and women have risked their lives. After some time, that paper may well affect the course of history. Saying all that he closed the door behind him and switched on the light. The moment light spread into the room, Fowler had a real thrill of the day. A man stood just halfway in the room with a small automatic pistol in his hand.
Ausable blinked his eyes in sheer surprise. For some moments he could not understand who that man was and wherefrom he had entered the room as it was locked from the outside.
The man who stood with a pistol was Max, another spy, who wanted to snatch that important paper from Ausable. On being asked by Ausable what he was doing in his room, Max clarified his intention that he wanted to grab the report on new missiles from him.
Now, it was really testing time for Ausable. He made up a quick plan to get rid of the intruder. He reacted in a very real and natural way. He did not show panic, rather he sat down on an armchair showing his anger not at Max, the intruder, but at the management of the hotel.
He uttered grimly (seriously), ““This is the second time in a month that somebody has got into my room through that nuisance (troublesome) of a balcony!”
There was a single window in the room and Fowler started looking in that direction, where it was there in the wall.
Ausable was trying to show Max that below that window, there was a balcony, that was used by some intruder previously also. But in reality, there was no such a balcony there.
Max remarked that he did not enter the room through the balcony but by using a master key. He also said that it would have saved his trouble if he had known it before.
After that, Ausable continued speaking on the topic of ‘balcony’ and explained to him that it was the balcony of another apartment. In a way, he wanted to make Max believe that Ausable was really speaking the truth about the balcony and he was really showing his resentment toward the carelessness of the management., which had promised to block it off.
Max stood stiffly with his gun. He waved the gun towards Fowler and Ausable and told them to sit because they had to wait for half an hour.
Ausable told him that they would have to wait for thirty-one minutes, not thirty. The appointment was fixed to take place at twelve-thirty.
Then Ausable asked him how he came to know about the report. Max also wanted to know how they got the report.
In this way, Ausable kept the man engaged in conversation. Suddenly, a knock on the door was being heard and it startled Max, who at once asked him who could be there at the door.
Ausable very cooly replied that it was the police.
He further said that as an important paper was reaching him, he had requested them to keep on checking inside his room to ensure that all was safe.
Max was feeling nervous and Ausable very cleverly asked him what he could do then. He also told him if he did not respond, the police would soon enter the room and they would not hesitate to shoot him.
Max had no choice but to jump out of the window on the so-called balcony. So he quickly moved towards the window and kept his pistol pointed towards Ausable and Fowler. He ordered Ausable to send the police away at once otherwise he would shoot at them. Thus he kept warning them and swung his one leg over the window-sill in order to wait on the balcony.
He said, “Send them away!” he warned. “I will wait on the balcony. Send them away or I’ll shoot and take my chances!”
As the knocking became louder and louder, Max swung his other leg down the window and grasped the frame with his free hand to support himself.
Then the knob of the door turned and Max, thinking it to be a danger to his life jumped below the window to save himself on the balcony that was never there.
As he dropped himself, he screamed only for once.
The door opened and a waiter stood inside the room with a tray, a bottle, and two glasses.
“Here is the drink you ordered for when you returned,” he said, and set the tray on the table, deftly (skillfully) uncorked the bottle, and left the room. White-faced, Fowler stared after him.
“But...” he stammered, “the police...” “There were no police.” Ausable sighed.
“Only Henry, whom I was expecting.” “But won’t that man out on the balcony…?” Fowler began.
“No,” said Ausable, “he won’t return. You see, my young friend, there is no balcony.”
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