The Midnight Visitor

Introduction:

The story ‘The Midnight Visitor’ is written by Robert Arthur. It is about a secret spy from Paris whose physical appearance is far from a typical dashing and daring agent. But he shows exceptional intelligence. The story revolves around three characters, two rival spies named Ausable and Max and one mystery writer Fowler.

About the author:

Robert Jay Arthur was born on November 10, 1909 in the Philippines. He was a mystery writer known for ‘The Mysterious Traveler’ radio series and his ‘Three Investigators’ series of novels. He also wrote a number of mystery books, mostly for children.

Summary:

Ausable is a chubby, and clumsy man while Max is slender and rugged. Ausable meets Fowler, a writer fascinated by spies. Ausable is expecting a sensitive document to arrive that night. Disappointed at Ausable’s appearance, Fowler follows Ausable to his room on the 6^th floor.

They are startled by the presence of Max, the rival spy with a gun. He threatens Ausable to hand over the documents to him as soon as they arrive. Acting composed Ausable sits down and complains about the balcony window that he thought Max used to break into his room. Max claims that he used ta passkey key to get inside.  

Suddenly there is a knock at the door. Ausable says that it must be the police. He reveals that he had asked the police to protect the document. Max gets anxious and asks Ausable to send them away. He intends to hide in the balcony. Max jumps out of the window and falls down. There is no balcony at all. A waiter brings Ausable’s drinks. There are no police. Fowler is impressed by Ausable’s presence of mind.

Meanings of words and phrases:

• musty: smelling unpleasantly old and slightly wet
• gloomy: dark or poorly lit place
• romantic: of, characterized by, or suggestive of an idealized view of reality
• wheezily: breathing with a whistling or rattling sound in the chest
• grunting: a low, rough noise
• scarcely: hardly
• accent: a distinctive way of pronouncing a language, especially one associated with a particular country, area, or social class
• passably: satisfactory but not excellent
• spy: a person employed by a government or other organization to secretly obtain information on an enemy or competitor
• espionage: the discovering of secrets, especially political or military information of another country or the industrial information of a business
• envisioned: to imagine as a future possibility
• sloppy: something or someone careless and unsystematic
• prosaic: without interest, imagination, and excitement
• chuckled: laugh quietly
• frustrated: annoyed or less confident
• disillusioned: disappointed and unhappy because of discovering the truth about something or someone that you liked or respected
• authentic: real or true
• thrill: a feeling of extreme excitement
• crafty: clever, especially in a dishonest or secret way
• countenance: a person s face or facial expression
• menacing: the presence of danger
• raise the devil: cause a commotion
• grimly: a very serious, gloomy, or depressing manner
• nuisance: annoying or causing trouble
• inflection: a time of sudden, noticeable, or important change
• passkey: a key to the door of a restricted area, given only to those who are officially allowed access
• explanatorily: a way in which an explanation is given about something
• stiffly: not relaxed or friendly
• gesture: a movement of the hands, arms, or head, etc. to express an idea or feeling
• evilly: morally wrong or bad
• grasped: seize and hold firmly
• deftly: a skillful, clever, or quick way
• uncorked: to open a bottle by pulling out its cork
• stammered: to speak or say something with unusual pauses or repeated sounds

Character Sketch:

Ausable:

Ausable proves to be a very clever man, in spite of his looks and mannerism. He thinks of a plan to get rid of Max as soon as he saw him.  He creates the impression that there is a balcony just beneath the window. He is aware that the waiter will be coming to deliver his drinks. He makes Max believe that there are police at the door to protect the missile documents. Max intends to hide in the balcony and warns Ausable to send away the police. Poor Max jumps through the window to his death, falling from the 6th-floor window. Thus, we see that although Ausable doesn’t match the description of a typical spy, he surely has the brains of one.

Textual Questions and Answers: (Page 14)

Q. How is Ausable different from other secret agents?

Ausable is different from other secret agents because he was very fat, lived in a room on the top floor of a gloomy French hotel, and could only speak French passably although he had been living in Paris for over 20 years. His voice still had an American touch to it. He used to receive messages via telephone instead of dark-eyed beauties getting him his messages. So he was very different from the way other secret agents are.

Q. Who is Fowler and what is his first authentic thrill of the day?

Fowler is a young writer who comes to meet Ausable. He is bored sitting with Ausable in a music hall as he had thought that the country’s secret agent would be thrilling and exciting but nothing of that sort happened. After some time when they were coming back to Ausable’s room, Fowler saw a man holding a gun standing in the room. So that is when he feels that the life of a secret agent can be exciting.

(Page 15)

Q. How has Max got in?

Max had got in with a master key or passkey.

Q. How does Ausable say he got in?

Ausable says that he thought that Max had got in through the balcony. He said that it was a nuisance as it was not even his own balcony and that it was the second time somebody had got in using that same balcony.

(Page 18)

Q. How does Ausable manage to make Max believe that there is a balcony attached to his room? Look back at his detailed description of it. What makes it a convincing story?

When Ausable says that he had complained to the management earlier about someone entering the room from the balcony that is beneath his window., Max started thinking that had he known there was a balcony, it would have been much easier for him to get to Ausable’s room. Ausable then tells Max that he wanted extra protection for the papers that were supposed to come in that day and that he had informed the police who were knocking on the door, checking on him. This made Max very nervous and he thought that he would wait for the police to go on the balcony. Without realizing it, he jumped out of the window and did not realize that there was no balcony. So the way Ausable thinks calmly and quickly makes the story a lot more convincing.