The Midnight Visitor Class 10

This is Chapter 3 of the NCERT Class 10 English supplementary reader Footprints Without Feet: ‘The Midnight Visitor’, a short spy story by Robert Arthur. The chapter runs about six printed pages — a five-minute story, then discussion exercises, a glossary and a two-poem Haiku feature. The official chapter PDF is linked right below, and the explanation follows it.

Download the official NCERT chapter PDF

The Midnight Visitor appears in Footprints Without Feet, the NCERT-published English supplementary reader for Class 10. The book’s official edition is available on ncert.nic.in, where the complete book PDF is published chapter by chapter for free.

Open the official NCERT textbook page and download The Midnight Visitor Class 10 chapter PDF so you can read the story exactly as it is printed in the school edition — then keep the text beside you while you work through the explanation below.

Chapter at a glance

The chapter is one compact spy story with a twist ending, followed by the book’s usual discussion exercises and a short poetry feature. Everything inside the six printed pages sits in one of these blocks:

Tip: the whole story is about five minutes of reading, so this is one chapter you can finish completely in a single sitting.

What this chapter teaches: the story and the twist

Here is the story in your own words — who is in the room, what each person wants, and why the final line lands. The PDF above has the full text; use this map to know what to look for as you read.

The setup: a secret agent who looks nothing like one

Robert Arthur’s story is set in a small room on the sixth floor of a gloomy French hotel. Ausable is a secret agent — and that is the joke of the story. He is very fat, speaks French and German only passably, and still carries the American accent he brought to Paris from Boston twenty years earlier.

His evening has been a dull one at a French music hall, and the only message he received was a prosaic telephone call making an appointment in his room. Fowler, the young romantic writer who has come to meet him, is disillusioned — he wanted mysterious figures, pistols and danger.

The conflict: Max and the report

Max is already in the room. The moment the light comes on, Fowler sees him standing halfway across it with a small automatic pistol. Max wants the report that is being brought to Ausable that night — an important paper concerning some new missiles.

How Ausable invents the balcony

Ausable has no weapon, so he fights with words. When a knock comes at the door, he calmly says it is the police — extra protection he claims to have asked for, given the importance of the paper. The knock is real, but it is only Henry the waiter arriving with the drink Ausable ordered; Max does not know that.

Then Ausable invents the balcony. It is not his, he says with irritation — it belongs to the next apartment.

His backstory: this room was once part of a large unit, the next room was the living room, its balcony now extends under his window, you can reach it from the empty room two doors down, someone used it last month, and the management promised to block it off but never did.

The lie works because it is boringly specific — the kind of small complaint a real resident would make about a hotel. Cornered between the ‘police’ at the door and the ‘balcony’ out the window, Max chooses the window. He swings a leg over the sill, drops — and screams once, shrilly.

The ending is Fowler’s. He sees the waiter, not the police; Ausable explains that no police ever came — only Henry, whom he was expecting. When Fowler asks about the man out on the balcony, the reply is the story’s last line: ‘There is no balcony.’

Three craft points worth saying aloud

• Everything planted is paid off. The drink Ausable ordered explains the knock at the door; the sixth-floor room makes the window the only believable escape; the half-hour wait for the report sets the pressure.
• The balcony lie is built from ordinary, concrete detail, so it sounds like memory rather than invention. That is what convinces Max — and the reader.
• The author saves the true ending for the final line. Every line before it supports Ausable’s story, so the surprise lands.

The chapter is text-centred: there are no diagrams or figures to decode, so the story’s words carry everything.

The READ AND FIND OUT questions, answered

READ AND FIND OUT boxes are printed inside the story, not at the end. Each box asks a question that the next part of the story answers, so the boxes are the book telling you what to notice while you read. Here are all four questions with the answers they were guiding you toward:

How is Ausable different from other secret agents?

He does not match the spies of fiction. He is very fat, speaks French and German only passably, kept the American accent he brought from Boston twenty years ago, and his evening consists of a dull music hall and one prosaic telephone call. The difference is the point: the romantic idea of a spy versus the ordinary reality.

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

Fowler is a young romantic writer who asked to meet a secret agent, and he is disappointed all evening — until Ausable switches on the light. His first authentic thrill comes when he sees Max standing halfway across the room with a small automatic pistol.

How has Max got in?

With a passkey. When the balcony is mentioned, Max says plainly that he used a passkey and that he knew nothing of any balcony — if he had known it existed, it would have saved him some trouble.

How does Ausable say he got in?

Through the balcony. Ausable claims the balcony belongs to the next apartment and extends under his window, reachable from the empty room two doors down. It is pure invention — which is exactly why Max believes it, and why the final line surprises everyone.

The ‘Think about it’ questions and how to answer them

These three questions are the chapter’s main discussion exercise. They ask for an opinion supported by the story, not a one-line fact, so a strong answer always names its evidence.

Question 1: Ausable versus the spy of books and films

The textbook suggests comparing fiction’s detectives and spies — it names Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple and James Bond — with Ausable. The contrast is glamour versus ordinariness.

Holmes has his logic, Bond his gadgets, but Ausable is a very fat man who wheezes, dresses carelessly and receives prosaic telephone calls. The conclusion worth drawing: the romance of spying is mostly invented, and the real work can look dull from the outside.

Question 2: why the balcony story convinces Max

The story works because it is full of unglamorous, concrete detail: the room was once part of a larger unit, the next room was the living room, its balcony runs under Ausable’s window, you can get onto it from the empty room two doors down, somebody did last month, and the management promised to block it off and never did.

Nobody invents that much boring detail on the spot, Max reasons — so it must be true. The lesson for an answer: a lie wrapped in everyday specifics sounds like memory.

Question 3: did Ausable plan it all in advance?

The honest answer is that the story never states his plan, and the clues point to improvisation. The police idea appears only when the knocking starts — Ausable says, ‘That will be the police,’ as if deciding on the spot. The balcony story draws on details of the room and building around him.

So a defensible reading: Ausable did not work out the plan in detail from the beginning; he made it up, taking advantage of events as they happened. That is presence of mind, not premeditation.

Presence of mind: the ‘Talk about it’ situations

The book defines presence of mind as the ability to think quickly and act calmly and wisely in a situation of danger and surprise. It adds the key idea: presence of mind comes out of mental preparedness — you handle a crisis better if you have thought about it beforehand.

Part one of the exercise asks you to narrate an example of presence of mind from your own experience or someone else’s. Part two lists six presence of mind situations to discuss, and you may add your own:

• A small fire starts in your kitchen.
• A child starts to choke on a piece of food.
• An electrical appliance starts to hiss and gives out sparks.
• A bicycle knocks down a pedestrian.
• It rains continuously for more than twenty-four hours.
• A member of your family does not return home at the usual or expected time.

There are no fixed answers — the exercise is for speaking in pairs or groups. A prepared student runs the same check every time: what makes this safer now, what can be switched off or moved, who needs help first, and who must be called.

For the kitchen fire, one reasoning path: smother the flames if you safely can, cut off the gas supply, move everyone away from the kitchen, then call for help. Never throw water on a fire caused by oil or by a live electrical appliance.

Word meanings: the chapter’s glossary

The story closes with a short glossary of nine words. The book’s own notes are short; the table below puts each one in plainer English and adds where it appears in the story.

Haiku and suggested reading

After the exercises, the unit closes with two small features that are part of the chapter’s printed contents: a short poetry feature and a reading list.

The Haiku feature

The book explains that Haiku is a Japanese poetic form — usually three short lines — that combines form, content and language in a meaningful but compact way, on themes of nature, feelings or experiences.

The first example is the famous frog haiku by Matsuo Basho that most readers recognise: ‘An old pond! / A frog jumps in — / The sound of water.’ The second, by Issa, is addressed to a snail at the poet’s feet — the poet looks down and asks the snail when it arrived.

The suggested reading list

The book recommends three short stories: ‘After Twenty Years’ by O. Henry, ‘The Stolen Bacillus’ by H.G. Wells, and ‘The Face on the Wall’ by E.V. Lucas. Only the titles and authors are printed, with no summaries, but the pairing is clear: twist endings, suspense, and close observation of people.

Common mistakes students make in this chapter

Two confusions show up in class tests and viva: how to describe the ending, and how far the story proves Ausable planned everything. The table corrects both, plus the one vocabulary trap.

Notice that Ausable’s appearance is the joke, not the weakness: he is the one who calls himself a sloppy fat man. Reading ‘sloppy’ as an insult misses the whole point — the most effective agent in the story looks completely ordinary.

Exam notes: how to revise this chapter quickly

Footprints Without Feet is a supplementary reader, and how it is tested can differ from year to year — textbook contents and the examinable syllabus are not always identical, so check the current official syllabus for how this chapter is examined in your session. These five steps cover everything the chapter itself demands:

1. Retell the plot in four sentences, ending with the twist: there is no balcony.
2. Know the four READ AND FIND OUT answers — they are the textbook’s own comprehension questions.
3. Prepare one paragraph on Ausable versus the typical spy, using the story’s details: very fat, Boston accent, music-hall evening, prosaic telephone call.
4. Learn the nine glossed words — the chapter’s only vocabulary list.
5. Have one real-life example of presence of mind ready, because the Talk about it exercise asks for one.

The chapter’s own questions are discussion-based: Think about it and Talk about it want opinions backed by the story, so build the habit of adding a detail from the text after every point you make.

If you are revising all of Class 10 English, start at the Class 10 English notes index, then fan out to the Class 10 revision hub or the main CBSE notes library.

Two chapters you may be reading alongside this one — A Long Walk to Freedom and From the Diary of Anne Frank — have their own Class 10 revision pages if you want the same treatment for prose chapters.

Revision summary: the story in five lines

For the night before the test, here is the whole chapter in five lines:

• Ausable, a secret agent who looks nothing like one, waits in a small sixth-floor Paris hotel room for a report about new missiles.
• Fowler, a young romantic writer, is disappointed by how ordinary spy work seems.
• Max, an enemy agent, slips in with a passkey and demands the report at gunpoint.
• Ausable invents a police check at the door and a balcony under the window; Max escapes onto the ‘balcony’ and falls.
• The last line reveals the truth — there was no balcony, and presence of mind, not force, won the room.

The chapter’s message in one sentence: presence of mind — quick, calm, prepared thinking — beats physical force.

Chapter-wise notes for this subject are not published yet. The unit-wise syllabus on this page is complete and verified against the official CBSE curriculum document.

Frequently asked questions

Quick answers to the questions students most often ask about this chapter.

What is special about Ausable in The Midnight Visitor?

The point is that he is not special at all. He is very fat, speaks French and German only passably, kept his Boston accent for twenty years, and gets only prosaic telephone calls. The story deliberately contrasts him with the romanticised spy of books and films.

How does Ausable trick Max into believing there is a balcony?

He gives a boringly convincing backstory: the room was once part of a larger unit, the next room was the living room, its balcony now extends under his window, it is reachable from the empty room two doors down, someone used it last month, and the management never blocked it off. Concrete everyday detail makes the lie sound like memory.

Did Ausable plan the whole thing in advance?

The story never says so. The evidence points to improvisation — the police idea appears only when the knock happens. A good answer weighs these clues instead of answering with a flat yes or no.

What does ‘READ AND FIND OUT’ mean in this chapter?

It is the name of the question boxes printed inside the story. Each box asks a question that the next part of the story answers, guiding you to read for key details.

How many exercises does The Midnight Visitor have?

There is no numbered exercise set. Inside the story are two READ AND FIND OUT boxes with two questions each; after the story come Think about it, with three discussion questions, and Talk about it, with a presence-of-mind discussion and six situations. A glossary, a suggested-reading list and two haiku close the unit.

Who wrote The Midnight Visitor?

Robert Arthur. His name is printed at the end of the story, right before the chapter’s glossary.

Sources and data verification

This listing is maintained for the 2026-27 academic session using the NCERT textbook information available to us. NCERT remains the authority for confirming the latest edition.

• The chapter contents described on this page come from the NCERT Class 10 English supplementary reader Footprints Without Feet, Chapter 3, ‘The Midnight Visitor’, in the edition currently published on ncert.nic.in.
• This page covers Chapter 3 only — the rest of the book, including its other chapters, is not described here.
• The page is maintained for the current academic session using the NCERT information available to us. Textbook contents and the examinable syllabus are not always identical — check the current official syllabus.
• NCERT settles the textbook, its editions and the official PDF; CBSE settles the curriculum and examinations.

Reference: NCERT Class 10 English textbook, chapter 3, official edition on ncert.nic.in.