Summary of ‘The Midnight Visitor’ Class 10 Footprints without Feet: ‘The Midnight Visitor’ is the story of a secret agent Ausable who is to get some confidential report of great importance but another secret agent Max tries to get those reports at gun point. Ausable proves wise enough to outwit him. Here is goven summary of the lesson ‘The Midnight Visitor’.

Summary: The Midnight Visitor

Fowler meets Ausable and is disappointed

Fowler, a young writer, came to meet Ausable possibly to see and observe the life style of secret agents in real sense. Fowler was disappointed as Ausable did not show any of secret agent type features. He was very fat, spoke French and German in American accent. He lived in a gloomy French hotel with musty corridors. Ausable realised the disappointment of Fowler and assured him of some action soon. He told him that he was to receive some important papers or whom many men and women had risked their lives.

Threat from Another Secret Agent Max

Ausable and Fowler entered Ausable’s hotel room but were shocked to see another secret agent named Max waiting in the room with an automatic pistol pointed at them. Max was there because he had come to know that Ausable was going to receive an important report about some new missiles that night. Max threatened to shoot if Ausable tried to act smart.

Ausable outwits Max through the Balcony Issue

To ensure the report’s safety as well as his own and the writer’s safety, Ausable invented a story about anybody entering his home easily through a balcony just below the window in his room. Actually, there was no balcony- if anybody climbed out from the window, he would fall to his death, as the room was on the sixth floor. However, Max told them that he had entered the room through the door using a pass key.

Max Jumps through the Window

Suddenly, there was a knocking on the door and Ausable pretended that it was the local police, who had been asked to provide an extra security for the important document he was about to receive. When the knocking was repeated, Max become angry at Ausable and decided to wait in the balcony (which he thought existed) until the police went away. Max freed his hands off the window panes and dropped to the balcony making a shrill cry once. When the door opened, a waiter came in with drinks which Ausable had ordered to be delivered to his room when he had returned to the hotel.

Infact balcony did not exist

Fowler was smelling any future threat from Max once he realised that he was befooled. He asked “But won’t that man out on the balcony…?” Ausable told him that there was no such balcony as he described and so Max would not return.