Chapter 3 — The Midnight Visitor

The story follows Ausable, a secret agent, who must outwit a rival spy named Max who threatens him with a pistol to steal an important missile report. Ausable uses quick thinking and an invented story about a balcony to trick Max into fleeing—to a balcony that doesn't exist.

Ausable is fat, speaks with an American accent, lives in an ordinary small room in a gloomy French hotel, and receives business by prosaic telephone calls—not the romantic, glamorous spy figure Fowler expected. He defeats danger through intelligence, not action.

Max is a rival spy with crafty, fox-like features. He breaks into Ausable's room with a pistol, demanding a report about new missiles that is being delivered that night. He believes the report will be safer in his hands.

Fowler is a young writer who comes to meet Ausable hoping for romantic spy adventure—mysterious figures, pistol cracks, drugs in wine. Instead, he experiences a dull evening at a music hall, then witnesses the real thrill when Max appears at gunpoint in Ausable's room.

Ausable tells Max about a balcony outside his window that belongs to the neighboring apartment, explaining how someone broke in the previous month the same way. He describes it in detail to make it convincing. When he claims police are arriving, Max flees to the non-existent balcony.

After Max screams and disappears, a waiter enters with a drink Ausable had ordered. Fowler realizes there were no police. Ausable then reveals: "There is no balcony." Max's entire escape was fabricated by Ausable's persuasive story and quick thinking.

Max says he arrived by using a passkey, not knowing about the balcony. Ausable's detailed, convincing description of the balcony's layout, access points, and history (someone broke in last month) makes Max believe it exists. When desperate, Max accepts the story without questioning it.

The story celebrates intelligence, presence of mind, and quick thinking as superior to physical danger or glamorous action. Ausable defeats a dangerous enemy not through violence but by thinking on his feet and crafting a persuasive lie.

Arthur presents Ausable as the opposite of the romantic spy stereotype—fat, ordinary, unglamorous—yet proves him the most effective through wit. The reader, like Fowler, expects action and drama but discovers that intelligence and presence of mind are the real thrill.

Fowler expected a glamorous spy from fiction (James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, etc.) but found a fat, dull man. His first authentic thrill comes when he sees Max pointing a pistol at Ausable—then he witnesses Ausable's clever trick unfold, proving that real intelligence is more exciting than fantasy.

Ausable tells Fowler the paper is quite important and several people have risked their lives for it. He says that soon the paper may well affect the course of history, adding that there is drama in this thought—this builds suspense before Max's arrival.

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