Chapter 3 Solutions — The Midnight Visitor

Fowler is a young and romantic writer who has come to meet Ausable because he wants to experience the adventurous life of a secret agent. He is initially disappointed to find Ausable dull and unromantic.

His first authentic thrill of the day comes when Ausable switches on the light in his room and they find a man — Max — standing halfway across the room with a small automatic pistol in his hand.

This sudden, dangerous encounter is the real, thrilling moment of espionage that the romantic young writer had hoped to witness.

In most books and films, secret agents are shown as tall, smart, handsome and physically fit, dressed elegantly and moving with confidence. They are surrounded by glamour, mystery and danger — dark-eyed beauties, the crack of pistols and thrilling chases — like the fictional characters Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple or James Bond.

Ausable, by contrast, is the exact opposite of this image. He is fat, sloppily dressed, wheezy, and lives in a small, dull room on the top floor of a gloomy hotel. He speaks with an American accent and gets his appointments through an ordinary telephone call.

Yet the story shows that a spy's real ability lies in intelligence and presence of mind, not in appearance. Despite his unglamorous looks, Ausable outwits the armed Max, proving that a sharp mind matters more than a dashing image.

Ausable pretends that Max got into the room through a balcony. He complains angrily that this is the second time in a month that somebody has got into his room "through that nuisance of a balcony".

He gives a detailed, convincing explanation: the room was once part of a large unit, and the next room used to be the living room which had a balcony that now extends under his window. He says a person can get onto it from an empty room two doors down, and that the management had promised to block it off but had not.

This entire balcony story is a trick invented by Ausable — in reality there is no balcony at all.