The Midnight Visitor Class 10 PDF: Chapter 3 Explained

Looking for the official chapter file? This page carries The Midnight Visitor Class 10 PDF — Chapter 3 of the NCERT supplementary reader Footprints Without Feet — and explains the story in plain language, from the gloomy French hotel to the twist in the final line.

The chapter is a six-page short story by Robert Arthur. The official PDF comes first below, and then the walkthrough: what happens in the story, the word meanings the book itself prints, the chapter’s own questions and activities, and the points where careful readers slip.

Download The Midnight Visitor Class 10 PDF

Chapter 3 of the Class 10 English supplementary reader Footprints Without Feet is a short story by Robert Arthur, printed across six pages of the official PDF.

The official NCERT e-textbook page for Footprints Without Feet publishes The Midnight Visitor Class 10 PDF with the complete chapter — story text, in-text question sets, glossary box and closing activities — exactly as printed in the book.

The Midnight Visitor Class 10 Chapter at a Glance

The chapter is a pure prose narrative — a complete short story with its study material wrapped around it. It has no diagrammatic figures, so everything a reader needs sits in the text itself:

• the full story text, in which Ausable, Max and Fowler meet in a sixth-floor room;
• two READ AND FIND OUT question sets printed where the answers become clear, previewing exactly what to look for next;
• a glossary box at the end of the story with the meanings of words such as espionage, wheezed and shrilly;
• the Think about it block of three reflective questions;
• the Talk about it presence-of-mind activity with six everyday situations;
• closing pages with a suggested reading list of three stories and a short note on haiku.

What Happens in The Midnight Visitor: Chapter Overview

The whole story turns on a single lie, so knowing it in advance makes the details easier to track. The chapter opens in a gloomy French hotel, in Ausable’s small room on the sixth and top floor.

Fowler, a young writer, has spent a dull evening trailing Ausable around Paris and is let down — he expected mysterious figures, the crack of pistols and drugs in the wine, and got a dull evening instead.

Ausable is expecting a report on new missiles, a paper that several people have risked their lives for. The rival agent Max is already inside the room, holding a small automatic pistol, ready to take the report. The night is then won by talk, not gunfire: Ausable invents a balcony under the window, and Max’s own fear does the rest.

Key Concepts: the Report, the Balcony Lie and Presence of Mind

These three ideas are the engine of the story. Understand the report, the balcony lie and presence of mind, and every scene below makes sense.

• The report on new missiles. This is the prize Max wants and the reason the night is dangerous. Ausable describes it as a paper for which men and women have risked their lives — the kind of document that could change the course of history. The reader never sees it handed over; the night ends first.
• The balcony lie. Ausable builds the balcony entirely out of words in one irritated speech. It is an ordinary lie, full of small details — a shared wall, a room once part of a larger unit, an intruder the month before — and its very ordinariness is why Max believes it.
• Presence of mind. The chapter’s Talk about it block defines presence of mind as the ability to think quickly and act calmly and wisely in a situation of danger and surprise. That is Ausable’s whole method: he stays calm and lets Max’s fear do the work, never touching the gun.

Use this table to fix who is who and what each man does during the night:

The chapter’s third Think about it question asks what readers argue about most: did Ausable plan everything in advance, or did he improvise as events happened? The book leaves the question open for discussion rather than settling it — a reader can defend either reading from the text.

Story Walkthrough: One Night in Ausable’s Sixth Floor Room

The chapter has no diagrams, so the walkthrough follows scenes instead. Eight beats carry the whole night, in order:

1. In the corridor, Fowler is let down. Ausable wheezes that he is a dull, fat man whose evening ends with a prosaic telephone call — not messages slipped into his hand by dark-eyed beauties.
2. Inside the room, Ausable switches on the light — and a man stands halfway across it, holding a small automatic pistol. This is Fowler’s first authentic thrill of the day.
3. The man is Max, and Ausable blinks a few times before greeting him: he thought Max was in Berlin.
4. Max murmurs that he wants the report on the new missiles being brought that night, and that it will be safer in his hands.
5. Ausable, with extreme irritation, builds the balcony in one speech: it belongs to the next apartment; this room used to be part of a larger unit; the balcony extends under his window; someone got onto it from the empty room two doors down last month; the management promised to block it off but never did.
6. Max says he came in with a passkey and had not known about the balcony — knowing of it might have saved him some trouble.
7. A knock comes. Ausable claims it is the police he called for extra protection. With the door unlocked and the knocking repeated, Max backs to the window and swings a leg over the sill, warning Ausable to send them away.
8. As the doorknob turns, Max drops to the balcony, screaming once. The door opens to a waiter — Henry — with the drink Ausable ordered. The police were never there, and the last line lands: there is no balcony.

Notice that the reader learns the truth at the same moment Fowler does. We watch Max believe the lie, hear the waiter arrive, and only then hear the final line — that timing is what makes the twist land.

Word Meanings From the Chapter, Explained in Context

The chapter prints a small word-meaning box at the end of the story. Each meaning below is tied to the moment where the word appears in the tale:

These are the chapter’s own glossary entries, so they carry exactly the sense the story needs — passably is not praise, and romantic describes Fowler’s imagination, not love.

Talk About It: Applying Presence of Mind Outside the Story

This is the chapter’s classroom activity, and it turns the story’s theme into a life skill. The Talk about it block defines presence of mind as the ability to think quickly and act calmly and wisely in a situation of danger and surprise, then asks you to find it in real life.

The block first asks you to narrate a personal example of presence of mind, from your own experience or from a story you know. It then sets six situations for discussion, on the idea that presence of mind comes out of mental preparedness — thinking about possible problems before they happen:

• 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 family member does not return home at the usual or expected time.

Take the first situation: a small fire starts in your kitchen. A model answer in the spirit of the exercise: stay calm rather than panic; move people away first; then act or call for help; and remove the danger only later, if it is safe.

The same three moves can anchor the discussion of the other five situations — protect people first, then act or call for help, then remove the danger if safe. Keep all of this as discussion material for the activity, not as certified safety advice.

Common Mistakes in Reading The Midnight Visitor

The story is short but easy to misread, because the twist depends on two things set up to sound real — a police knock and a balcony. The table names each error and the story detail that corrects it:

How to Use This Chapter for Practice

Here is the honest framing: this is practice material, not a prediction of exam questions. The chapter’s own question blocks train comprehension, reflection, discussion and writing, in the order the book intends.

• READ AND FIND OUT — direct comprehension questions printed at the point of reading. The first set asks how Ausable is different from other secret agents, and who Fowler is and what his first authentic thrill is. The second asks how Max got in, and how Ausable says he got in. A full answer names the character and points to the line that settles it: a passkey versus a balcony.
• Think about it — three open reflective questions: how fictional secret agents look, how Ausable makes the balcony convincing, and whether he planned the night in advance.
• Talk about it — the discussion activity on presence of mind, explained above.

Think about it question 2 asks how Ausable manages to make Max believe the balcony exists. A full answer needs three moves: a first sentence stating the method, two supporting details from the story, and a closing line tying the trick to presence of mind. Here is a model paragraph using that shape:

Ausable makes the balcony believable by making it feel like an old annoyance rather than a trap. He does not present it as information; he complains about it.

The room was once part of a larger apartment, he explains, and the next room’s balcony now runs under his own window; someone got onto it last month from the empty room two doors down, and the management never blocked it off.

Every detail is small, concrete and easy to picture, and none can be tested from inside the room. Max is a spy who looks for lies, but this sounds like a tenant’s grievance, not a trick. That is presence of mind: Ausable builds a story so ordinary that suspicion has nowhere to settle.

If you adapt the model, keep the same architecture — method, evidence, why it worked — and put the story’s own details in your own sentences.

Two practical points. Textbook contents and the examinable syllabus are not always identical — check the current official CBSE syllabus for what is being assessed.

For more practice, the Class 10 English notes hub collects chapter-wise resources, with the Class 10 notes hub and the main CBSE notes index covering the rest of your subjects. You’ll also find notes for First Flight chapters such as Nelson Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom and From the Diary of Anne Frank if you are revising the whole book.

The Chapter in Six Beats: From First Lines to Final Twist

The fastest way to re-see the chapter’s shape — six beats, in order, from the first lines to the final twist:

1. Fowler is let down by the unromantic Ausable in the corridor.
2. The light switch reveals Max and his pistol — Fowler’s first thrill.
3. Max wants the report on the new missiles.
4. Ausable invents the balcony, then claims the knock is the police.
5. Max jumps for a balcony that is not there.
6. The waiter arrives, the police were never real, and the last line lands the twist.

The story is only one of several reading items in the chapter. It is followed by the glossary box, the question blocks, a suggested reading list, and a short note on haiku.

The note explains haiku as a Japanese poetic form: compact, with the most common shape being three short lines, and its themes drawn from nature, feelings or experiences. Two example poems sit beside it — Matsuo Basho’s frog jumping into an old pond, and Issa’s lines to a snail at his feet.

Next Steps: What Sits Around This Chapter in the Book

This chapter sits inside the NCERT Class 10 English supplementary reader Footprints Without Feet. To move through the book:

• browse the Class 10 English book page for the full book listing;
• go back to the previous chapter in Footprints Without Feet, or forward to the next chapter in the same book.

The chapter also ends by recommending three further short stories as reading: “After Twenty Years” by O. Henry, “The Stolen Bacillus” by H. G. Wells and “The Face on the Wall” by E. V. Lucas. These are the chapter’s own suggestions.

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.

This page describes Chapter 3 of the NCERT Class 10 English supplementary reader Footprints Without Feet, official edition published on ncert.nic.in.

It covers this one chapter of that book; it does not describe the CBSE curriculum or any other textbook.

The listing is maintained for the current academic session using the NCERT information available to us.

NCERT settles textbooks, editions and official PDFs; CBSE settles the curriculum, syllabus and examinations.

Reference: NCERT Class 10 English Footprints without Feet textbook, chapter 3, official edition on ncert.nic.in.

Frequently Asked Questions About The Midnight Visitor

Who is the midnight visitor in Class 10 English?

Max, the rival agent, is the “midnight visitor.” He lets himself into Ausable’s sixth-floor room with a passkey and a small automatic pistol, planning to take the report on new missiles before it reaches Ausable. He is the only character who visits that night.

How does Ausable make Max believe the balcony exists in The Midnight Visitor?

By filling the lie with invented specifics.

Ausable says the balcony belongs to the next apartment, that his room was once part of a larger unit, that the balcony now runs under his window, and that somebody climbed onto it last month from the empty room two doors down — ending with the grievance that the management promised to block it off but never did.

Every detail is concrete, untestable from inside the room, and framed as an old annoyance rather than as information Max must act on.

Who was knocking at the door at the end of The Midnight Visitor?

Henry the waiter, arriving with the drink Ausable had ordered — a tray, a bottle and two glasses. Ausable tells Max the knock is the police protecting the report, but when the door opens the story reveals the truth, and Ausable later says only Henry was expected. The police were invented.

What happens to Max at the end of The Midnight Visitor?

He swings out of the window to wait on the balcony and drops — and the balcony does not exist. He screams once as he lets go, and the story ends there, so the fall itself is left to the reader’s inference. Ausable’s last words to Fowler are that there is no balcony.

How is Ausable different from other secret agents in this chapter?

He matches no fictional description of a spy. He is very fat, speaks French and German only passably, kept his American accent through twenty years in Europe, and finishes his evening with an ordinary telephone call rather than danger and mystery. He wins the night through calm thinking, not glamour or gunplay.