A Secret Agent Who Disappoints
He looks like no spy you have read about.
↳ The first sentence of the story is about what he is NOT.
📚 Chapter Learning Kit
The Midnight Visitor · Class 10 English · Footprints Without Feet
English 3 topics 135 leveled MCQs 60 flashcards 4 games Free
Shared by a Veda teacher · Generated with Veda AI · Oct 2026
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💡 Key Idea
✏️ Example
💡 Key Idea
💡 Key Idea
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⚙️ Process
The whole idea, one bite at a time
Veda Bites are swipeable micro-lessons — each one teaches exactly one idea. Here's a taste from this kit; the app has the full deck.
The Wrong Sort of Setting
Nothing here says 'adventure'.
↳ Every prop of the spy thriller is removed before anything happens.
A Young Romantic Writer
Who is Fowler?
A writer, young and romantic — the glossary gives ‘romantic’ as having a fantastic view of reality.
↳ He is a spectator throughout — and the person being taught.
A Complaint, Not a Claim
He grumbles about it.
Ausable sits down heavily and says he will raise the devil with the management — the second time in a month somebody has used that nuisance of a balcony.
↳ He never once asks Max to believe him.
How Max Really Got In
Here is the slip.
↳ A set textbook question: he came in with a passkey, not over a balcony.
The Balcony Story
Now the detail.
↳ Six details, none of which anybody would bother to invent.
📖 Smart notes
What you'll study, topic by topic
1
A Secret Agent Who Disappoints, and a Man With a Gun
Fowler, a young romantic writer, has spent a dull evening trailing a fat, wheezing, American-accented spy around Paris and is thoroughly let down. Ausable teases him about it, promises him a paper that may affect history…
- Ausable matches no description of a secret agent that Fowler has ever read — which is the first thing the story tells us, and the point on w…
- The setting is deliberately unromantic: a musty corridor in a gloomy French hotel, and a small room on the sixth and top floor, hardly the p…
- Ausable is fat — very fat — and wheezes when he speaks. Although his French and German are passable, twenty years in Paris have never rubbed…
~26 min · full explanation, examples & memory tricks in the app
2
The Balcony That Max Never Checked
Ausable complains to nobody in particular about a balcony under his window, and Max — who came in with a passkey — believes every word of it. Then a knock at the door is turned into the police, and a man with a gun choos…
- Ausable sits down heavily in an armchair and complains, grimly, that he will raise the devil with the management — this being twice inside a…
- Max gives himself away at once. He asks 'Balcony?' with a rising note, says he used a passkey, and admits that he did not know about the bal…
- That single sentence is what makes the trick possible: Max has just told Ausable that he knows nothing about the outside of the room, and ha…
~28 min · full explanation, examples & memory tricks in the app
3
“There Is No Balcony”
The door opens on a waiter with a tray. There were no police — only Henry, whom Ausable was expecting — and the man who went out of the window will not be coming back, because the balcony he stepped on to was never there…
- The door opens on a waiter carrying a tray, a bottle and two glasses. He says it is the drink Ausable ordered for his return, sets the tray…
- The ordinariness is the point. Nothing dramatic enters the room — the man who has just fallen six floors is answered by a waiter opening a b…
- Fowler, white-faced, manages half a sentence about the police, and Ausable sighs out the first revelation: there were no police at all, only…
~28 min · full explanation, examples & memory tricks in the app
❓ Leveled MCQ practice
Try the smart MCQs from this kit
135 questions laddered from warm-up to topper-level, each with an explanation. A taste:
How does the story introduce Ausable in its opening sentence?
Beginner
A As the most feared secret agent in the whole of Europe
B As a retired agent who had not worked for many years
C As a man who fitted no description of a secret agent Fowler had read
D As a Frenchman who had spent his life in the city of Paris
Show answer & explanation
As a man who fitted no description of a secret agent Fowler had read
The story begins by telling us what he is not.
Which set of details describes the setting of the story?
Beginner
A A musty corridor, a gloomy French hotel, and a small room on the top floor
B A grand hotel suite overlooking the centre of the city of Paris
C A quiet country house some distance outside the French capital
D A locked office in a government building guarded by armed men
Show answer & explanation
A musty corridor, a gloomy French hotel, and a small room on the top floor
It is scarcely, as the narrator puts it, a setting for a romantic adventure.
On which floor is Ausable's room, and why does it matter?
Advanced
A The ground floor, so that Max could walk in easily
B The sixth and top floor, which is what makes the ending possible
C The first floor, which is level with the balcony next door
D The second floor, which is why the fall did not kill Max
Show answer & explanation
The sixth and top floor, which is what makes the ending possible
A man dropping from a sixth-floor window has nothing at all to land on.
Which physical detail about Ausable does the story stress most?
Beginner
A That he is very tall
B That he is very old
C That he is very pale
D That he is very fat
Show answer & explanation
That he is very fat
It says so twice in the same breath, and he wheezes when he talks.
🃏 Flashcards
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🎮 Learning games
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Word Match
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Fill Blank
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