The document describes a secret agent named Ausable who is unexpectedly visited by another agent, Max, who is holding a gun. Ausable seems helpless due to his overweight and older appearance, but he is able to cleverly trick Max using his quick wit and deception. He fabricates a story about a non-existent balcony in his room, causing Max to believe the police are coming and to jump to his death. Despite his physical shortcomings, Ausable is able to outsmart his enemy through his mental abilities and presence of mind.

1. Robert Arthur

2. Questions / Activities
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Objectives
Warming up
The Midnight Visitor

3. Questions / Activities
• Have you ever seen a spy movie, or read a spy story? What is it?
Do you like it? Why?
• What is a spy like? What is your general impression of a spy?
Look at the prompts and pictures on the next slide and try to
think of as many words as possible to describe people who
work as a secret agent.

4. Age, appearance Personality
Tasks,
responsibilities
Reasons
Questions / Activities

5. Young or old?
Handsome or
ordinary-looking?
Adventurous
Courageous
Intelligent
Shrewd
Presence of mind
Collect and pass on significant
information
Recruit new agents
For money?
For ambition?
For patriotism?
They live in a secret world
of deception, fraud ,
and sometimes violence.
Espionage
Questions / Activities

6. Espionage
• [Fr.] spying
 Espionage ： the secret collection of information, or intelligence, the source
of such information wishes to protect from disclosure.
 Intelligence ：evaluated and processed information needed to make
decisions. Intelligence generally has a national security connotation and
therefore exists in an aura of secrecy.
Questions / Activities

7. An Example
• British intelligence agents secretly intercepted conversations of U.N. Secretary-
General Kofi Annan in his New York office last year.
Questions / ActivitiesWarming up

8. CIA
• Central Intelligence Agency
• Mainly for gathering secret information that may bear on national security
• Created in 1947
• The CIA also coordinates the activities of the United States intelligence community, which
includes agencies such as the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the National Security
Agency (NSA).
• In addition, the CIA takes overall responsibility for gathering information from other U.S.
intelligence agencies, analyzing the separate pieces of information from each source, and
providing a recommendation to the president of the United States and the president’s
advisers.
Questions / Activities

9. FBI
• Federal Bureau of Investigation
• Chief investigative agency of the United States
federal government and a division of the U.S.
Department of Justice
• The primary responsibility for counterespionage activities within the US.,
coordinating its work with the CIA, which is responsible for such
operations outside the US.
Questions / Activities

10. FBI
• It also provides services to other law enforcement agencies, including
fingerprint identification, laboratory analysis of criminal evidence, police
training, and access to a centralized crime information database.
• Because of its broad mandate, the FBI is one of the most powerful and
controversial agencies in the government.
• The bureau traces its origins to 1908, when the attorney general appointed a
small group of investigators within the Department of Justice.
Questions / Activities

11. KGB
• Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti
(State Security Committee)
• the government agency of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in charge of the
Soviet political police from 1954 to 1991.
• The KGB, the last in a series of Soviet security agencies dating from 1917, was officially
disbanded when the USSR collapsed.
• During its years of operation the agency’s main directive was to protect the Soviet regime
from internal and external threats by means of a vast police and spy network.
• During the cold war, both the FBI and the CIA concentrated their attention primarily on KGB
of the USSR.
Questions / Activities

12. Key points
• Ausable was a secret agent but he didn’t look like that .he
was very fat but not much tall but he is much alert in his
mind.
• Ausable had a room on the sixth and top floor of a French
Hotel.
• Fowler was a writer. Ausable told him that he would get an
important report that night concerning some new missiles.
This report could change the course of history.
• Fowler saw Max, another secret agent who threatens Fowler
with a pistol demanding the report.

13. Key points
• Ausable handled Max cleverly. He told Max that he would
complain to the hotel authorities about the balcony Which
should be closed immediately.
• There was a loud knocking at the door. Ausable smiled and told
that that was the police.
• Max got nervous. His face was black with anger .He asked
Ausable to send the police back. In the meantime he would go
and wait on the balcony.
• Max jumped into the balcony. In this way Ausable got rid of
Max.

14. Summary
• Fowler is surprised to see a secret agent Ausable who is too fat
to be a secret agent. Ausable tells him that he was going to get
an important paper for which many men have risked their lives.
When both of them reach Ausable’s room.
• Fowler is scared to see a man standing in the room.Max who
is tall and thin man and is holding an automatic pistol in his
hand . He had entered his room by using a key to take the
report concerning a new missile. Ausable ,sensing the danger,
fabricated a story about the non-existent balcony which Max
believed to be true.

15. Summary
• Ausable complained that it was due to the balcony that
somebody had entered his room the second time. After
sometime there was knocking at the door.Ausable again
befooled Max by saying that it was the police who wanted to
come inside to provide him protection. Max wanted to run
away to avoid the police and jumps to his death into that non-
existent balcony.

16. Summary
• Ausable complained that it was due to the balcony that
somebody had entered his room the second time. After
sometime there was knocking at the door.Ausable again
befooled Max by saying that it was the police who wanted to
come inside to provide him protection. Max wanted to run
away to avoid the police and jumps to his death into that non-
existent balcony.

17. About the Background
• This is a common story of a secret agent or international spy.
What is uncommon is the way the author describes this
character. Ausable does not fit the description of secret agents
in Hollywood movies or popular literature. Unlike 007, James
Bond for example, who is young, strong, handsome, and
irresistible to women, Ausable is just a "sloppy fat man".
Physically he is no threat to anybody. He is not even very
healthy. He carries no guns. He is no linguistic genius--
everybody could tell where he comes from his foreign accent

18. About the Background
• He lives in a small hotel, communicates with his comrades by
ordinary telephone. There seems to be nothing mysterious,
romantic or even exciting in his life or his operations. No pistol
fire, no dark-eyed beauties, no drug or poison. But it is precisely
this commonness that makes him so uncommon. The author is
very clever in portraying him in this way in contrast to the
general image because it makes the story fresh, unexpected and
dramatic.
•

19. About the Background
• When we make a character sketch, we often begin by describing
a person's looks. But although physical appearance is important,
what matters more is how the person acts, talks, thinks and
deals with people. And we should try to find a word or phrase
that can best sum up our impressions of this person. In the case
of Ausable, the most outstanding feature must be his wisdom,
his presence of mind and his quick wit. He is not strong
physically, but he can beat his enemy.

20. About the Background
• He is fat and slow, but he reacts very quickly. He carries no
weapon, but he has an excellent brain which is more powerful
than any magic weapon. He appears helpless, but he gets rid of
his deadly enemy without lifting a finger. There is no shooting
or fighting, but the battle of wits is even more exciting and
gripping.

21. Outline of the Text
• Part I (Para. 1-5 ) tells us who Ausable is and why Fowler
wants to see him. In this part, our impression of Ausable is no
different from Fowler's. Therefore, like Fowler, we as readers
are not at all prepared for what is to happen next.
• Part II (Para.6-16) describes the unexpected visit of Ausable's
adversary Max. This gives Fowler as well as us readers a great
start. Ausable too says he is totally unprepared, but in fact he is
very calm. He talks as if he has admitted defeat. Actually he is
already laying out a plan to deal with the situation. That is why
he keeps talking about the balcony.
•

22. Outline of the Text
• Part III (Para.17-26) tells us how Ausable outwits Max and
makes him jump onto the "balcony". The last two sentences
give the story a surprising ending. It is only then that the truth
has finally dawned on Fowler and us readers as to what has
really happened to Max.
•

23. Theme
• Wisdom is more powerful than any weapon.
• Never judge a person by his appearance.
• First impressions could be misleading.
• He who laughs last, laughs longest.