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Ausable did not fit any description of a secret agent Fowler had ever read. Following him down the musty corridor of the gloomy French hotel where Ausable had a room, Fowler felt let down. It was a small room, on the sixth and top floor, and scarcely a setting for a figure of romantic adventure. But Ausable, in his wrinkled business suit badly in need of cleaning, could hardly be called a romantic figure.

He was, for one thing, fat. Very fat. And then there was his accent. Though he spoke French and German passably, he had never altogether lost the New England twang he had brought to Paris from Boston twenty years before.

“You are disappointed,” Ausable said wheezily over his shoulder. “You were told that I was a secret agent, a spy, dealing in espionage and danger. You wished to meet me because you are a writer, young and romantic. You envisioned mysterious figures in the night, the crack of pistols, drugs in the wine.

“Instead, you have spent a dull evening in a French music hall with a sloppy fat man who, instead of having messages slipped into his hand by dark-eyed beauties, gets only a prosaic telephone call making an appointment in his room. You have been bored!”

The fat man chuckled to himself as he unlocked the door of his room and stood aside to let his discomfited guest enter.

“You are disillusioned,” Ausable told him. “But take cheer, my young friend. Presently you will see a paper, a quite important paper for which several men have risked their lives, come to me in the next-to-the-last step of its journey into official hands. Some day soon that paper may well affect the course of history. In that thought there is drama, is there not?”

As he spoke, Ausable closed the door behind him. Then he switched on the light.

And as the light came on, Fowler had his first authentic thrill of the day. For halfway across the room, a small automatic in his hand, stood a man.

Ausable blinked a few times.

“Max, he wheezed, “you gave me a start. I thought you were in Berlin. What are you doing here in my room?”

Max was slender, a little less than tall, with features that suggested slightly the crafty pointed countenance of a fox. There was about him—aside from the gun—nothing especially menacing.

“The report,’ he murmured. “The report that is being brought you tonight on Russia’s new missiles. I thought it would be safer in my hands than in yours.”

Ausable moved to an armchair and sat down heavily.

“I’m going to raise the devil with the management this time, and you can bet on it,” he said grimly. “This is the second time in a month somebody has gotten into my room off that confounded balcony!”

Fowler’s eyes went to the single window of the room. It was an ordinary window, against which now the night was pressing blackly.

“Balcony?” Max said, with a rising inflection. “No, a passkey. I did not know about the balcony. It might have saved me some trouble had I known.”

“It’s not my balcony,” Ausable said with extreme irritation. “It belongs to the next apartment.”

He glanced explanatorily at Fowler.

“You see,” he said, “this room used to be part of a large unit, and the next room—through that door there—used to be the living room. It had the balcony, which extends under my window now.

“You can get onto it from the empty room two doors down—and somebody did, last month. The management promised me to block it off. But they haven’t.”

Max glanced at Fowler, who was standing stiffly a few feet from Ausable, and waved the gun with a commanding gesture.

“Please sit down,” he suggested. “We have a wait of half an hour at least, I think.”

“Thirty-one minutes,” Ausable said moodily. “The appointment was for twelve-thirty. I wish I knew how you learned about that report, Max.”

The other smiled without mirth.

“And we wish we knew how it was gotten out of Russia,” he replied. “However, no harm has been done. I will have it back—what is that?”

Unconsciously Fowler, who was still standing, had jumped at the sudden rapping on the door. Ausable yawned.

“The gendarmes,” he said. “I thought that so important a paper as the one we are waiting for might well be given a little extra protection tonight.”

Max bit his lip in uncertainty. The rapping was repeated.

“What will you do now, Max?” Ausable asked. “If I do not answer, they will enter anyway. The door is unlocked. And they will not hesitate to shoot.”

The man’s face was black as he backed swiftly toward the window; with his hand behind him he flung it up to its full height, and swung a leg over the sill.

“Send them away!” he rasped. “I will wait on the balcony. Send them away or I’ll shoot and take my chances!”

The rapping on the door became louder. And a voice was raised.

“M’sieu! M’sieu Ausable!”

Keeping his body twisted so that his gun still covered the fat man and his guest, the man at the window grasped the frame with his free hand to support himself as he rested his weight on one thigh, then swung his other leg up and over the sill.

The doorknob turned. Swiftly Max pushed with his left hand to free himself from the sill and drop to the balcony outside. And then, as he dropped, he screamed once, shrilly.

The door opened and a waiter stood there with a tray, a bottle and two glasses.

“M’sieu, the cognac you ordered for when you returned,” he said, and set the tray upon the table, deftly uncorked the bottle, and retired.

White-faced, Fowler stared after him.

“But—” he stammered, “the police—”

“There were no police.” Ausable sighed. “Only Henri, whom I was expecting.”

“But won’t that man out on the balcony—”

“No,” Ausable said, “he won’t return. You see, my young friend, there is no balcony.”