Word: changed
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Next year, his lord teacher Tsao was fighting the notorious Japanese-backed ex-bandit and warlord, Chang Tso-lin; Feng calmly attacked the rear of Tsao's armies, imprisoned Tsao, and, for a while, became China's "strong man." He removed the better part of the Imperial City's ancient treasures after putting out the ly-year-old Boy Emperor Pu Yi. He allied himself with Chang. He also married the secretary of the Peking Y.W.C.A. (his first wife, a peasant, had just died...
Police identified the woman as Bertha Walt, a pretty young Zurich office worker. The night before she had carried some bread away from the dinner table, and apparently went to the zoo to feed Chang. There was a keeper's door in the wall at the back of the elephant pit through which she could have entered. To a friend she had said: "I often find animals kinder than people...
...management wanted to kill Chang, but Keeper Rietmann pleaded for mercy. Chang was spared. Until two weeks ago, he gave no more trouble. Then suddenly he became aggressive, even attacking Mandjullah. Again Hans Rietmann defended the animal. Chang, he said, was entering his bullhood and would be upset for a while. The chains that tied Chang during the night were reinforced; keepers were forbidden to enter the pit alone...
Hans Rietmann had no fear. On Christmas Eve, he entered the pit by himself. When he tried to fasten the chains around the elephant's hind legs, Chang turned and swept him up in his trunk...
Later that night, the trumpeting din of elephants fighting aroused the sleeping zoo. The zoo director rushed to Chang's pit, found him attacking Mandjullah. On the floor he found Rietmann's dead body. This time there was no one to plead for Chang. At dawn the keepers' rifles cracked four times. Chang, the elephant with imagination, was dead...