"Tsarol Babe"

For some months the Dowager Tsarina Dagmar, widow of Tsar Alexander III, and her nephew King Christian X of Denmark have employed agents to investigate the possibility that a woman with bullet scars upon her scalp and abdomen, who is being cared for in a Berlin sanitarium under the name "Frau von Tschaikovski" (TIME, Jan. 11), may actually be the Grand Duchess Anastasia, reputedly murdered with her father Tsar Nicholas II and the rest of the imperial family in a cellar at Ekaterinburg. (July 17, 1918)

Last week "Frau von Tschaikovski," who has been suffering from a well nigh complete nervous breakdown, was reported to be nearing convalescence. She declared that she lost consciousness after the volley which killed her family and wounded her, and awoke to find herself jolting along in the peasant cart of one Tschaikovski, a Red guard, who later told her that he was a member of the firing squad but had subsequently covered her with a pile of rags, while the corpses of the murdered Romanoffs were dragged away to be destroyed by acid.

Anastasia and Tschaikovski then -- runs the story -- fled to Bucharest, Roumanian capital, where she bore him a son. Tschaikovski was later shot by Bolshevist agents; and "Frau von Tschaikovski" declares that she placed the child in an orphan asylum near Bucharest when she was brought to Berlin by her brother-in-law.

The Dowager Tsarina Dagmar's agents are rumored to have traced the child. The Grand Duchess Anastasia's nurse Sascha, said recently after minutely examining the body of "Frau von Tchaikovski:" "This is the body of Anastasia. I know her body as well as I do my own. Anastasia had a brown mole on her back -- her birthmark. That mark is there. Anastasia had flat feet. This girl's feet are flat. They are the same shape as Anastasia's.

"In addition Anastasia had a protruding bone on her left foot. That protrusion is still there. Her ears are the same size and shape as Anastasia's. Anastasia's middle finger was slightly crushed in her childhood when a servant caught it in an automobile door. The middle finger is still slightly out of shape. Her hair is darker than was Anastasia's, but it has the same wave."

The Tsar's four daughters all possessed luxuriant hair, clear delicate complexions, and a carriage and manner unaffectedly regal. Anastasia, a girl of 17 at the time of her reported assassination, was considered a distinctly handsome young woman hors de boudoir.