How did the thinking machine get the supplies to make a robot of himself in "The Problem of Cell Thirteen"?

Jacques Futrelle's "The Problem of Cell Thirteen" is an interesting tale of intellectual jailbreak. In it, a very intelligent professor who goes by the name The Thinking Machine agrees to be locked in a prison cell to prove that he can escape, which he does. Throughout the story, the reader is left guessing how The Thinking Machine is able to do this. Toward the end of the story, the professor fortunately explains so that we all might understand one example of his genius.After discovering rats in his cell, and realizing they did not leave underneath the cell door, the professor finds a hole in the wall which leads to a drain pipe. One evening, he catches a rat and ties a message written with a scrap of his shirt and polish from his shoe, wrapped in a $10 bill, to the leg of a rat and sends it out of the room. The rat leaves via the drainpipe, as they always do, and ends up on a playground where it is found by a young boy, who reads the note, that promises another $10 to whomever finds the note and takes it to a reporter by the name of Hutchinson Hatch. The boy does so, and this puts the professor in contact with a man on the outside, who then ties twine to the thread once he finds it outside of the drain pipe (having been gnawed off by the rat) and then ties it to wire to form a more secure transportation system to the inside. It is through this system that the supplies for the dummy (not really a robot, but more of a mannequin wearing a wig) are transported into the prison cell. In order to avoid being discovered, everything is moved out each night, and the professor also stages a dead rat at his side of the entrance to the pipe, so that anybody who might investigate would be repulsed and give up. When needed, he is also able to communicate via the pipe with Mr. Hatch, although it is difficult for them to hear one another.