In general, we get the sense that time is passing so slowly for Tom from the excruciating detail of the movements of his feet and his fingers. Every time the narrator has to tell us about how his left foot inched or how his right hand scooted (and I'm paraphrasing here, not quoting) we understand that these movements feel like they take forever for Tom, yet they probably are happening pretty quickly.
Let's take a close look at some of the more salient details that also indicate the slow passage of time during his adventure on the ledge of the apartment building. We'll start by noting how all of his experiences seem to happen within instants (very brief moments of time) and yet they contain all sorts of images and feelings:
He saw, in that instant, the Loew's theater sign, blocks ahead past Fiftieth Street; the miles of traffic signals,...
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all green now; the lights of cars and street lamps; countless neon signs; and the moving black dots of people. And a violent instantaneous explosion of absolute terror roared through him...
These full, detailed experiences continue to be packed into very brief moments:
For a motionless instant he saw himself externally--bent practically double, balanced on this narrow ledge, nearly half his body projecting out above the street far below--and he began to tremble violently...
In the fractional moment before horror paralyzed him, as he stared between his legs at that terrible length of street far beneath him, a fragment of his mind raised his body in a spasmodic jerk to an upright position again, but so violently that his head scraped hard against the wall, bouncing off it, and his body swayed outward to the knife edge of balance, and he very nearly plunged backward and fell.
Then, the narrator emphasizes how the traffic patterns near the signal below Tom seem to progress very slowly, although we know from experience that it only takes a minute or so for traffic to remain stopped in one direction by a red light:
Seconds passed, with the chill faint wind pressing the side of his face, and he could hear the toned-down volume of the street traffic far beneath him. Again and again it slowed and then stopped, almost to silence; then presently, even this high, he would hear the click of the traffic signals and the subdued roar of the cars starting up again.
Lastly, we notice how slowly time is going by for Tom when we see how incredibly slow his progress is as he works his way along the wall. Only a few dozen steps feel like they take forever:
He didn't know how many dozens of tiny sidling steps he had taken, his chest, belly, and face pressed to the wall; but he knew the slender hold he was keeping on his mind and body was going to break...
Taken together, all of these details illustrate how slowly Tom's adventure seems to be transpiring for him. So it's surprising, even funny, to find out that he's only outside the building for about eight minutes before he starts trying to break the window in earnest to get back in.