a few minutes before eight o'clock
Standing by the window , Kenneth Torrance quickly planned the several steps which would take him to the Arctic and its silent ice-coated sea . And when , some two hours later , after a short warning rap on the door , the individual who served as Mr. Torrance 's attendant entered his room , he was confronted , not by the gentleman whose dinner he carried , but by an empty room , a stripped bed , an open window , and a rope of sheets dangling from it toward the ground two stories beneath . That was at seven o'clock in the evening . _ The Crash _ At a few minutes before eight o'clock , Air Mail Pilot Steve Chapman was enjoying a quiet cigarette while waiting for the mechanics to warm up the five hundred horses of his mail plane satisfactorily . Halfway through , he heard , from behind , a quick patter of feet , and , turning , he observed a figure clad in flannel trousers and sweater . The cigarette dropped right out of his mouth as he cried : `` Ken ! Ken Torrance ! ''