I've read Heaton's other books, and he is very good at writing about bad guys, but what is he trying to tell us by letting the bad guys in this book win everything in the end?

So you see there never was a bad James in the Sunday-school books that had such a streak of luck as this sinful Jim with the charmed life.

No; that is the way with all other bad boys in the books; but it happened otherwise with this Jim, strangely enough.