lost return value during a static call

hi All, I'm seeing a weired behavior in following code http://pastebin.com/B5q8i1RY when it goes through 2 static methods, at some point it stops returning value to the calling method. (please see comments in-line). may be I'm doing this in a wrong way so your suggestions are welcome. And I really appreciate if someone can explain how 'return' behaves with static methods specially when they are called recursively. thanks a bunch chamila