Need help with Return syntax

Question

I though that the two pieces of code below would perform the same function but apparently i am missing something. The code is supposed to multiply two integers. Both use the add method.
//Method that adds two integers this method works great
public static int add(int a, int b)
         if(a <= 0)
            return (a < 0) ? add(MCH.succ(a), MCH.pred(b)) : b;
         else
            return (a > 0) ? add(MCH.pred(a), MCH.succ(b)) : b;
      }//The variable total is defined earlier as what ever a originally was and is not modified.
  //This method for multiplying also works great for positive numbers but i wanted to shorten it.
  public static int multiply(int a, int b)
          if(b==1)
                return a;
          return multiply(add(total,a),--b) ;
    //This code i though was the same as above just in one line but apparently not
    //10*10 will return 10
    // 5*5 will return 5
    public static int multiply(int a, int b)
          return (b==1) ? multiply(add(total,a),--b) : a;
      }Why are the two sections of code returning different values. Any help is much appreciated

Answer 1

I tried 5*6 which produced 5 as an answer using the second version of multiply so it looks like no matter what i put in the output is always the first int.