RETURN statement odd behavior?

[Jeff Mason]

Consider the following (questionable, to be sure, but syntactally legal) stored
procedure (using the Northwind database):

Create Procedure Test
As
Return (Select Count(*) From Orders)
Select * From Orders;

If you execute this SP in QA via:

Declare @test int;
exec @test = test;
print 'Order count = ' + cast(@test as varchar);

you'll notice that you get a correct return value, but you also get the entire
resultset from the Orders table(!), this despite the fact that BOL states:

"The RETURN statement unconditionally terminates a query, stored procedure, or batch.
None of the statements in a stored procedure or batch following the RETURN statement
are executed."

If you change the procedure definition to:

Create Procedure Test
As
Declare @tmp int;
Select @tmp = Count(*) From Orders;
Return @tmp;

Select * From Orders;

Then things behave as expected, returning only the return value.

Worse, if the procedure is defined as:

Create Procedure Test
As
Return (Select Count(*) From Orders);
Return -1;

This will return a -1 regardless of how many rows are in the Orders table.

Anybody know what's going on here?

- Jeff